The Tale of the Two Travellers or the Blinded Man/Preface
Preface.
The comparative study of folk-tales has reached the point where it begins to have a history; where schools and different lines may be traced. The three great theories: The Mythological, the Indian (or Benfey’s) and the Antropological have not given the solution of the tales problem, and now a new working method the Geographic-historic, such as it has grown up and especially has been used in Finnish folklore-researches, will try to settle the mainroads in the heterogenous world of the tale. This method has found its practical application in Kaarle Krohn’s and Antti Aarne’s studies of folk-tales, and it now appears more theoretically developed and fixed in Antti Aarne’s „Leitfaden der vergleichenden Märchenforschung“. Hereby has been formed a fundamental aid in the work, and as we too in Bolte and Polívka’s commentaries to Grimms Märchen have an invaluable help in examining thoroughly the material, it must be expected that the efforts to find out the history of each tale will increase. Much work has been done, and thanks to a series of special-researches we already know the history af some tale-circles pretty well. It is evident that on these the history of Tale will some day be founded. The popular variants is about the only evidence of the tales life that we posses. What more we know about the life of a tale is scattered and occasional so that it alone in addition to the popular tradition can help us to a result. The improvement on the resources at our command creates a better general view over the working-material and the most obvious result of this, is that the traditions, i. e. the number of variants, has increased to a degree never suspected. The greater material gives greater work, but on the other hand it adds to the chances of gettting the real main-lines in the life of the tales.
It often has been said as an objection against the comparative tale-researches that the material on which it is founded is too uncertain and frail to draw any conclusions from, and to a certain point these objections are justified. The fact is that every single version of a tale is the result of an individual development. All of them have been treated in a more or less, conscious individual, I dare say artistic manner, and hereby is opened the possibilityposibility of the influence of a great number of accidental and spontaneous factors, which by their nature avoid nearer investigation. But on the other hand if we find a tale, as for instance this now before us, appearing again and again in more than three hundred records from all ends of the world, and we see how curiously constant the tradition is, then just this wonderful tenacity of tradition gives us the right of regarding the material so reliable that we may venture to build a research on them. Surely we cannot expect a firm decision in all details, but on a large scale we can learn from the traditions the development and the ways of the type. The problem we meet is always the same: what is the explanation of this coincidence? We have no adequate reason for not believing in wandering and transfer. Complicated novels as most of the tales are, would not grow up spontaneously in different places, and it is their wanderings the tale-researches in single examinations will endeavour to follow. Among these investigations this work takes its place as a contribution to the history of tales.
The unity of this research then, is not, as will be seen, the single archaic motive, as for instance here animals appearing and acting as human beings, a motive which besides very likely roots in the comtemplation of nature in times past. What is of interest here is not such a motive as possible expression for a view of the world belonging to a more primitive stage in the phase of development, but it is this episode as one of the poetical motives of a novel. Here the primitive has vanished, we treat certain poetical motives, motives which the teller hardly belives in, but which, after traditional custom must be used in this kind of a tale, for the tales are after all poetical compositions too, and in their lives, in a rich popular tradition, we have so to say an equivalent to the written sources with which the history of litterature deals even if the material as a link in a verbal tradition conforms to other laws than those reigning in the world of litterature.
As to a further planning out of a research like this is to be remarked: First the single parts of the material at hand must be presented and examined to enable us to separate the foreign and borrowed features, and decide what belongs to the underlying tradition. But such an original tradition is on quite another plane than the recent popular variants, and the result is that we cannot decide their place in the development, judging from their smaller or greater distance from the fundamental tradition. Therefore a new section must follov, where on earlier evidences, and from a general judgement of the variants as a whole, and after their geographic extension, it is attempted to follov the wanderings of the tales. So it is inevitable to touch on the same incident several times, but to the first investigation of motives belongs necessarily an investigation of the whole problem, in which the outer life, not the inner structure of the tale shall he fixed.
Before I conclude this preface I well render an account for a preliminary work to this study. After the appearance of a small article on „a few Epic Laws in two Sections of Tales“ (Danske Studier 1915 p. 71) where the tale at hand enters the research if only represented by a few variants, Professor Kaarle Krohn in Helsingfors enabled me to use a graduale thesis by Lempi Kaila: „Totuus ja Valhe eli kaksi kulkijaa“ (Truth and Lie or the two Travellers). Thank to this efficient work, I got admission in a very easy way to the exceedingly rich Swedish-Finnish and Finnish material (about one fourth of the whole) which with very few exceptions has not come forth in print. Some of the results of Lempi Kaila’s investigations have of course at the same time been of use and help to me during the working out of this study, while on the other hand no real co-operative work could be established as the much bigger number of variants underlying my work made it a necessity to take up the matter anew. Where therefore the work of Magister Kaila differs from my conclusions, I have in foot-notes shortly accounted for these diversities.
Finally I bring my best thanks to all who have helped me in collecting the variants. Especially I must acknowledge my obligations to Professor Dr. J. Bolte and A. von Löwis of Menar in Berlin, Professor J. Polivka and V. Tille in Prague; teacher at the university of Lund Dr. C. W. v. Sydow and Dr. A. Aarne in Helsingfors.
Reidar Th. Christiansen
dr. phil.