Rumanian Bird and Beast Stories Rendered into English. Anonymous

tales, so prominent a feature of heterodox propaganda.

      The weapons used by the Catholic Church in its persecution of heretical sects are, almost every one of them, borrowed from the Greek armoury. One learns to know this fact more and more from a closer enquiry into the inner history of Byzance, its laws, decrees, administration and practice. And, precisely the same influence destroyed later the heretical teaching in the West as it destroyed it among the Greeks. The power of the Church and the secular arm were both used ruthlessly for exterminating any idea or any belief that ran counter to the doctrines taught by the established Church. The Cathars had also a much more difficult task in converting the East of Europe, inasmuch as they were also confronted there by some amount of literary tradition. Illiterate as were the masses, there were still among them and among their clerics, men of ability, men of learning, men trained in the scholastic schools, able, if not to refute, at any rate to confuse, the strange doctrine.

      All these forces combined, produced in the East the same result as they have produced among the Greeks. We are thus on the track of one of the most important sources of Western European folk-lore, always remembering that the medium in which this propaganda flourished differed considerably in the West from that in the East. In the former such propaganda met with a more ancient layer of well-established literary tradition. The Catholic Church, as mentioned above, was first in possession. It was not a tabula rasa on which the new teaching could be written, but yet that which existed was profoundly modified and a new fund of highly poetic yet popular material was added to the small store of knowledge possessed by the common people. But in time the Church took up the challenge, and remorselessly hunted down the apostles of popular heterodox teaching, just as the Greeks had done, going even further. It punished with sword and fire the followers of unauthorised practices, and branded every deviation from the strait path as rank heresy. The books containing legends and tales were burnt, and their possessors were often treated in like fashion.

      Inquisition, Church and other influences helped, as already mentioned, to destroy them. In the tragedy of heresy-hunting and burning of witches, the charge of devil worship was the basic principle, the chief head of accusation. It was clearly devised against the followers of the dualistic teaching. To tell a tale like any of these Rumanian “creation” tales, would have been inviting the heaviest punishment—to believe in it would have meant sure death. No wonder that they disappeared quickly, or were changed into harmless satires, as in the Reynard Cycle, or were even used for political cartoons, in broadsides, like the Cock Robin Cycle in the time of Charles II., which, when transplanted to Russia, became a political lampoon on Peter and his Court.

      Heresy-hunting becomes a popular distraction only when the official clergy find it profitable to make it so, and when the people are made to trace their own ills and troubles, their losses in field and stable, to the evil machinations of these tools of the devil. So long as they are not suffering in body or purse, the folk are absolutely indifferent to dogmas, and they will eagerly accept anything that pleases them. It will therefore not come as a surprise, in view of what has been stated, if we find some weird conceptions among the Rumanian peasantry.

      Studied from the point of view of heresiology or rather of popular psychology, some of these tales will appear to us as so many living records of the great spiritual movement, which for centuries dominated Europe, and which has since died out.

      Too little attention has been given hitherto to the influence of those numerous sects, which stretched from Asia Minor to the south of France, and overflowed even into England. Their dualism, the strong belief in the Power of Evil, Satan and his host, the consequent duty of the faithful to banish him or to subdue him, thus developed into belief in sorcery and witchcraft, with the attending horrors of the Inquisition.

      Then came a period of wider education still less tolerant of old women’s superstition and nursery tales. What was left still standing has been, and is being, finally destroyed by our modern schools and schoolmasters. From this dire fate, the folk-lore of the nearer East has as yet been preserved. The importance of the study of folk-lore has happily been recognised in those countries, early enough to stop the blight which had set in and which threatened to destroy it more ruthlessly than even in the West. The modern “man of science” is a more relentless iconoclast than the religious fanatic. He starts from the mind in his attempt to destroy folk-lore, using to this end cold reasoning, logical conclusions, spiritual prepossession and intolerance. The religious fanatic starts from the heart, with overwhelming passion, fiery zeal, unreasoning hatred, from which there is a possible escape for mysticism and mythical lore, whilst from the former there is none. Happily, our science of folk-lore with its deep sympathy and profound appreciation of these manifestations of the popular psyche has come in the nick of time to rescue from total extinction what the schoolmaster and the heresy-hunter have not yet annihilated.

      I turn now to another aspect of these bird and beast tales. If, as I believe, they show us what is at the back of the mind of the people, they are of invaluable service to the student of anthropology, above all to him who seeks enlightenment in the grave problems of education and civilization; and they are not without importance for the solution of political problems.

      Attempts are made—well meant, no doubt—to foist that state of culture which the West calls “modern civilization,” or “civilization” pure and simple, upon the reluctant people of the Near and Far East. We are forgetful of the fact that these nations have had a civilization of their own, and that something more important is included in this forcible change than the change of a dress.

      As the outcome of a long-drawn battle between feudalism and modern society, as a result of political and economic evolutions, the civilization of the West, when introduced among nations that have not gone through the same experience, acts like the Juggernaut car, which crushes under its wheels the worshippers of this new god and destroys at the same time the foundations of the old order of things. Only students of folk-lore, those who try to reach the hidden depths, nay, to penetrate the inner soul of the people, are in a position to judge of the results of these civilizing attempts. They can compare the past with the present, and draw a proper balance between gain and loss. Are the people happier, more contented, more moral, and even more religious after the change, than they were before it? Surely not. And if not, why not? The answer is very simple: because in this violent change no tenderness is shown to those beliefs and practices which are dear to the people and which help to lighten the burden of life by innocent mirth and the wholesome play of fancy. Wire brooms may sweep well; but they may do it too well, and they can sweep everything away, leaving the home bare and the gardens stripped of every leaf and flower.

      A few words concerning the order and grouping of these tales. They have been arranged in three main groups. The first comprises those tales which I have characterised as creation legends. In them the origin of birds, beasts and insects is explained as the result of some direct act of God, or the Saints, or the Devil. An attempt has been made to follow a certain chronological order. Those tales stand first in which God is acting at the beginning of the creation. Then, following the Biblical order, the legends connected with the persons of sacred history from Adam to the Apostles, including St. Mary and St. Anne. Mystical Christmas carols or rather epic ballads, in which similar subjects are treated, have been inserted between the legends. The second section comprises such legends as are more like fairy tales. The mythical personages are no longer those known through the Scriptures. On the contrary, there are in these tales reminiscences of ancient heathen gods and heroes, chief among them being Alexander the Great.

      In the third section the animal fables are grouped together. It is the literature of the apologues without any framework or moral setting. The parallels, as far as could be found, are given briefly at the end of each legend, tale or fable. I have striven to be concise in my references to the best-known collections of tales, such as Grimm, Hahn, Cosquin, and Gonzenbach, where the student of fairy tales can easily find the whole comparative literature.

      For the genuine and unadulterated popular origin of these tales I can vouch absolutely. Some I have heard in my early youth, but the majority have been culled from the works of S. Fl. Marian (Ornitologia poporană Română, 2 vols., Cernăuţĭ 1883; and Insectele, Bucharest 1903), than whom a more painstaking trustworthy collector could not be imagined. Some have been taken from the Folk-lore reviews, Şezatoarea, ed. by