by the foolish laughter and license of the filthy tales we have to put up with by and by. She is alone; without a neighbour. The bad, unwholesome life of the dark, little, walled towns, the mutual spyings, the wretched dangerous gossipings, have not yet begun. No old woman comes of an evening, when the narrow street is growing dark, to tempt the young maiden by saying how for the love of her somebody is dying. She has no friend but her own reflections; she converses only with her beasts or the tree in the forest.
Such things speak to her, we know of what. They recall to her mind the saws once uttered by her mother and grandmother; ancient saws handed down for ages from woman to woman. They form a harmless reminder of the old country spirits, a touching family religion which doubtless had little power in the blustering hurly-burly of a great common dwellinghouse, but now comes back again to haunt the lonely cabin.
It is a singular, a delicate world of fays and hobgoblins, made for a woman’s soul. When the great creation of the saintly Legend gets stopped and dried up, that other older, more poetic legend comes in for its share of welcome; reigns privily with gentle sway. It is the woman’s treasure; she worships and caresses it. The fay, too, is a woman, a fantastic mirror wherein she sees herself in a fairer guise.
Who were these fays? Tradition says, that of yore some Gaulish queens, being proud and fanciful, did on the coming of Christ and His Apostles behave so insolently as to turn their backs upon them. In Brittany they were dancing at the moment, and never stopped dancing. Hence their hard doom; they are condemned to live until the Day of Judgment.[19] Many of them were turned into mice or rabbits; as the Kow-riggwans for instance, or Elves, who meeting at night round the old Druidic stones entangle you in their dances. The same fate befell the pretty Queen Mab, who made herself a royal chariot out of a walnut-shell. They are all rather whimsical, and sometimes ill-humoured. But can we be surprised at them, remembering their woeful lot? Tiny and odd as they are, they have a heart, a longing to be loved. They are good and they are bad and full of fancies. On the birth of a baby they come down the chimney, to endow it and order its future. They are fond of good spinning-women—they even spin divinely themselves. Do we not talk of spinning like a fairy?
The fairy-tales, stripped of the absurd embellishments in which the latest compilers muffled them up, express the heart of the people itself. They mark a poetic interval between the gross communism of the primitive villa, and the looseness of the time when a growing burgess-class made our cynical Fabliaux.[20]
These tales have an historical side, reminding us, in the ogres, &c., of the great famines. But commonly they soar higher than any history, on the Blue Bird’s wing, in a realm of eternal poesy; telling us our wishes which never vary, the unchangeable history of the heart.
The poor serf’s longing to breathe, to rest, to find a treasure that may end his sufferings, continually returns. More often, through a lofty aspiration, this treasure becomes a soul as well, a treasure of love asleep, as in The Sleeping Beauty: but not seldom the charming person finds herself by some fatal enchantment hidden under a mask. Hence that touching trilogy, that admirable crescendo of Riquet with the Tuft, Ass’s Skin, and Beauty and the Beast. Love will not be discouraged. Through all that ugliness it follows after and gains the hidden beauty. In the last of these tales that feeling touches the sublime, and I think that no one has ever read it without weeping.
A passion most real, most sincere, lurks beneath it—that unhappy, hopeless love, which unkind nature often sets between poor souls of very different ranks in life. On the one hand is the grief of the peasant maid at not being able to make herself fair enough to win the cavalier’s fancy; on the other the smothered sighs of the serf, when along his furrow he sees passing, on a white horse, too exquisite a glory, the beautiful, the majestic Lady of the Castle. So in the East arises the mournful idyll of the impossible loves of the Rose and the Nightingale. Nevertheless, there is one great difference: the bird and the flower are both beautiful; nay, are alike in their beauty. But here the humbler being, doomed to a place so far below, avows to himself that he is ugly and monstrous. But amidst his wailing he feels in himself a power greater than the East can know. With the will of a hero, through the very greatness of his desire, he breaks out of his idle coverings. He loves so much, this monster, that he is loved, and, in return, through that love grows beautiful.
An infinite tenderness pervades it all. This soul enchanted thinks not of itself alone. It busies itself in saving all nature and all society as well. Victims of every kind, the child beaten by its step-mother, the youngest sister slighted, ill-used by her elders, are the surest objects of its liking. Even to the Lady of the Castle does its compassion extend; it mourns her fallen into the hands of so fierce a lord as Blue-Beard. It yearns with pity towards the beasts; it seeks to console them for being still in the shape of animals. Let them be patient, and their day will come. Some day their prisoned souls shall put on wings, shall be free, lovely, and beloved. This is the other side of Ass’s Skin and such like stories. There especially we are sure of finding a woman’s heart. The rude labourer in the fields may be hard enough to his beasts, but to the woman they are no beasts. She regards them with the feeling of a child. To her fancy all is human, all is soul: the whole world becomes ennobled. It is a beautiful enchantment. Humble as she is, and ugly as she thinks herself, she has given all her beauty, all her grace to the surrounding universe.
Is she, then, so ugly, this little peasant-wife, whose dreaming fancy feeds on things like these? I tell you she keeps house, she spins and minds the flock, she visits the forest to gather a little wood. As yet she has neither the hard work nor the ugly looks of the countrywoman as afterwards fashioned by the prevalent culture of grain crops. Nor is she like the fat townswife, heavy and slothful, about whom our fathers made such a number of fat stories. She has no sense of safety; she is meek and timid, and feels herself, as it were, in God’s hand. On yonder hill she can see the dark frowning castle, whence a thousand harms may come upon her. Her husband she holds in equal fear and honour. A serf elsewhere, by her side he is a king. For him she saves of her best, living herself on nothing. She is small and slender like the women-saints of the Church. The poor feeding of those days must needs make women fine-bred, but lacking also in vital strength. The children die off in vast numbers: those pale roses are all nerves. Hence, will presently burst forth the epileptic dances of the fourteenth century. Meanwhile, towards the twelfth century, there come to be two weaknesses attached to this state of half-grown youth: by night somnambulism; in the daytime seeing of visions, trance, and the gift of tears.
This woman, for all her innocence, still has a secret which the Church may never be told. Locked up in her heart she bears the pitying remembrance of those poor old gods who have fallen into the state of spirits;[21] and spirits, you must know, are not exempt from suffering. Dwelling in rocks, and in hearts of oak, they are very unhappy in winter; being particularly fond of warmth. They ramble about houses; they are sometimes seen in stables warming themselves beside the beasts. Bereft of incense and burnt-offerings, they sometimes take of the milk. The housewife being thrifty, will not stint her husband, but lessens her own share, and in the evening leaves a little cream.
Those spirits who only appear at night, regret their banishment from the day and are greedy of lamplight. By night the housewife starts on her perilous trip, bearing a small lantern, to the great oak where they dwell, or to the secret fountain whose mirror, as it multiplies the flame, may cheer up those sorrowful outlaws.
But if anyone should know of it, good heavens! Her husband is canny and fears the Church: he would certainly give her a beating. The priest wages fierce war with the sprites, and hunts them out of every place. Yet he might leave them their dwelling in the oaks! What harm can they do in the forest? Alas! no: from council to council they are hunted down. On set days the priest will go even to the oak, and with prayers and holy water drive away the spirits.
How would it
