DRUNKEN/DRUGGED GUARDS IN MASTER THIEF TALES

 The general appeal of the tale of Rhampsinitus, added to the fact that it appears in what is perhaps the most interesting and popular book of Herodotus, has made it travel far and wide to the most diverse parts of the world.

Versions of the story have found their way into nearly every important collection. To such an extent, indeed, has the tale circulated, that it would require a volume to give all the versions in their entirety. In the present appendix, then, I can do no more than give an occasional extract, but

I shall add full references which will show the extensive ramifications of this most interesting story. Thus readers, who so wish, will be able to follow up the subject to any length.

First, then, let us look at the story as told by Herodotus (ii, 121).

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When more conversation passed, and one of the sentinels joked with him and moved him to laughter, he gave them another of the skins; and they, just as they were, lay down and set to to drink, and joined him to their party, and invited him to stay and drink with them. He was persuaded, forsooth, and remained with them. And as they treated him kindly during the drinking, he gave them another of the skins; and the sentinels, having taken very copious draughts, became exceedingly drunk, and being overpowered by the wine, fell asleep on the spot where they had been drinking.
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and being asked the same questions as all the rest were, he related that he had done the most clever thing when, having made the sentinels drunk, he took away the corpse of his brother that was hung up.

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MODERN VERSIONS

I shall here give selections from one or two versions from different countries which will illustrate the effect of local environment on the story and show the introduction of fresh incidents.

First I select the story as told by Ser Giovanni in his II Pecorone. The exact date of this work and the true identity of the author has not yet been determined. The date given in the book itself in an introductory verse is 1378, but scholars consider the work is probably early fifteenth century.

A translation appeared in Painter’s Palace of Pleasure, I, No. xlviii, ed. J. Jacobs, II, p. 8 et seq.,London, 1890 (see Bolte and Polívka, vol. iii, p. 399n¹).

The following translation is taken from the English edition by W. G. Waters, London, 1897, p. 102 et seq.:—

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But his mother, like the foolish woman she was, kept on begging him to do her will, and the son, out of fear lest she might send someone else to purchase the meat, bade her make a pie, and himself took a bottle of wine and mixed in the same certain narcotic drugs; and then when night had fallen he took some buns of bread, and the pie, and the wine aforesaid, and, having disguised himself in a large cloak, he went to the stall where the carcass of the calf, which was still entire, was exposed for sale.

After he had knocked, one of those who were on the watch cried out:

“Who is there, and what is your name?”

Whereupon Riccardo answered:

“Can you tell me where I shall find the stall of a certain Signor Ventura?”

The other replied:

“What Ventura is it you seek?”

Riccardo said:

“In sooth I know not what his given name may be, for, as ill luck will have it, I have never yet come across him.”

Then the watchman went on to say:

“But who is it who sends you to him?”

“It is Signora Ventura his wife,” answered Riccardo, “who sends me, having given me certain things to take to him in order that he may sup. But I beg you to do me a service, and this is, to take charge of these things for a little, while I go back home to inform myself better where he lives. There is no reason why you should be surprised that I am ignorant of this thing, forasmuch as it is yet but a short time since I came to abide in this place.”

With these words he left in their keeping the pie, and the bread, and the wine, and made pretence of going away, saying:

“I will be back in a very short time.”

The guards took charge of the things, and then one of them said:

“See the Ventura (Good Fortune) that has come to us this evening”;

and then he put the bottle of wine to his mouth, and drank and passed it on to his neighbour, saying:

“Take some of this, for you never drank better wine in all your life.”

His companion took a draught, and as they sat talking over this adventure, they all of them fell asleep.

All this time Riccardo had been standing at a crevice of the door, and when he saw that the guards were asleep he straightway entered, and took hold of the carcass of the calf, and carried it, entire as it was, back to his house, and spake thus to his mother:

“Now you can cut as much veal as you like and as often as you like”;

whereupon his mother cooked a portion of the meat in a large broth-pot.

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The above version contains nearly all the important incidents found in so many later variants, but is clearly based on the French version of Dolopathos.

We will now look at a Gypsy version from Romania. It forms No. 6, “îl dui cïor (cei doui Hoṭi)” in Dr Barbu Constantinescu’s Probe de Limba Ṣi Literatura Ṭiganilor din Romãnia, Bucharest, 1878, pp. 79-87. The stories are given in the original Rómani with a Romanian translation. It then appeared in English with notes by F. H. Groome in the Journal of the Gypsy-Lore Society, vol. iii, July, 1891, pp. 142-151 (cf. also Academy, 29th November 1890, pp. 506-507).

The “thief” variety of story appears to be very popular amongst the gypsies, for in his Gypsy Folk-Tales F. H. Groome gives no less than five “master thief” stories, one of which is a fairly close variant of the tale of Rhampsinitus. The end of it, however, resembles Grimm’s “Meisterdieb,” No. 192, and is found more complete in a Slovak-Gypsy story (see R. von Sowa’s Mundart der Slovakischen Zigeuner, Göttingen, 1887, No. 8, p. 174).

“The Two Thieves,” as the story we are about to discuss is called, is one of the fifteen (not thirteen as stated by Groome, op. cit., p. liii) stories in Constantinescu’s collection. As he notes in his most interesting Introduction, the gypsies form an important channel of story-migration, and one, I would add, which folklorists have rather neglected.

I can merely give here the story of “The Two Thieves,” which appears on pp. 41-46 of Groome’s work. Reference should be made to pp. 46-53, where the Slovak-Gypsy variant of Grimm’s story is given, followed by other versions and some useful notes on the story under discussion.

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So the king went and took the corpse, and hung it up, and set soldiers to watch it.

Then the thief took and bought a white mare and a cart, and took a jar of twenty measures of wine. And he put it in the cart, and drove straight to the place where his comrade was hanging. He made himself very old, and pretended the cart had broken down, and the jar had fallen out. And he began to cry and tear at his hair, and he made himself to cry aloud, that he was a poor carter, and his master would kill him.

The soldiers guarding the corpse said one to another:

“Let’s help to put this old fellow’s jar in the cart, mates, for it’s a pity to hear him.”

So they went to help him, and said to him:

“Hullo! old chap, we’ll put your jar in the cart; will you give us a drop to drink?”

That I will, deary.”

So they went and put the jar in the cart. And the old fellow took and said to them:

“Take a pull, deary, for I have nothing to give it you in.”

So the soldiers took and drank till they could drink no more.

And the old fellow made himself to ask: “And what is this?”

The soldiers said: “That is a thief.”

Then the old man said:

“Hullo! deary, I shan’t spend the night here, else that thief will steal my mare.”

Then the soldiers said:

“What a silly you are, old fellow! How will he come and steal your mare?”

“He will, though, deary. Isn’t he a thief?”

“Shut up, old fellow. He won’t steal your mare; and if he does, we’ll pay you for her.”

“He will steal her, deary; he’s a thief.”

“Why, old boy, he’s dead. We’ll give you our written word that if he steals your mare we will pay you three hundred groats for her.”

Then the old man said:

“All right, deary, if that’s the case.”

So he stayed there. He placed himself near the fire, and a drowsy fit took him, and he pretended to sleep. The soldiers kept going to the jar of wine, and drank every drop of the wine, and got drunk. And where they fell there they slept, and took no thought. The old chap, the thief, who pretended to sleep, arose and stole the corpse from the gallows, and put it on his mare, and carried it into the forest and buried it. And he left his mare there and went back to the fire and pretended to sleep.

And when the soldiers arose, and saw that neither the corpse was there nor the old man’s mare, they marvelled, and said:

“There! my comrades, the old man said rightly the thief would steal his mare. Let’s make it up to him.”

So by the time the old man arose they gave him four hundred groats, and begged him to say no more about it.

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It will be seen that in its chief incidents the above gypsy version resembles the original Rhampsinitus tale, but, like many other variants, has had portions of another story added to it.

We will now contrast an interesting Finnish version in Old Swedish, which, as far as I know, has never before been translated into English. The story appears to have been very popular in Finland, where about fifteen versions are found (see Aarne, “Verzeichnis der Märchentypen,” Helsingfors, 1910, and “Finnische Märchenvarianten,” Hamina, 1911, FF Communications 3, p. 40, and 5, p. 77). Bolte describes the version given below as Swedish, but in reality it is Finnish (Fenno-Swedish), being written in the Swedish spoken by the Finns during the Vasa era, about the fifteenth century.

The version in question is to be found in Ȧberg, Nyländska Folksagor, 2:a häftet, Helsingfors, 1887, and is here translated literally—the somewhat disjointed style of the Old Swedish and constant use of short sentences being preserved.

The Bank Thief

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As the king could not find out who was the thief in this way, he caused a watch-house to be built outside the town, and placed the body inside. Six men were put to guard it outside and six inside. The king thought that somebody would try to take the body away, and that this would be the one to whom it belonged. When the student heard about this, he ordered twelve clerical gowns to be made, and when he had got them, he went from one toll-gate to the other and bought a large amount of liquor.

Then he went to the watch-house, asking if he might stay there for one night. But the guards were strictly forbidden to let anybody stay there, and dared not keep him over the night.

He said:

“Why can’t you let me stay for one night? I will help you to guard, if you let me stay.”

Thus, he was allowed to stay. He then gave them some of the liquor. At first they would not touch it, but when he said that he would keep watch if they chanced to go to sleep, they took some of it. Before long they were all asleep. Then he dressed them all in the clerical gowns and took the corpse away.

When the first guard awoke and saw what had happened, he called the others, saying to each of them:

“Good morning, Your Reverence! That traveller has gone away with the corpse and now Fan (Old Nick) will take us! I suggest that we all go to the king and ask him for a paṛṣ each.”

So they did. The king thought:

“Where on Earth have all these priests come from?”

However, he gave them a paṛṣ each.

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The main incidents from Herodotus still appear. A new addition is the amusing incident of the “priests” obtaining a paṛṣ each, although in the Old Dutch poem, “De Deif van Brugghe” (see the reprint by G. W. Dasent, Zeit. f. d. Alterth., vol. v, 1845, p. 399), the guards are dressed in monks’ clothing.

It found its way to Greece somewhere about 150 B.C., when it became incorporated with ancient Greek myths of pre-Homeric date. It received fresh impetus by its inclusion in the Seven Sages, and kindred mediæval collections. The numerous languages into which these collections were translated spread the tale of the Two Thieves all over Europe. This dissemination may have been considerably helped by the gypsies, who picked up the tale in the Balkans and included it in their general stock-in-trade of stories.

The “Tale of Rhampsinitus” therefore, affords one of the most interesting and perfect examples of the longevity and migration of a really good tale, the history of which can be traced for over two thousand, three hundred years.

PS.
Excerpt on analogues to Gaza (the Rhampsinitus story in the Seven Sages cycle):
In i, 5, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 28, 32, 38 the robber intoxicates (or drugs) the guards that have been set to watch the headless body, then steals the body away from them and gives it burial; in 27 and 30 he sings the guards to sleep. In%i8, after intoxicating the guards, he dresses them up in monks' clothes.