The Science of Fairy Tales / An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology

by Edwin Sidney Hartland

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?Then listen! when this day is overpast,
A fearful monster I shall be again,
And thou may'st be my saviour at the last,
Unless, once more, thy words are nought and vain;
If thou of love and sovereignty art fain,
Come thou next morn, and when thou seest here
A hideous dragon, have thereof no fear,
?But take the loathsome head up in thine hands,
And kiss it, and be master presently
Of twice the wealth that is in all the lands,
From Cathay to the head of Italy;
And master also, if it pleaseth thee,
Of all thou praisest as so fresh and bright,
Of what thou callest crown of all delight.

?Ah, me! to hold my child upon my knees,
After the weeping of unkindly tears,
And all the wrongs of these four hundred years.?

But the horrible apparition of the dragon was too much for the adventurer's courage:

?He cried out and wildly at her smote,
Shutting his eyes, and turned and from the place
Ran swiftly, with a white and ghastly face,?

to die within three days, a raving maniac. And

?Never any man again durst go
To seek her woman's form, and end her wo.?

It would be too tedious to run through even a small proportion of the examples of this tale, almost innumerable in Germany alone. Fortunately, it will only be necessary to allude to a few of its chief features. When the enchanted princess assumes a monstrous form, the usual ordeal of the would-be deliverer is to kiss her. A toad or a snake is, perhaps, her favourite form; but occasionally she is half woman, half toad, or half woman, half snake. Further transformations now and then take place, as from a snake into a fiery dog, or from a bear into a lion, from a lion into a snake. Sometimes as a bear alone she threatens her deliverer. In a Carinthian saga he is to cut three birch rods at the full of the moon, and then wait at the appointed place. The damsel approaches in the guise of a snake, with a bunch of keys in her mouth, and menaces him, hissing and snorting fire. Unmoved by the creature's rage, he is to strike her thrice on the head with each rod and take the keys from her mouth. In the Duchy of Luxemburg the favourite form assumed by the princess is that of a fire-breathing snake, bearing in her mouth a bunch of keys, or a ring; and the deliverer's task then is to take the keys or ring away with his own mouth. It is believed that Melusina, whose story we shall deal with in the following chapters, is enchanted beneath the Bockfels, a rock near the town of Luxemburg. There she appears every seventh year in human form and puts one stitch in a smock. When she shall have finished sewing the smock she will be delivered; but woe then to the town! for its ruins will be her grave and monument. Men have often undertaken her earlier deliverance. This is to be effected at midnight, when she appears as a snake, by taking with the mouth a key from her mouth and flinging it into the Alzet. No one, however, has yet succeeded in doing this; and meantime when a calamity threatens the town, whose faithful guardian she is, she gives warning by gliding round the Bockfels uttering loud laments.[175]