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205

Wojcicki, K. W., Polnische Volkssagen und Märchen, translated into German by Friederich Heinrich Lewestam. Berlin, 1839. Bk. III. No. VIII, pp. 128-30.

"BROTHER AND SISTER."

ABSTRACT

Unnatural brother--Sister promises compliance if brother cannot find maiden lovely as herself to be his bride. After seven years' vain search he returns to claim her--Countertasks--Magic dresses--carriage which travels alone and unseen--Heroine flight (underground in magic carriage)--Spittle speaks in voice of heroine's maid--Brother breaks into her empty room.

TABULATION

(1) Brother and sister are orphans, and posses a rich kingdom. Sister is so lovely that brother wants to marry her. She is horrified. He says he will go into the world and seek a maiden as lovely as herself for his bride, but if none such can be found, he will return and marry her. She promises to do his will.-- (2) After seven years' vain search he returns, and tells sister to fulfil her promise. In order to delay the wedding, she demands a dress like the moon with stars. He brings it her, and she demands one like the sun. This also is procured, and then she demands a little carriage in which she can travel whither she will without being seen. With the help of a magician this is obtained.-- (3) Then heroine goes to her room, sends her maid away, and, standing in the carriage, begins putting on her lovely clothes. She says all the time, whilst dressing:

"Open, earth! open wide!
For to be a brother's bride
Is an awful sin."

When she is clad for the wedding, the earth opens and swallows girl and carriage.-- (4) In descending, he spits on the ground, and commands spittle to speak¹ in the voice of her maid. The impatient brother sends a servant to ask why tarries the bride. Servant knocks at the door, and asks if the princess is nearly ready. Spittle answers: "She has just put on one stocking." Soon he knocks again, and says: "The guests wait; the bridegroom waits; is not the princess ready?" Spittle answers: "Now she has just put on her dress; she is nearly ready." Evening comes on, and a thick mist covers the earth.-- (5) The impatient brother knocks and calls in vain, at last breaks open the door, and steps with his followers into the room. When he asks after his sister, spittle says, "Your sister has already gone below. This is what she left you:

'Open, earth! open wide!
For to be a brother's bride
Is an awful sin.'"

NOTES

1: See Note 69.

Note 69

(P. 428.) Spittle speaks in the following stories:--Athanas'ev, i, No, 3b; Callaway, p. 64, "Umtomhinde"; Campbell, i, 55, "Battle of the Birds" [SurLaLune: See Joseph Jacob's version]; F.-L. Journal, ii, 14, "Prince Unexpected" (Polish story); Grimm, i, 414, variant of "Hansel und Grethel"; Kohler, Orient u. Occ., ii, 112; Magyar Folk-tales, xxxiii, "Fairy Helena"; Ralston, pp. 142, "The Baba Yaga," 161; Vernaleken, "The Drummer," p. 292; Webster, p. 125. A door, when spat upon, answers (Müllenhoff, p. 399).

Drops of blood speak in Kalewala, in Dasent's "Mastermaid" (p. 71), and in Grimm's "Sweetheart Roland" (No. 56). Tufts of hair speak in Theal, p. 131. Compare the talking sticks in 204 of this collection.

In the Edda, the spittle of the waves was shaped by the gods into a man, whose blood, when he was slain, was mixed with honey and made into the mead, of which, if a man drink, he becomes a poet and a sage (see Corpus Poet. Boreale, i, 464).
Return to place in text.

Cox, Marian Roalfe. Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-five Variants of Cinderella, Catskin, and Cap O' Rushes, abstracted and tabulated. London: David Nutt for the Folklore Society, 1893.

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