IN THE LAND OF MARVELS.* Tuts translation from the Austrian
and Bohemian popular stories of Professor Vernaleken is a very worthy supplement to the mainly North-German collection of the Brothers Grimm. Of course, the close analogy between many of Grimm's tales and many of these, will be seen at once. Indeed, some are iden- tical, with no variation greater than some little change of cir- cumstance, which might be accounted for by the freaks of the memory alone. On the other hand, some are very fresh and original.. The shape which is given in its South-German dress to the story which is best known in England as that of "The White Cat," has to us a striking humour of its own. Instead of the white cat, we have in this form of the story simply a night-cap, which hops about in the very independent condition
• In the Land of Marvels: Folk-tates from Austria and Bohemia. By Theodor Vernabeken. With Preface by E. Johnson, DLL. London : W. Swan Sonnen- sehein. of having no head to which it appears to be attached. The night-cap, moreover, hops upon its strings, which suggests, of course, the most elaborate starch. But there is nothing at all starchy about this lively head-dress. It,—or rather "she," for she is always treated as a lady,—appears to be benignity itself; and the talismanic power which attaches to her strings of turning trees into castles, and castles back again into trees, must have tended in the lands in which the tale was current to give a stimulus to the use of night-caps. The night- cap does everything which, in the old English fairy-tale, the white cat used to do, and is at last victoriously chopped in pieces and transformed into the fairy princess of the equivalent tale. Again, we are much taken by the Bohemian equivalent for the well-known Irish legend of "Bottle Hill." In the Irish legend, the poor peasant ex- changes his last cow for a bottle which has the magic quality that when he sweeps the room and places the bottle in the centre of the floor and says, "Bottle, do your duty," the bottle opens, and two little men come out, who cover the table with the most delicate dishes, and when the feast is over, take them all back again into the bottle. The peasant being forced to give up his bottle to the traditional evil genius of the Irish peasantry,—his landlord,—he is reduced again to poverty, and takes another journey to sell his last pig, when he meets the wizard again, who gives him another bottle for his pig. This time, on his putting the bottle in the centre of the room and saying, "Bottle, do your duty," two men, armed with clubs, come out of the bottle, give all present a good thrashing, and, after they have laid them helpless on the floor, retire again to their magic home. The peasant takes this new present to exhibit to his landlord, and by the judicious use of its powers recovers the more beneficent bottle also,—so teaching the cynical lesson of worldly wisdom, that, in this evil world; to have physical power on your side is the only sure guarantee for even the most attractive of the gifts of for- tune. This is the moral of a good many of Grimm's popular tales—for example, of the one called " Tischchen, deck dich, Gold-Esel, und Kniippel aus dem Sack," and also of the South-German equivalent here given called "The Washing Rag, the Golden Goat, and the Hat-Soldiers ;" but much the closest approach to the "Legend of Bottle Hill" is the lively Bohemian tale called "The Magic Pot and the Magic Ball," in which the "Legend of Bottle Hill" is repeated in a form in some respects even more engaging than that current in Ireland. Instead of "Bottle, do your duty," the magic formula in this tale is "Ball, be polite, and take your bat off," on which the ball begins to be violently agitated, and to roll about till it divides in two, and out of the ball thus divided the magic attendants make their appear- ance. This strikes us as even a more fascinating formula than the injunction to the bottle, since it suggests that the fruitful fermentation in the ball arises from the excitement of mind due to a desire to be polite. Again, the final disappearance of the balls out of an open door into the mountains, where the genii of the balls escape, adds a touch of wildness to this tale which does not belong to "The Legend of Bottle Hill." There is another very charming form of the same widely-prevalent tale which is called here "The-Present of the Wind," and which is said to come from Moravia. The south wind first gives the gift of plenty, and then, when that gift is taken by fraud from the man to whom it had been given, the south wind bestows instead the physical force to regain it. But there is a peculiar appropriateness in ascribing both these gifts to the wind, which suggests a higher type of fancy than we detect in either "The " Legend of Bottle Hill" or the story called "The Magic Pot and the Magic Ball."
On the whole, however, we should say that these South-German and Bohemian stories have not the full mellowness and humour of the North•Gennan tales. Compare, for instance, the form in which the tale in which Death is cheated of his prey in "Der Gevatter Tod" in Grimm's tales, appears in this collection in the story called" Hans with the Goitre," and the superiorhumour and imaginative power of the former tale will be seen at once. The endings, too, of many of these South-German tales, are mocking endings, while almost all the popular stories collected by the Brothers Grimm are penetrated throughout with the peasants' firm belief in the authenticity of the marvels narrated. In South Germany and Bohemia the stories too often—as also in Ireland —end with a laugh or a jeer.
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