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The Tartaro and Petit Perroquet

Like many others in the world, there was a mother and her son. They were very wretched. One day the son said to his mother that he must go away, to see if he could do anything. He goes far, far, far away. He traverses many countries, and still goes on and on. He arrives in a great city, and asks if they know of a place for a servant. They tell him that there is one in the king’s house. There they tell him that he is to be gardener. But he tells them that he does not know how to use a hoe at all, but that, all the same, he would learn it with the others. He was very nice-looking. He soon learnt it, and was liked by everybody.

This king had a daughter, and she often noticed Petit Perroquet, because he was polite to everybody. In this city there was a prince, and he was paying court to this young princess, and he was seized with dislike and jealousy of Petit Perroquet. One day this prince¹⁹ went to find the king. He said to him,

“You do not know what Petit Perroquet says?—that he could bring the Tartaro’s horse here.”

The king sends for Petit Perroquet, and says to him,

“It seems that you have said that you could bring the Tartaro’s horse here?”

“I certainly did not say it.”

“Yes, yes,” said the king, “you said it.”

“If you will give me all that I ask for, I will try.”

He asks for a great deal of money, and sets off. He travels on, and on, and on, and he had to pass a wide river. He speaks to the ferryman, and pays the passage money, and tells him that perhaps he will have a heavy load on his return, but that he will be well paid.

He lands on the other side; but he had yet a long way to go in the forest, because the Tartaro lived in a corner of the mountain. At last he arrives, and knocks at the door. An old, old woman comes to him, and says to him,

“Be off from here as quickly as possible; my son smells the smell of a Christian a league off.”

“To eat me here, or to eat me elsewhere, it is all the same to me.”

But he goes outside, and hides himself under a great heap of cut ferns. He had scarcely been there a moment, when he hears a deep breathing and a grinding of teeth, which sounded like thunder. He stops where he is, trembling. The Tartaro goes to his house, and asks his mother if there is not some Christian or other hidden here.

“No, no,” says she. “But eat away, your dinner is all ready.”

“No, no! I must eat this Christian first.”

He goes hunting, looking, looking into every corner. He goes to the heap of ferns, and pulls off some to put them on one side; but our Petit Perroquet was quite, quite at the bottom. The Tartaro was just on the point of finding him, but he grew tired, and went indoors, and began to eat and to drink enormously. Our Petit Perroquet creeps out of his ferns, and goes off to the stable. The horse had a big bell round his neck, but he fills it with ferns (this bell was as large as the big bell in the church of St. Jean de Luz). He mounts on the horse’s back, and very soon he arrives at the ferry, and the ferryman comes to meet him. Together they get the horse into the ferry-boat as well as they could, and they cross over. He gave him a handsome reward. As soon as he was on the other side, the Tartaro appeared, crying out to him to give him his horse back again, and that he would give him all he could wish for. He replies, “No,” and goes off full gallop. When he came near the king’s palace he took the fern out of the bell, and everybody comes running out of doors or to the windows. All the world was astonished to see Petit Perroquet return.

The king was in ecstasy. He did not know what to say, but he liked him even more than he did formerly, and the princess did also. The other prince was not at all pleased, and he begins to think of some other plot. He goes off to find the king, and he says to him,

“Do you not know that Petit Perroquet says that he could bring the Tartaro’s diamond?”

The king sends for Petit Perroquet, and says to him,

“It seems that you say you can get the Tartaro’s diamond?”

“I certainly did not say any such thing.”

“Yes, yes—you said it.”

“No, no! I did not say it; but I will try, if you give me all I shall ask for.”

And he asks for a great deal of money.

He goes off, and reaches the ferry, and pays the ferryman well, and goes far, far, far away into the forest, till he gets to the house of the Tartaro. The old woman tells him to be off from there; and he goes and hides himself again in the ferns. And he stops there until the Tartaro comes to the house, just as he did the first time. He turns over nearly all the ferns, and leaves him scarcely covered. He stops quietly there all the time that the Tartaro was having his huge supper, and when he thinks he has finished, and is taking his nap, he creeps out very, very gently. The Tartaro always put his diamond under his pillow, and he takes it away without waking him, and escapes, running off as fast as if to break his feet. The ferryman is there, and he crosses him over, and he pays him well. The Tartaro appears on the other side again, and calls out to him telling him to give him back his diamond, and that he would give him all that he could wish for. He answers, “No, no!” and runs on to the king’s house.

When he arrived there, the king did not know what to do. One feasted him, and another feasted him, and all the world was busied about him, and everyone loved him more and more, and the princess as well as the rest. The wicked prince did not know what to think of it. He was eaten up with jealousy, and he thought of something else, and said to the king:

“Petit Perroquet says that he can bring the Tartaro himself.”

The king sends for Petit Perroquet, and says to him:

“It appears that you have said that you will bring the Tartaro himself here.”

“No, no, no, I did not say anything at all like that; but if you will give me all I ask for, I will try. You must have a carriage made of iron, half-a-yard thick, and three horses to draw it, and lots of money. When all that is ready, I will set out.”

He asks, also, for a barrel of honey, another of feathers, and two horns, and starts off.

When he comes to the ferry, it was no easy thing to get this carriage into the boat. When he has got to the other side, he first puts himself into the barrel of honey, and then into the barrel of feathers, and ties the horns on to his head, and then mounts as postilion. He then comes to the Tartaro’s house, and just then he happened to be at home. Petit Perroquet knocks at the door. The Tartaro himself comes to open, and asks:

“Who are you? You!”

“I!!—I am the oldest of all the devils in hell.”

He opens the carriage door for him, and says:

“Get in there.”

The Tartaro gets in, and Petit Perroquet, very glad, starts off, and arrives at the ferry. He crosses, as he best can, with his carriage and horses. He pays the ferryman generously, and comes to the king’s palace. They were all terrified when they saw that he had the Tartaro there. They tried to shoot him with cannon, but he caught the bullets, and sent them back as if they had been balls to play with. They could not kill him in that way, so they finished him with other arms.

As Petit Perroquet had well gained her, they gave him the princess in marriage. He sent for his mother to the court, and as they lived well, so they died happily.

Pierre Bertrand.

II—The Heren-Suge.—The Seven-Headed Serpent

It would only be spoiling good work by bad to attempt to re-write the exhaustive essay which appears, under the heading of “St. George,” in Baring Gould’s “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.” He there traces the atmospheric myth in which the Dragon is the storm-cloud, the Maiden the earth, and the Hero the sun, through all the forms of the great Aryan legend, in Indian, Egyptian, Phœnician, Italic, Keltic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian mythology. He shows that it was merely by a mistaken metaphor²⁰ that St. George came to assume the place, and wear the glories of the solar hero; and that England only followed in the wake of other countries, in making him her national Saint and Patron.

We will, therefore, now only glance at some of the Basque and Pyrenean forms of this wide-spread myth. M. Cerquand boldly places one form of the story, which is attached to the house of Belzunce, among historical legends. But the history of Belzunce and the Dragon stands in the same relation to the original myth as does that of Guy, Earl of Warwick, Moor of Moor Hall, and of scores of other heroes. In a Basque version, collected by ourselves, the concluding words show that in this form it is simply an Eponymous legend, to account for the name, “and that is whence comes the name of Belzunce.” The oldest Pyrenean version with which we are acquainted is that of the “Serpent d’Isabit.” We give the outlines of it from memory, as we heard, and read it, at Bagnères de Bigorre.

The serpent lay with his head resting on the summit of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, his neck stretched down towards Barèges, while his body filled the whole valley of Luz, St. Sauveur, and Gédres, and his tail was coiled in the hollow below the cirque of Gavarnie. He fed but once in three months, or the whole country would have been desolate. With a strong inspiration of his breath, he drew into his capacious maw, across the valleys, whole flocks of sheep and goats, herds of oxen, men, women, children, the population of whole villages at once. He was now asleep, and inert, after such a repast. The whole male population of several valleys assembled to consult on what should be done. After long and fruitless debate an old man arose and spoke:—“We have nearly three months yet before he will wake; let us cut down all the forests on the opposite hills; then let us bring all our forges and all the iron we possess, and with the wood thus cut down let us melt it all into one red-hot fiery mass; then we will hide ourselves behind the rocks, and make all the noise we can to try and awaken the monster.” So said, so done. The serpent awoke in a rage at having his slumbers broken, he saw something bright on the opposite side of the valley, and drew in a long breath, and the fiery mass, with a roar like a thunderbolt, flew across the valley, right down the monster’s throat. Then, what convulsions ensued; rocks were uptorn or split open, the mountains were shattered, the glaciers beaten into dust as the serpent twisted and lashed about in his agony. To quench his agony of thirst he descended to the valley, and drank up all the streams from Gavarnie to Pierrefitte. Then, in his last convulsion, he threw himself back upon the mountain side and expired; his head rested in a deep hollow; as the fire within him slowly cooled, the water he had swallowed poured out of his mouth, and formed the present Lac d’Isabit. In M. Cerquand’s legend of the Dragon d’Alçay, the red-hot iron is replaced by “a cow’s skin full of gunpowder.” In all the Basque legends of this class the hero dies.

But these legends differ widely from the following tales; there is in them no princess to be rescued, no charcoal-burner, no marriage, or any other wonders. Were it not for their still closer resemblance to the Gaelic tales, we should suspect the following legends to be simply translations of some French legend of St. George. As we remarked before, like the Deccan cobras, the Heren-Suge is always seven-headed. It is strange, too, to notice that the princess always behaves in the same chivalrous way. “One is enough to die.” The union, too, of Tartaro and Heren-Suge in the same tale is curious.

The Grateful Tartaro and the Heren-Suge

Like many of us who are, have been, and shall be in the world, there was a king, and his wife, and three sons. The king went out hunting one day, and caught a Tartaro. He brings him home, and shuts him up in prison in a stable, and proclaims, by sound of trumpet, that all his court should meet the next day at his house, that he would give them a grand dinner, and afterwards would show them an animal such as they had never seen before.

The next day the two sons of the king were playing at ball against (the wall of) the stable where the Tartaro was confined, and the ball went into the stable. One of the boys goes and asks the Tartaro—

“Throw me back my ball, I beg you.”

He says to him, “Yes, if you will deliver me.”

He replies, “Yes, yes,” and he threw him the ball.

A moment after, the ball goes again to the Tartaro. He asks for it again; and the Tartaro says:

“If you will deliver me, I will give it you.”

The boy says, “Yes, yes,” takes his ball, and goes off.

The ball goes there for the third time, but the Tartaro will not give it before he is let out. The boy says that he has not the key. The Tartaro says to him:

“Go to your mother, and tell her to look in your right ear, because something hurts you there. Your mother will have the key in her left pocket, and take it out.”

The boy goes, and does as the Tartaro had told him. He takes the key from his mother, and delivers the Tartaro. When he was letting him go, he said to him:

“What shall I do with the key now? I am undone.”

The Tartaro says to him:

“Go again to your mother, and tell her that your left ear hurts you, and ask her to look, and you will slip the key into her pocket.”

The Tartaro tells him, too, that he will soon have need of him, and that he will only have to call him, and he will be his servant for ever.

He puts the key back; and everyone came to the dinner. When they had eaten well, the king said to them that they must go and see this curious thing. He takes them all with him. When they are come to the stable, he finds it empty. Judge of the anger of this king, and of his shame. He said:

“I should like to eat the heart, half cooked, and without salt, of him who has let my beast go.”

Some time afterwards the two brothers quarreled in presence of their mother, and one said to the other:

“I will tell our father about the affair of the Tartaro.”

When the mother heard that, she was afraid for her son, and said to him:

“Take as much money as you wish.”

And she gave him the Fleur-de-lis.²¹ “By this you will be known everywhere as the son of a king.”

Petit Yorge²² goes off, then, far, far, far away. He spends and squanders all his money, and does not know what to do more. He remembers the Tartaro, and calls him directly. He comes, and Petit Yorge tells him all his misfortunes; that he has not a penny left, and that he does not know what will become of him. The Tartaro says to him:

“When you have gone a short way from here you will come to a city. A king lives there. You will go to his house, and they will take you as gardener. You will pull up everything that there is in the garden, and the next day everything will come up more beautiful than before. Also, three beautiful flowers will spring up, and you will carry them to the three daughters of the king, and you will give the most beautiful to the youngest daughter.”²³

He goes off, then, as he had told him, and he asks them if they want a gardener. They say, “Yes, indeed, very much.” He goes to the garden, and pulls up the fine cabbages, and the beautiful leeks as well. The youngest of the king’s daughters sees him, and she tells it to her father, and her father says to her:

“Let him alone, we will see what he will do afterwards.” And, indeed, the next day he sees cabbages and leeks such as he had never seen before. Petit Yorge takes a flower to each of the young ladies. The eldest said:

“I have a flower that the gardener has brought me, which has not its equal in the world.”

And the second says that she has one, too, and that no one has ever seen one so beautiful. And the youngest said that hers was still more beautiful than theirs, and the others confess it, too. The youngest of the young ladies found the gardener very much to her taste. Every day she used to bring him his dinner. After a certain time she said to him,

“You must marry me.”

The lad says to her,

“That is impossible. The king would not like such a marriage.”

The young girl says, too,

“Well, indeed, it is hardly worth while. In eight days I shall be eaten by the serpent.”

For eight days she brought him his dinner again. In the evening she tells him that it is for the last time that she brought it. The young man tells her, “No,” that she will bring it again; that somebody will help her.

The next day Petit Yorge goes off at eight o’clock to call the Tartaro. He tells him what has happened. The Tartaro gives him a fine horse, a handsome dress, and a sword, and tells him to go to such a spot, and to open the carriage door with his sword, and that he will cut off two of the serpent’s heads. Petit Yorge goes off to the said spot. He finds the young lady in the carriage. He bids her open the door. The young lady says that she cannot open it—that there are seven doors, and that he had better go away; that it is enough for one person to be eaten.

Petit Yorge opens the doors with his sword, and sat down by the young lady’s side. He tells her that he has hurt his ear, and asks her to look at it;²⁴ and at the same time he cuts off seven pieces of the seven robes which she wore, without the young lady seeing him. At the same instant comes the serpent, and says to him,

“Instead of one, I shall have three to eat.”

Petit Yorge leaps on his horse, and says to him,

“You will not touch one; you shall not have one of us.”

And they begin to fight. With his sword he cuts off one head, and the horse with his feet another;²⁵ and the serpent asks quarter till the next day. Petit Yorge leaves the young lady there. The young lady is full of joy; she wishes to take the young man home with her. He will not go by any means (he says); that he cannot; that he has made a vow to go to Rome; but he tells her that “to-morrow my brother will come, and he will be able to do something, too.” The young lady goes home, and Petit Yorge to his garden. At noon she comes to him with the dinner, and Petit Yorge says to her,

“You see that it has really happened as I told you—he has not eaten you.”

“No, but to-morrow he will eat me. How can it be otherwise?”

“No, no! To-morrow you will bring me my dinner again. Some help will come to you.”

The next day Petit Yorge goes off at eight o’clock to the Tartaro, who gives him a new horse, a different dress, and a fine sword. At ten o’clock he arrives where the young lady is. He bids her open the door. But she says to him that she cannot in any way open fourteen doors; she is there, and that she cannot open them, and he should go away; that it is enough for one to be eaten; that she is grieved to see him there. As soon as he has touched them with his sword, the fourteen doors fly open. He sits down by the side of the young lady, and tells her to look behind his ear, for it hurts him. At the same time he cuts off fourteen bits of the fourteen dresses she was wearing. As soon as he had done that, the serpent comes, saying joyfully,

“I shall eat not one, but three.”

Petit Yorge says to him, “Not even one of us.”

He leaps on his horse, and begins to fight with the serpent. The serpent makes some terrible bounds. After having fought a long time, at last Petit Yorge is the conqueror. He cuts off one head, and the horse another with his foot. The serpent begs quarter till the next day. Petit Yorge grants it, and the serpent goes away.

The young lady wishes to take the young man home, to show him to her father; but he will not go by any means. He tells her that he must go to Rome, and set off that very day; that he has made a vow, but that to-morrow he will send his cousin, who is very bold, and is afraid of nothing.

The young lady goes to her father’s, Petit Yorge to his garden. Her father is delighted, and cannot comprehend it at all. The young lady goes again with the dinner. The gardener says to her,

“You see you have come again to-day, as I told you. To-morrow you will come again, just the same.”

“I should be very glad of it.”

On the morrow Petit Yorge went off at eight o’clock to the Tartaro. He said to him that the serpent had still three heads to be cut off, and that he had still need of all his help. The Tartaro said to him,

“Keep quiet, keep quiet; you will conquer him.”

He gives him a new dress, finer than the others, a more spirited horse, a terrible dog,²⁶ a sword, and a bottle of good scented water.²⁷ He said to him,

“The serpent will say to you, ‘Ah! if I had a spark between my head and my tail, how I would burn you and your lady, and your horse and your dog.’ And you, you will say to him then, ‘I, if I had the good-scented water to smell, I would cut off a head from thee, the horse another, and the dog another.’ You will give this bottle to the young lady, who will place it in her bosom, and, at the very moment you shall say that, she must throw some in your face, and on the horse and on the dog as well.”

He goes off then without fear, because the Tartaro had given him this assurance. He comes then to the carriage. The young lady says to him,

“Where are you going? The serpent will be here directly. It is enough if he eats me.”

He says to her, “Open the door.”

She tells him that it is impossible; that there are twenty-one doors. This young man touches them with his sword, and they open of themselves. This young man says to her, giving her the bottle,

“When the serpent shall say, ‘If I had a spark between my head and my tail, I would burn you,’ I shall say to him, ‘If I had a drop of the good-scented water under my nose;’ you will take the bottle, and throw some over me in a moment.”

He then makes her look into his ear, and, while she is looking, he cuts off twenty-one pieces from her twenty-one dresses that she was wearing. At the same moment comes the serpent, saying, with joy,

“Instead of one, I shall have four to eat.”

The young man said to him,

“And you shall not touch one of us, at any rate.”

He leaps on his spirited horse, and they fight more fiercely than ever. The horse leaped as high as a house, and the serpent, in a rage, says to him,

“If I had a spark of fire between my tail and my head, I would burn you and your lady, and this horse and this terrible dog.”

The young man says,

“I, if I had the good-scented water under my nose, I would cut off one of your heads, and the horse another, and the dog another.”

As he said that, the young lady jumps up, opens the bottle, and very cleverly throws the water just where it was wanted. The young man cuts off a head with his sword, his horse another, and the dog another; and thus they make an end of the serpent. This young man takes the seven tongues with him, and throws away the heads. Judge of the joy of this young lady. She wanted to go straight to her father with her preserver (she says), that her father must thank him too; that he owes his daughter to him. But the young man says to her that it is altogether impossible for him; that he must go and meet his cousin at Rome; that they have made a vow, and that, on their return, all three will come to her father’s house.

The young lady is vexed, but she goes off without losing time to tell her father what has happened. The father is very glad that the serpent was utterly destroyed; and he proclaims in all the country that he who has killed the serpent should come forward with the proofs of it.

The young lady goes again with the dinner to the gardener. He says to her,

“I told you true, then, that you would not be eaten? Something has, then, killed the serpent?”

She relates to him what had taken place.

But, lo! some days afterwards there appeared a black charcoal-burner, who said that he had killed the serpent, and was come to claim the reward. When the young lady saw the charcoal-burner, she said immediately, that most certainly it was not he; that it was a fine gentleman, on horseback, and not a pest of a man like him. The charcoal-burner shows the heads of the serpent; and the king says that, in truth, this must be the man. The king had only one word to say, she must marry him. The young lady says, she will not at all; and the father began to compel her, (saying) that no other man came forward. But, as the daughter would not consent, to make a delay, the king proclaims in all the country, that he who killed the serpent would be capable of doing something else, too, and that, on such a day, all the young men should assemble, that he would hang a diamond ring from a bell, and that whosoever riding under it should pierce the ring with his sword, should certainly have his daughter.²⁸

From all sides arrive the young men. Our Petit Yorge goes off to the Tartaro, and tells him what has happened, and that he has again need of him. The Tartaro gives him a handsome horse, a superb dress, and a splendid sword. Equipped thus, Petit Yorge goes with the others. He gets ready. The young lady recognizes him immediately, and says so to her father. He has the good luck to carry off the ring on his sword; but he does not stop at all, but goes off galloping as hard as his horse can go. The king and his daughter were in a balcony, looking on at all these gentlemen. They saw that he still went on. The young lady says to her father:

“Papa, call him!”

The father says to her, in an angry tone,

“He is going off, because apparently he has no desire to have you.” And he hurls his lance at him. It strikes him on the leg. He still rides on. You can well imagine what chagrin for the young lady.

The next day she goes with the gardener’s dinner. She sees him with his leg bandaged. She asks him what it is.

The young lady begins to suspect something, and goes to tell to her father how the gardener had his leg tied up, and that he must go and ask him what is the matter. That he had told her that it was nothing.

The king did not want to go, (and said) that she must get it out of the gardener; but to please his daughter, he says he will go there. He goes then, and asks him, “What is the matter?” He tells him that a blackthorn has run into him. The king gets angry, and says “that there is not a blackthorn in all his garden, and that he is telling him a lie.”

The daughter says to him,

“Tell him to show it us.”

He shows it to them, and they are astonished to see that the lance is still there. The king did not know what to think of it all. This gardener has deceived him, and he must give him his daughter. But Petit Yorge, uncovering his bosom, shows the “fleur-de-lis” there. The king did not know what to say; but the daughter said to him,

“This is my preserver, and I will marry no one else than him.”

Petit Yorge asks the king to send for five dressmakers, the best in the town, and five butchers. The king sends for them.

Petit Yorge asks the dressmakers if they have ever made any new dresses which had a piece out; and on the dressmakers saying “No,” he counts out the pieces and gives them to the dressmakers, asking if it was like that that they had given the dresses to the princess. They say, “Certainly not.”

He goes, then, to the butchers, and asks them, if they have ever killed animals without tongues? They say, “No!” He tells them, then, to look in the heads of the serpent. They see that the tongues are not there, and then he takes out the tongues he has.

The king, having seen all that, has nothing more to say. He gives him his daughter. Petit Yorge says to him, that he must invite his father to the wedding, but on the part of the young lady’s father; and that they must serve him up at dinner a sheep’s heart, half cooked, and without salt. They make a great feast, and place this heart before this father. They make him carve it himself, and he is very indignant at that. The son then says to him:

“I expected that;” and he adds, “Ah! my poor father, have you forgotten how you said that you wished to eat the heart, half cooked, and without salt, of him who let the Tartaro go? That is not my heart, but a sheep’s heart. I have done this to recall to your memory what you said, and to make you recognize me.”

They embrace each other, and tell each other all their news, and what services the Tartaro had done him. The father returned happy to his house, and Petit Yorge lived very happily with his young lady at the king’s house; and they wanted nothing, because they had always the Tartaro at their service.

Laurentine.

In a variation of the above tale, from the narration of Mariño Amyot, of St. Jean Pied de Port, the young prince, as a herdsman, kills with a hammer successively three Tartaros who play at cards with him; he then finds in their house all their riches and horses, barrels full of gold and silver, etc., and also three “olano,” which is described as an animal who serves the Tartaro, like a dog, but much larger and more terrible, but also more intelligent and able to do any message. He kills the serpent with the aid of the “olanos,” and the princess helps by striking the serpent’s tail with a sword,²⁹ instead of sprinkling the “sweet-scented water.” The “olano” then steals dishes off the king’s table for the prince. The charcoal-burner comes; but at last the prince shows the tongues and pieces of dress, and all ends happily, except for the charcoal-burner, who is placed on the top of seven barrels of powder, and fire is applied beneath, and then nobody sees him any more.

The commencement of the next is so different that we give it at length.