Folk Tale
Notes
| Author | Dean S. Fansler |
|---|---|
| Book Title | Filipino Popular Tales |
| Language | English |
A Tagalog story resembling the Bicol tale in some respects is “The Adventures of Juan” (JAFL 20 : 106–107), in which
A magic tree furnishes the lad who spares it a goat that shakes silver money from its whiskers, a net which will catch fish even on dry ground, a magic pot always full of rice, and spoons full of whatever vegetables the owner wishes, and finally a stick that will beat and kill. The first three articles a false friend steals from Juan by making him drunk. With the help of his magic cane, however, he gets them back, and becomes rich and respected. One night a hundred robbers come to break into the house, to take all his goods and kill him; but he says to the stick, “Boombye, boom-ha!” and with the swiftness of lightning the stick flies around, and all those struck fall dead, until there is not one left. Juan is never troubled again by robbers, and in the end marries a princess and lives happily ever after.
The hero of our tale is a lazy, good-natured man, whose industrious wife’s reproaches finally drive him from home. Analogous to this beginning, but not furnishing a complete parallel, is Caballero’s “Tio Curro el de la porra” (Ingram, 174–180).
Uncle Curro is pleasure-loving and improvident, and soon finds himself and his family in the direst need. Unable finally to bear the reproaches of his wife, he goes out in the field to hang himself, when a little fairy dressed like a friar appears, and blames him for his Judas-like thought. The fairy then gives him an inexhaustible purse, but this is stolen from him by a rascally public-house keeper. Again he goes to hang himself; but the fairy restrains him, and gives him a cloak that will furnish him with all kinds of cooked food. This is likewise stolen. The third time he is given a cudgel. While on his way home, he is met by his wife and children, who begin to insult him. “Cudgel, beat them!” Magistrates and officers are summoned. These are put to rout; and finally Uncle Curro and his stick make such havoc among all sent to restrain him, that the king promises him a large estate in America.
This version differs from the usual form, in that the inn-keeper is not punished, nor are the first two magic objects recovered.
The “Ass-Table-Stick” cycle, of which the “Indolent Husband” is clearly a member, is one of the most widespread Märchen in the world. For a full bibliography of this group, see Bolte-Polívka, 1 : 346–361 (on Grimm, No. 36). The usual formula for this cycle is as follows:—
A young servant (or a poor man) is presented by his master (or by some powerful personage—in some of the versions, God himself) on two different occasions with a magic object, usually a gold-giving animal, and a table or cloth which miraculously supplies food. When in an inn, he is robbed of the magic object and magic animal by the inn-keeper or his wife, and worthless objects resembling those that are stolen are substituted while the hero sleeps (or is drunk). The third magic article, which he gets possession of in the same way as he acquired the other two, is a magic cudgel or cane, through the aid of which he recovers his stolen property.
This is the form of the story as it is found in Basile (1 : i), Gonzenbach (No. 52), Cosquin (Nos. IV and LVI), Schott (No.
20), Schneller (No. 15), Jacobs (English Fairy Tales, “The Ass, the Table, and the Stick”), Dasent (No. XXXIV, “The Lad Who
Went to the North Wind” = Asbjörnsen og Moe, 1868, No. 7), Crane (No. XXXII, “The Ass that Lays Money”); and it is this formula
that our story follows. Grimm, No. 36, however, differs from these stories in two respects: (1) it has a framework-story of
the deceitful goat on whose account
In their details we notice a large number of variations, even among the European forms. The personage from whom the poor man receives the magic objects is sometimes God, Fortune, a fairy, a statue, a magician, a dwarf, a priest, a lord, a lady, etc. (Cosquin, 1 : 52). The old humpback in our story may be some saint in disguise, though the narrator does not say so. The gold-producing animal is not always an ass, either: it may be a ram (as in the Norse and Czech versions), a sheep (Magyar, Polish, Lithuanian), a horse (Venetian), a mule (Breton), a he-goat (Lithuanian, Norwegian), a she-goat (Austrian), a cock (Oldenburg), or a hen (Tyrolese, Irish). For references see Macculloch, 215.
The Indian members of this cycle are Lal Behari Day, No. 3, “The Indigent Brahman;” Minajev, “Indiislda Skaski y Legendy” (1877), No. 12; Stokes, No. 7, “The Foolish Sakhouni;” Frere, No. 12, “The Jackal, the Barber, and the Brahmin who had Seven Daughters.” Of these versions, Day’s most closely resembles the European form (Cosquin, 1 : 57).
Numerous as are the Indian and other Oriental variants, it seems to me very likely that out story was not derived directly from them, but from Europe. However, I shall not undertake to name the parent version.
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