Bits of Blarney

  LEGENDS OF FINN MAC COUL.

  There is a similarity, all over the world, between the popular legendsand traditions of different nations. They are reproduced, with slightdifferences of circumstance and costume, to suit each new locality. Forexample, the Maiden Tower at Constantinople, actually built by theEmperor Manuel, centuries ago, for the purpose of a doublecommunication--with Scutari, on the Asian side, and with the point ofcoast occupied by the Serai Bournou on the Asian. Whenever the hostilevisit of a Venetian fleet was anticipated, a strong iron chain used tobe drawn on both sides, across the entire breadth of the strait.Respecting this are several legends, all of which have their prototypesin the West.

  The generally received account has appropriated it as the place inwhich, for safety, a damsel was held in close retirement until the fataltime named in a prediction should have passed away; but a serpent,accidentally brought up in a basket of fruit, caused the maiden's death.Here is a striking illustration of the similarity between the legends ofthe East and those of the West. In the Third Calendar's Story, in theArabian Nights' Entertainments (which have charmed all of us in youth,and rarely fail to delight us when we return to them in maturer years),the whole interest turns on an incident of the same character. Bothstories appear deeply imbued with that fatality which forms thedistinguishing feature in Eastern belief and practice. Near Bristol,also, are the remains of a tower, called Cook's Folly, erected to be thedwelling-place of a youth of whom it had been predicted that (like theheroine of the Turkish legend) his life would be in peril from a serpentuntil the completion of his eighteenth year. The dangerous time hadnearly expired, when the youth died from the venomous bite of an adder,which had been accidentally conveyed to his isolated abode in a bundleof fagots.

  In the south of Ireland, on the summit of a mountain called CorrigThierna (the Chieftain's Rock), is a heap of stones which, if there betruth in tradition, was brought there to build a castle in which was todwell a son of Roche, Prince of Fermoy, of whom it had been predictedthat he would be drowned before his twentieth year. The child, when onlyfive years old, fell into a pool of water which had been collected, onthe top of the mountain, to make mortar for the erection of the tower,in which it was intended he should be kept "out of harm's way," untilthe perilous period had elapsed. The child was drowned. In each case,the prophecy appears to have brought about its own fulfilment. There isa moral in these old traditions, did we but know how to seize and applyit.

  Washington Irving has localized several legends as American, but his RipVan Winkle has been traced to a German origin, and many of his otherlegends appear to be old friends in a new attire. Who can say whence anytraditional stories are derived? Some years ago, a supplement to theThousand-and-One Nights, containing an Arabian tale called the SageHeycar, was published at Paris, and the translator noted the curiousfact that this Oriental story contained many incidents exactly similarto passages in the life of AEsop: such as sixteen pages of details of avisit made by Heycar to the court of Pharaoh, which are the same, wordfor word, with the account of the like visit made by AEsop. So, too, thechallenge which Pharaoh sent to the King of Abyssinia, demanding him tobuild a palace in the air, and the ingenious means to which AEsop hadrecourse, are transferred to Heycar. Even the fables of AEsop, thePhrygian, have been claimed for Lokman, the Arabian philosopher, and nowthe very incidents of his life are taken from him by Heycar.

  The Coventry legend of Lady Godiva is claimed by the Arabians. In VonHammer's new Arabian Nights is the story called Camaralzeman and theJeweller's Wife, founded on an incident precisely similar to that inwhich the English heroine appears.

  The truth is, it is impossible to ascertain what coincident mythologyconnects the East and the West. We know not what relation Thor ofScandinavia may have with Vishnu of Hindostan. The oldest English andIrish stories appear to have corresponding legends among the Celts,Danes, Scandinavians, and Normans, and, again, these have wanderedeither to or from the East. Even such thoroughly English stories as TomThumb, Jack the Giant Killer, and Whittington and his Cat, are claimedas aboriginal in foreign countries. The Wise Men of Gotham, one of theoldest English provincial legends, is given, nearly verbatim, in one ofthe German popular stories, collected by the Brothers Grimm, and itsincidents may be found in the Pentamerone (in the story of Bardiello),but has been translated from the Tamul tongue, which is a dialect ofSouthern India, as the "Adventures of Gooroo Noodle and his FiveDisciples."

  The Germans are very fond of legendary lore. Like the Irish, they havetheir cellar-haunters, who invariably tap the best wine, and makethemselves merry with whatever the cellar and larder can supply. Likethe Irish, too, they have traditions of gigantic dwellers in the land,in days gone by, and they re-people the Hartz with men of enormousstature and strength, capable of daring and doing any thing, yet whodiffer from the Genii, in the Arabian Tales, who are spoken of aspossessing supernatural powers, while the giants of Western tradition,having nothing remarkable, except their size and strength, and so farfrom being endowed with more than human powers, may be noticed, on thecontrary, as being slow-witted and rather dull of comprehension,--for,like most very tall people of the present day, their upper story isunfurnished. Such were Finn Mac Coul, and his great rival, Ossian,neither of whom can be named as remarkably bright "boys." There are afew instances of this which may be worth recording. For example:--