1001 Nights: The Orient and the Far Northwest

H.C. WOLFART

University of Manitoba

No one who has taken even a cursory look at the Sacred Stories of the Sweet Grass Cree which Leonard Bloomfield published in 1930 (Bloomfield 1930)

could fail to notice that, among a stupendous array of ancient Cree myths, he blithely included a text titled "Aladdin". What must have possessed

Bloomfield, the reader is tempted to ask, to print such a text, told to him in 1925 by ka-wihkaskosahk, without the least comment?

If you then turn to the text itself, the puzzle become even more obscure,

for there are several detailed notes on grammatical points but, again, none

at all on the fact that, about three-quarters through the text, the narrator

suddenly finds herself in the midst of another story from the Arabian Nights,

the second part of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves".

1. Transmission

None of this would seem surprising in a European context where the tales

of the Thousand and One Nights have long been favourites, both as adult literature and as stories for children. In considering their place in the indigenous literatures of North America, on the other hand, it is useful to keep in mind four well-established facts:

(1) The tales of the Arabian Nights Entertainment had taken Europe by

storm in the 18th century as part of a general fascination with matters oriental (recall the "orientalism" [Edward Said] exhibited before long in the symphonies of Mozart, the paintings of Ingres, the novels of Wilhelm Hauff, etc.).

(2) Many of these tales, which are Indian in origin (and often Persian in redaction) rather than Arabic, had in fact been trickling through long before Galland's translation of 1704 (Galland 1704) — at least since the Crusades and the Decameron (cf. Littmann 1921).

370

1001 NIGHTS 371

(3) Stories (and manuscripts) were the objects of trade and commerce even without plastic wrapping and the Universal Product Code.

(4) While it takes years to learn, say, the manufacture of damascene steel,

a single telling may suffice for a tale (or a song) to be transmitted from one place and one tradition to another.

It is this last point, above all, which seems to lend an air of futility to

the grand compendia of Stith Thompson and others1 — and seems to have

stymied any thought on the part of folklorists of emulating the methods of comparative reconstruction in their celebrated rigour.

Especially with the advent of printing (and now radio and television)

— who could ever trace lines of transmission and begin to draw stemmata?

Just as North American Indian myths and legends appeared early on the European book market — besides Schoolcraft and other works pub­

lished only in English, there are major German editions2 at least from the 1830s on — the collections of the Herder-Grimm era sold like hotcakes in

England and France, with the first English translation of the Grimm tales (1824) illustrated by none less than George Cruikshank; later editions are countless.

1.1 The fur-trade route

For the indigenous languages of North America, some lines of transmission seem obvious, and no one would quibble with Boas (1925:199) when he speaks of the "great wealth" of material which the "early French settlers . . . carried over extended areas of the continent ... as employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and as independent fur traders." It does not take much imagination to picture the voyageurs smoking their pipes after dinner, or the somewhat more permanent post staff sitting around their stoves of a winter's night, and telling the familiar stories of their childhood and youth

— and any others they may have heard in their travels. As Honigmann suggested in 1953 (long before the current wave of Metis

studies), it may well have been the dispersal of the Metis from Red River and the major role they continued to play in the freighting operations of the fur companies which provided the major avenues for the diffusion of

French folktales. It also seems plausible enough that all these stories fell on eager ears

among people for w h o m story-telling was not only a necessity, both practical

1His may be the most comprehensive and widely cited instances (cf. Aarne and Thompson 1928; Thompson 1929, 1932) but there are many precursors, such as Cox (1892), Hartland (1894) or Bolte and Polivka (1912).

2For example Jones (1837), George (1856), Knortz (1871), and, late in the century, even Boas himself (1895).

372 H.C. W O L F A R T

and spiritual, in transmitting their entire store of knowledge and wisdom viva voce but also an important art form, giving rise to story-telling contests

which might best be compared to those of the Meistersinger of late medieval

Europe. This "fur-trade route" of text transmission is clearly a necessary part

of the picture, but just as clearly it is not sufficient as the whole. There are other modes of transmission, one of which I propose to document in this

paper.

1.2 The missionary route

The first document is one that took m e completely by surprise when it

leapt at m e in one of the scattered libraries of the Oblate order: two note­

books with translations into Cree by Father Jules Calais (1871-1944). Born

at Luneville in Lorraine, Calais did not leave his native departement of

Meurthe-et-Moselle until after his ordination in 1896; following his noviciate at Angers he came to Athabasca Landing on the upper North Saskatchewan

in 1899, where he immediately began the study of Cree, and stayed in north­

ern Alberta and the adjacent prairie regions for the remaining 45 years of his life; his mission at Sturgeon Lake (at the southern edge of the Peace River

area) now bears his name (cf. Carriere 1976.1:157). From 1937 until 1942 he was editor of the periodical Kitchitwaw, published in Cree at Hobbema,

and his papers3 include the two notebooks mentioned above (Calais 1944a,

1944b), which he seems to have penned during his last winter; one of the translations is dated 27 December 1943.

There are a few popular English hymns, an anecdote or two about

Father Lacombe and some Cree stories, but the major portion of one note­book is taken up by the story of Ali Baba, and the other is filled completely with that of Aladdin. W h y a missionary priest would apply his energy and talents to such pagan matter rather than, say, the lives of the saints or the edifying legends of Christian tradition is a question I a m not prepared to answer; or could it be that these missionary priests shared the principle

I first encountered these papers, which have since been deposited in the Provincial Archives of Alberta (cf. Owens and Roberto 1989), in 1967 in the archives and library of the Oblate Province at St-Joachim (cf. Wolfart 1984), where m y guide was Father Emile Tardif.

I am also indebted to the current Oblate Archivist, M m e Claude Roberto, and of course to m y colleague Freda Ahenakew, who not only permitted m e to draw on the pre-publication version of the ka-mimikwatowet texts but also helped at every step with genealogical details and her untiring teachings on matters of Cree language. The errors which remain are, of course, mine.

The financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council is gratefully acknowledged.

1001 NIGHTS 373

by which the Cree categorise all texts as either dtayohkan 'sacred story' or dcimowin 'experience story'? If this were the case, saints' lives and legends

might be on the heavy side of the divide, and what better candidate for light literature than the immortal tales of the 1001 Nights?

Be that as it may, the existence of Father Calais' translations — which only precede the classic Ali Baba film of Fernandel by a few years — is another testimony to the enduring allure of these tales.

The Calais manuscripts constitute an unambiguous document of one avenue of transmission: a literate agent of instruction (missionary or teacher) deliberately translating Old World texts into Cree. Even for a critical edi­

tion, I doubt if I would ever attempt to identify the text from which they were translated — for the popular editions are countless, in English as in French. Only with the original in hand, however, would we be able to estab­lish whether Father Calais actually translated a text or re-told in Cree two

stories which m a y have been part of his mental baggage since his childhood in Lorraine.

The crucial point is the very existence of his manuscripts. They force us to consider the possibility, indeed probability,4 that Father Calais simply followed a general practice among earlier priests — no matter how long

ago — and perhaps even among the "writers" of the fur-trade companies (cf. Johnson 1967; Wolfart 1985:411) whose libraries still have not been fully catalogued and analysed.

1.3 Fur-trade texts vs. missionary/teacher texts

The texts emerging at the end of these two major avenues of transmission might be expected to differ roughly in the following areas:

Fur-Trade Texts

- early (and with large-scale assimilation/integration of cultural items);

- strictly oral, artisanal/pre-industrial (i.e., resembling traditional folktales without the intervention of major technological amplifica­tion);

- deletion, re-arrangement or contamination of motifs or episodes;

- demonstrable transmission errors.

Missionary/Teacher Texts

- late (ca. mid-19th century [but, of course, with overlap], with cul­tural items remaining unassimilated);

For an eye-witness account of such practices recall Honigmann's encounter in 1948 at Attawapiskat with a French-Catholic missionary who "sometimes repaid hospitality ... by telling his Swampy (eastern) Cree hosts stories of Reynard the Fox" (1953:311).

374 H.C. W O L F A R T

- no longer strictly oral (and the result of industrial amplification in

the form of popular editions); - fairly strict retention of sequence and configuration of episodes;

- relatively undisturbed transfer from some original to a "mere trans­

lation", not a re-creation.

This is what one might expect, and in the remainder of the paper we will

survey a small set of such texts in the light of these categories.

The crucial piece of evidence for the transmission of oral documents — as in that of manuscripts — is the carry-over of peculiarities or errors. In the case of the tales in question, the individual motifs are reasonably simple

but their configuration is both complex and, often enough, unmotivated and

thus subject to either retention and disturbance in the process of imitating

an antecedent original.

2. The Texts

2.1 The ka-wihkaskosahk text

In examining actual texts, let us begin with the only published docu­ment of this type: the brief text told in 1925 by ka-wihkaskosahk/Maggie Achenam (acenam) and published by Bloomfield under the title "Aladdin"

(ka-wihkaskosahk/Maggie Achenam 1930, identified below as "S[page-line]"). It is hardly surprising that this mere plot summary of two and a half pages

varies substantially from the elaborate version of Zotenberg's Paris manu­

script which takes approximately 130 pages in Littmann's translation. It seems quite extraordinary that Bloomfield, whose work shows him

to have been a m a n of great literary gifts and also meticulous to the point

of pedantry, restricts his editorial commentary to supplying the title, and

that he has nothing whatever to say about the recent fate of the tale (or even about the European tales which had recently been recorded, in En­glish, among various neighbouring groups), nor indeed the fact that the tale of Aladdin is severely truncated and then followed, after the barest of transitional sentences,

ekwah ay-ayaw. (S342-10) 'Then he dwelt there.'

by a similarly laconic summary of the second half of "AH Baba and the Forty Thieves".

Besides the unusual juxtaposition of wemiscikosis and moniyds which Bloomfield, despite his hedging footnote, translates as 'French boy' and 'Englishman', the text yields few terms that look like loan translations or otherwise remarkable, e.g.,

1001 NIGHTS 375

owdsaskotenikan ka-manitowaniyik (S340-35) 'his magic lamp'

asiniwi-miteh (S341-30) 'a stone heart'

eh-miyosit maskihkiw-iyiniw (S341-40) 'an excellent physician'

— which last phrase, despite its foreign flavour, seems current among con­temporary Plains Cree speakers.

I have not been able to determine whether the expression,

kiskeyihtam, ekot e-masinahikehk pihkohk, . . . (S340-24) 'He knew from the pattern of the ashes . . .'

is a Cree term for divination or a caique. The incantation, finally, which the evil Englishman teaches the French boy to use,

nikotwasik iskwahtem, pdskihtepayih! (S340-6, S340-8) 'Six door, go open!'

provides the only linguistic clue (cf. section 3.2.2, below) to the language of the antecedent version of this tale.

The evidence of this brief text published in Cree seems to support the observation of Honigmann (1953:310), based on five tales told to him in

English by two Cree-speaking Metis at Fort Nelson, British Columbia in 1943: Honigmann finds it noteworthy "that diffusion has so little altered the form and content of the European-derived tales." As he argues, "their

relatively unmodified nature [with concepts like priest, king, wedding, gold,

money and ship] supports the hypothesis of their relatively recent diffusion." While a closer comparison would go beyond the scope of the present study,

the tales published by Honigmann differ greatly from the Cree texts to which we now turn.

2.2 The ka-mimikwatowet texts

The substantial collection of Plains Cree texts which ka-mimikwatowet/Will­iam Greyeyes (1912-1987) told to Freda Ahenakew between 1982 and 1986 includes four5 which are unambiguously of Old World provenance (ka--mimikwatowet/William Greyeyes 1990; identified below as "(WG-[text]").

5 Despite the eh arming interpretation of two (sexually balanced) pairs of four, proffered in the parallel instance of a collection of eight texts by Regna Darnell (1988:462), the number of texts here seems entirely accidental.

376 H.C. W O L F A R T

The narrator was raised on Opitihkwahakew's Reserve (known as Mus­

keg Reserve in English, the southernmost of the three closely related re­

serves north of Fort Carlton whose people are traditionally subsumed un­

der the term wdskahikaniwiyiniwak; cf. Ahenakew 1987, especially pp. x-xi)

and received much of his schooling at St. Michael's Roman Catholic Board­

ing School, Duck Lake; although he served in Europe during World War II

and later lived at Prince Albert, he is explicit about the fact that he had

learnt these stories much earlier:

e-ki-miyohtahk 6m dya, you know, moniydw-dtayohkan e-ki-~ e-ki-osihtdcik, ay etikw dwa kehcind ki-nihtd-dcimow ekwa mina ewakw dwa Louis, Ahenakew. (WG-31) 'He used to make it sound nice, you know, when they rendered a White fairy­tale, he certainly was very good at telling stories, that Louis, Ahenakew.'

. . . ewak oma peyak dsay mina Louis Ahenakew otdcimowinis, moniydw--dcimowinis e-ki-ndh-nehiyaw-dtotahk mdna; dh-dcayohkesici, mistahi ki-mdh--miyohtdkwaniyiwa otdcimowina. . . . "d, ketahtawe," itwew, is oma peyak aya, ". . ." (WG-63) 'This one is again a story of Louis Ahenakew, one of the White stories which he used to tell in Cree; when he would tell some of these fairy-tales, they were made to sound very good, his stories. . . . "Well, at one time," he said, for this one, "..."'

ewak oma mina peyak kd-wi-atotamdn, Louis ewakw dwa, okiskinahamdkew otdcimowin. . . . awa, ketahtawe," itwew,u. . ." (WG-64) 'This story, too, the one I am about to tell, it is the story of Louis, the teacher. . . . "Well, at one time," he said, "..."'

Despite their foreign character, then, these texts are not distinguished from

indigenous ones (cf. Ahenakew and Wolfart 1987:xiii) when it comes to

formal statements of attribution.

The immediate source identified by the narrator is a man well known

among the waskahikaniwiyiniwak and especially on Atahk-akohp's Reserve

at Sandy Lake. Louis Ahenakew and William Greyeyes' father, James,6

used to visit one another and exchange stories, and it seems likely that

William Greyeyes, too, as a boy knew Louis Ahenakew.

Louis Ahenakew was born about 1870 and for many years taught at the

mission school at Sandy Lake, where his students before 1896 included the

future Canon Edward Ahenakew, the son of his brother Baptiste (the great

grandfather of Freda Ahenakew). The reminiscences of Edward Ahenakew

(as edited by Ruth Matheson Buck) include a description of him as "a man

As Freda Ahenakew (personal communication) recalls the genealogy of her far-flung family, James Greyeyes was the son of Nancy Favel, whose second husband, wasekamatawap/Greyeyes, was the brother of Louis Ahenakew's wife, Catherine Ermineskin.

1001 NIGHTS 377

who in later years might have been mistaken for a distinguished Frenchman,

with his grey hair and a neat pointed beard" (Ahenakew 1964:12).

The early Anglican establishment on the North Saskatchewan seems

to have fostered or indeed brought about a rare confluence of talent and

dedication; until the reminiscences, both oral and written, of all the ma­

jor figures can be examined in detail (for the latter, cf. the references in

Hines 1915; Murray 1956; Buck 1960; Ahenakew 1964, 1973), we can only

speculate on the details of the influence which John Hines and Edward

K. Matheson, who came to Sandy Lake and Snake Plains, respectively, in

1874 and 1877, appear to have exerted on their pupils.

With respect to the White-Man's tales in question, however, his prefa­

tory remarks clearly illustrate William Greyeyes's understanding that they

were rendered into Cree by Louis Ahenakew himself.

The last set of these stories, recorded in October 1986, is preceded by

a more elaborate prologue than the others:7

a, Ste e-yekawiskdwikamdhk mana peyak ki-aydw kayds, okiskinahamdkew, awa sapiko man ota, tdnitahtwdw kiki-wdp-~ kiki-wdpamdwdw, mihcet kiki--kiskiyimdwdw, Allan Ahenakew mina kahkiyaw witisdna, ekota ohci wiyawdw, ekote e-ohcicik aniki wiyawdw.

mdk ewakw dwa, mistahi e-ki-nihtd-dcimot, nihtd-dtayohkew; e-ki--okiskinahamdkewit, mina mitone ki-mdh-miywdsiniyiwa dtiht moniydw--dcayohkanisa e-ki-ayamihtdt e-ay-dcimot. ekwa wehcitaw dtiht e-kinwdki; ewak oma peyak kd-wi-dtotamdn, 'kd-piyesisiwit' ki-isiyihkdtam. (WG-62)

'Well, over there at Sandy Lake long ago there used to live a certain person, a teacher, you actually used to see him many times, many of you used to know him, the father of Allan Ahenakew and his siblings, he was their father.

But that one used to be very good at telling stories, at telling fairy-tales; he used to teach school, and some of the White fairy-tales were really nice when he had read them [for himself] and then told them. Some were fairly long; one of those is the one I am about to tell, "He Who Was a Bird" is what he used to call it.'

Several of these texts, which will be ready for publication shortly, were

recorded more than once, as summarized in Table 1.

While the titles used in the table are strictly working-titles, some of

the texts are explicitly given a title in the introduction, e.g.,

d, aya, 'kd-piyesisiwit' itamwak dm dya, dtayohkan. (WG-31) 'Well, now, they called it "He Who Was a Bird," this fairy-tale.'

7 As these remarks are in the first instance addressed to the waskahikaniwiyiniwak themselves, Cree propriety demands that direct mention of Louis Ahenakew's name be avoided (as that of a deceased relative) and that he be referred to obliquely, here through his son Allan Ahenakew.

378 H.C. WOLFART

Table 1

WG-03 WG-31

WG-62

WG-18

WG-34

WG-33

WG-64

WG-63

03/82

12/82 10/86

08/82

12/82

12/82 10/86

10/86

[osawipiyesis]

[askimes]

[nisotewak]

[akaminakasiya]

In the case of the earliest of these recordings, the narrator himself marked

the title on the box, in syllabic orthography:

kd-piyesisiwit (WG-03) 'He W h o Was a Bird'.

In view of William Greyeyes's insistence that these texts originate with Louis Ahenakew, it is worth noting that in this case8 the title, too, is

explicitly attributed to him:

. . . ,- ewak oma peyak ka-wi-atotaman, 'kd-piyesisiwit'ki-isiyihkdtam. (WG-62) '. . . ; one of those is the one I am about to tell, "Ho W h o Wits __ Bird" is what he used to call it.'

In other cases, the title mentioned is no more than a general allusion (rem­iniscent of the references found in much of traditional folklore compendia):

aya, ahpo etikwe ahpo kika-nisitohtendwdw ewak oma, tdpiskdt <'-itryihtamdu 'The Beauty and the Beast' etik dm ewako dcimowin. (WG-63) 'Now, perhaps you will recognise this one, I guess, it almost sounds like "Beauty and the Beast," this story.'

And even for these tales, a title is not a necessity:

tdnis etikwe kehcind ewako e-isiyihkdtek, maka nika-sipwSydcimon. (WG-64) 'I don't know what its real name is, but I'll start telling it..'

In terms of the traditional genre categories of Plains Cree literature, these texts seem to be somewhat ambiguous. Some of the above introduc­tions, e.g., those of W G - 3 1 and W G - 6 2 , use the term atayohkan 'sacred

This story was also told, according to Freda Ahenakew's childhood memories (personal communication), by her paternal grandmother, Nancy n.e m6$aakSptU).

1001 NIGHTS 379

story' which is carried over to include Old World fairy-tales. All others use the noun dcimowin 'story' or the corresponding verb stem dcimo- 'tell a story', as in the barest of the introductions:

nik-dcimon. (WG-33) 'I will tell a story.'

In both cases, the simple term may be modified to include a specification

of the provenance: moniydw-dcayohkanis 'White-Man's tale' and moniydw--dcimowinis 'White-Man's story' occur side by side.

Even where the introductory labels are missing, however, there can be little doubt about the type of story that is being told. The plot and the motifs aside, to which we will turn in a moment, there are numerous terms

which stand out as distinctly foreign in a Plains Cree text. In W G - 0 3 , for

instance, there is no great profusion of such terms but they neatly cluster in the semantic field of princes and princesses:

okimdsis- 'prince'

okimdskwesis- 'princess' okimdskwesistwi- 'be a princess' okimdskwesis-ayiniwinis- 'the clothes of a princess'

okimdw-ayiwinis- 'royal clothes' okimdw-dy- 'royal things, princely things'

okimdwikamikw- 'palace' okimdwiwin- 'kingdom'

okimdwindkosi- 'have a royal appearance'

okimdskwewi- 'queen'

mistikimdw- 'noble' mistikimdwi- 'be a noble'

mistikimdskwewinakosi- 'have the appearance of a noble lady' mtstiktmdskwehkdso- 'pretend to be a noble lady'

The texts contain a number of instances where, in the context of an Old

World fairy-tale, particular phrases might be suspect as being loan-translations

or the like; e.g.,

(i) mitoni mdyanohk e-nipawiydn

(ii) e-mdyikdpawiydn

(both:) 'when I a m in a bad spot'

iskotew e-pakitatdtahk

'breathing forth fire'

iskotew e-wayawi-potdtahk

'breathing out fire'

380 H.C. WOLFART

Such pragmatically marked instances as the last two would hardly be judged

normal beyond the context of a story; but when less highly marked examples

were reviewed out of context, most passed as unexceptional.

The same seems to be true of individual lexical items, e.g.,

okanawatihkuew- "shepherd, goatherd",

simdkanisiho- 'be dressed as/like a soldier',

kapesiwikamikw- 'inn, hotel'.

S o m e m a y be pragmatically peculiar but perfectly normal grammatically,

e <_•

piwdpiskwastotin- 'helmet',

piwdpiskwdskikane- 'have metal on one's chest, wear a breast-plate',

piwdpiskwayiwinisa i-apihkdteyiki

'braided iron-clothes, chain-mail'.

This, clearly, is also the pattern governing semantic extensions, e.g.,

asisoy- 'ice-chisel; dagger, sword',

apasoy- 'tent-pole; lance';

the extensions are occasionally m a d e explicit by participial modifiers, e.g.,

S-kdh-kinikihkotek[iJ dpasoya 'sharpened tentpoles'

but the accompanying verb,

ni7i.dsJ.t-a/tw- 'knock someone down by means of a wooden tool'

is just as appropriate to Cree warfare as to the jousting of medieval chivalry.

In short, some of the terms appearing in these Old World fairy-tales

m a y be odd pragmatically but they are ordinary enough in their grammat­

ical structure.

As a closing remark on the form of the texts, it should be noted that

they contain occasional references to a particular event being repeated three

times, or items appearing in threes, in competition with the traditional

fourfold repetition of most Cree texts. This feature may, of course, reflect

the antecedent, original of these texts; it may, however, also be due simply

to the predominant influence of R o m a n Catholicism on Opitihkwahakew's

Reserve and the effect, of m a n y years spent in boarding school.

3. "The Twins of the Fisherman"

While the texts told by ka-mimikwatowet are clearly Cree texts, their plots

and many of their individual episodes strike English-speaking readers as familiar:

a poor woodcutter w h o finds a golden feather;

a wealthy merchant reduced to penury by a distant, shipwreck;

1001 NIGHTS 381

- a cave scene in which a corpse is rescued from mistreatment at the

hands of his creditors by a soft-hearted young man;

- a palace hospitably opened to the visitor, except for the bed-chamber.

Without any doubt these are the stuff of fairy-tales, household images to

all raised in the world of books.

These are also, of course, the grist on which turn the mills of the motif-

hounds who see a monster under every bed and care little if it is the dragon

of St. George's or the underwater panther of the Ojibwa. It is remarkable

that in a rough experiment based on three plot summaries from this collec­

tion, no one failed to recognize individual motifs — but none of the subjects

was able to identify an entire tale.

As we turn to a particular instance, let m e sketch out one of these

tales, the English title of which is "The Twins of the Fisherman". It is the

first version, told in 1982 and running to about 25 minutes. In the opening

section,

A man and his wife live by selling fish, which are frozen in boxes and sent away. The catch declines, ultimately to nothing, and they starve. One day the fisherman encounters a ling who identifies herself as queen and offers him an unlimited supply of fish if he will give her to husband the son his wife will bear. Since both he and his wife are safely beyond child-bearing age, he agrees and from now on catches an abundance of fish.

Before the year is out, his wife has twins, strong boys, and so do their black mare and their black bitch. As the twins approach the age of 18, he tells them what had happened. The young men declare that they had wanted to leave in any case; they go and have swords and armour made and, having tested them, ride off, one heading east and the other west.

The one turning east announces that he will know his brother's fate from his sword: if it is tarnished halfway, he is in trouble, if fully, dead; in either case he will look for him, and also conversely.

Now for the first half of the main plot:

Travelling east, he arrives at a town draped in black and is told that each year a young woman, chosen by lot and chained on top a large rock, has to be offered to a four-legged winged dragon with seven heads breathing fire. This time the lot has fallen on the king's youngest daughter, who has refused all offers of substitution. Upon enquiry the stranger is further told that all manner of braves and princes have either fled the dragon or been killed by it; there is only one captain who will accompany the princess at the appointed time, about a month hence.

The stranger obtains a post as shepherd and has a shield, a coat of chain-mail and a helmet made. He watches from hiding as the young woman is taken to the rock; when the dragon approaches and the captain flees, the hero's horse remains under control and he races towards the princess and

tells her not to worry.

382 H.C. WOLFART

One by one, in heroic combat, he chops off the seven heads, crucially assisted by horse and dog. Since the captain will claim to have slain the dragon and thus to have earned her hand, the hero instructs the princess to have the heads hung up, to insist on a year's delay and then to marry only him who can take them down; then he cuts out their tongues, and she further gives him her ring and necklace.

He returns to shepherding, and the king is pleased at how fat are the sheep. The captain is decorated but, finally, when no one is able to take down the dragon-heads, the princess points out that only the shepherd has not tried. He arrives in full armour, succeeds at the task and further identifies himself by ring and necklace. While the captain is thrown in a deep hole, the wedding is held at once and the dragon-slayer is given half the kingdom.

A real dragon-story, indeed, and also, as Boas (1925:200) says, among "the most widely distributed stories, ... found over the greater part of the [North American] continent ."

In the second half of the main plot,

The hero enjoys hunting deer and boar, and once he leaves all his com­panions behind in pursuit of a large deer. Lost, he comes upon a hut and an old woman who tells him that the deer will lead him to a beautiful princess whose blandishments he must resist, for she is a powerful witch and there is also a captain who will subject him to various trials in their attempt to destroy him. He encounters the princess on a black stallion and is engaged in jousting by her companion, whom he at length overpowers. He is rendered senseless, however, by a draught, and so are horse and dog.

Meantime the other twin, seeing his sword tarnish, looks for him. At first mistaken by his younger twin brother's wife and also by the old woman in the hut, he is told what to expect and further warned not to accept food or drink. He is also made to joust with the captain, throws him down and cuts his head off; when he throws the drink he is offered at the witch, she dissolves and various young princes come back to life.

As they return, the princess recognizes her husband's dog by the collar she had put on him, and then her husband by the ring. There also is another beautiful young woman to marry the other twin, and the kingdom is divided between them.

The first question which this plot raises in my mind is one of coherence: is this a tale or merely a more-or-less accidental concretion of modular stock elements?

In the latter case, of course, we would then look to the voyageurs as the most likely route of transmission, while the first alternative would force us to seek a specific model on which this tale in its entirety might be based. In this case, moreover, we would also have to face up to the vexed question of proof.

1001 NIGHTS 383

3.1 The folklore model

The individual motifs recur practically everywhere, and even some combi­nations thereof may be seen in the Kathasaritsagara9 and — more obviously — in the classical cycle of Perseus10 which includes (albeit in the opposite order) both a witch turning her victims into stone (Medusa) and the rescue of a princess (Andromeda) from the dragon.11

The most common of these elements may well be the use of the dragon's tongue (or tongues, as the case may be) as the means of identifying the hero

(and also the false claimant) — a key part of the late 12th-century roman of Tristan and Isolde, equally popular in the German of Gottfried and the French of Beroul.

But the recognition of the same motif and of parallel sequences of episodes here and there would be of little value in discriminating between the fur-trade model and the missionary model because it is exactly these disiecta membra which are diffused as pieces and then re-assembled in a

variety of ways. Recall that Boas (1925:199; recently echoed by Ramsey

1987:207) counts the seven-headed dragon among "the most widely dis­tributed stories, . . . found wherever the French fur trader went."

I have not succeeded in finding the entire configuration of motifs and events as told by ka-mimikwatowet matched in a European (or Asian)

source — although the miraculous conception is an essential constituent

of this type of tale, the details of our version differ substantially in all the sources I have been able to examine. The hypothesis that the introductory

part is a substitution, the result of contamination with another well-known tale, is supported by the fact that neither the reward exacted by the fish nor the threatened sanctions are mentioned again.

The two major constituents of the plot, the slaying of the dragon and the rescue from the witch, impress m e as just as isolable as the opening section — and not only on first hearing but throughout the past two years — because there seems to be no causal connexion between them, not even a casual link, and no motivation is offered for their combination. As it turns out, however, they were not juxtaposed by either William Greyeyes or Louis Ahenakew: they appear in exactly this combination in the widely

Most folklorists seem to agree, for example, that this is the tale of Asokadatta and Vijayadatta (cf. Penzer 1924(2):196-213); for the wider background cf. Heller (1929), Hertel (1914), MacDonald (1924), Mahdi (1984), etc.

10 This complex is told quite fully by Ovid in the Metamorphoses (books 4 and 5) and is widely known in such summarizations as that of Schwab 1838; cf. Hartland 1894.

11 For classical and medieval reminders I am indebted to the erudition of my colleagues Rory B. Egan, Robert J. Glendinning and John Wortley — and, above all, to Jakoba Siller, who remembered the Perseus cycle from her school days.

384 H.C. WOLFART

known tale of "The Two Brothers" which the Grimm brothers had recorded at least as early as 1808.

The Grimms themselves published several versions of this tale (on their techniques cf. most recently Ellis 1983), the list of parallels12 fills many pages in the handbooks (cf. Bolte and Polivka 1912(1):528-556) and there are at least two studies devoted specifically to this tale (Polivka 1901; Ranke 1933). It also seems reasonable to assume - although the effort to doc­ument this point would be daunting - that this tale appears in at least some of the countless popular collections.

Before we turn to questions of method once again, we should at least survey two of the closest North American parallels.13

The first is the story which Skinner was told, evidently in English, in 1913 among the Plains Cree of the lower Qu'Appelle Valley in southeast­ern Saskatchewan (1916b:364-367). Skinner's Plains Cree tale is remark­able above all for its plain style and ordinary prairie setting: instead of princesses, palaces and knightly armour we find that the king's daughter is simply called ''the girl"; the false claimant, a "porter" working "in the coals", hauls her back to town in his wheel-barrow; the hero rides "through the bushes" and lives in a "shanty outside of (sic] the town"; and when he at last "married the girl, . . . they had a big ball."

The Cree original- or at least the speech of a Cree-English bilingual - is clearly reflected in the record published by Skinner. The old couple "lived way off in the bush," and the magical gift left them "overloaded with fish." The two brothers "stayed at home till they were grown up" when "All at once one of the boys asked where all the people were." To unmask the false claimant, finally, "the girl called a meeting of all the young men in the town, who were to tell the stories of their lives" - a typical Cree scene reported in a correspondingly familiar form.

From a narrative perspective, the differences in plot are minor:

(1) The fish (a sucker) is cut up and fed to the fisherman's wife, mare and dog; a fourth part, when planted, yields "two swords [later simply referred to as knives] growing on a bush."

(2) The girl is not tied to a rock but led "west from the town" and simply

12 Tales which share the key elements (as defined by Bolte and Polivka 1912(1): 534) in the combination found here have been collected in Brittany (Luzel 1870, Sebillot 1892), Lorraine (Cosquin 1876), on the Riviera (Andrews 1892), in Cat­alonian (Alcover 1892), Spanish (Caballero 1878) and from the Basque country (Webster 1877) . It is remarkable that there seems to be only one such parallel from Scotland (Campbell1890) and none at all from England.

13 A concerted effort to collect Old World tales in North America is suggested by the nearly simultaneous appearance of Skinner (1913, 1916a, 1916b ), Speck (1913), Teit (1909, 1916) and, shortly thereafter, Thompson (1919, 1929).

1001 NIGHTS 385

"left" to be "fed to the snake with seven heads", who comments on the unexpected opponent: "'Ah, I shall have two meals instead of one!'"

(3) The identification of the dragon-slayer relies as much on his own report as on the tongues (there is no mention of the heads).

(4) With all the other young men having told their story and the hero about

to take his turn, the false claimant "wanted to go out and urinate"; he "begged and said he was suffering" but "the king made him stay", and

at last he "was taken out and burned alive."

(5) W h e n the groom sees a light in the distance, it is the bride who warns

him that "whoever goes never returns." (6) The witch persuades the hero to "tie his dog with hair from her head"

the touch of which turns him into a "tombstone." (7) Mistaken as her husband by the king's daughter, the other brother,

too, sees the light and is warned by her: "I told you before." Despite a turn of phrase ("He went to bed with his sister-in-law, but ran away when she went to sleep.") which might be read to suggest otherwise but probably reflects the innocuous Cree verb kawisimo-, there is no trace of either the chastity or the jealousy motif.

(8) The king's daughter cannot tell the two apart: "She took both in, and had a great dinner." (There is no mention of her ring or necklace.)

While the two tales clearly show the same overall plot, several individual

features seem distinct (and incidental) enough to merit closer study.14

A second version of the tale which Skinner also recorded in 1913, pre­sumably in English or, at most, in French (although he makes no mention of the language), among the Plains Ojibwa of the Long Plain Reserve in southern Manitoba (1916a:330-334) has become widely known through its inclusion in the Thompson anthology (1929:201-205). Against the back­ground of the ka-mimikwatowet text, the plot differs as follows:

(1) The fish (a jackfish) is cut up and eaten, causing miraculous conception. (2) One of the brothers dips his little finger in silver water and thereby

turns it into silver. (3) The Windigo or Manitou has eight heads (instead of the familiar seven). (4) The dragon's tongues are used, not by the hero but by the false claimant.

(5) The false claimant (a blacksmith) pleads stomach pains.

(6) The groom is lured away by a blue fire.

uSome, for instance, are shared with Skinner's Plains Ojibwa tale (1916a), notably the false claimant's plea of digestive distress and the light which lures the groom away; these two are further shared with the version which Barbeau (1917:82-86) recorded at Ste-Anne, Kamouraska; the monster's greedy remark when seeing two victims instead of one, on the other hand, is paralleled in his recording (1916:41-45) from Lorette, Quebec.

386 H.C. W O L F A R T

(7) The chastity motif, which comes into play when the older brother ar­

rives at the princess's town in search for his brother, is fully developed;

no sooner is the younger brother rescued than he kills the older in a

jealous rage, later to revive him by means of magic water found on the

witch.

(8) The princess cannot tell the two apart.

In terms of overall structure, of course, these discrepancies pale by compari­

son with other contemporary versions of the tale, for example that recorded

in the Loire-Atlantique region of France in 1954 by Massignon (1968:34-

39).15

For the French-Canadian versions of the tale, which must be regarded

as classics — even if they cannot be the single, apical ancestor of all North

American Indian versions which some might like to see in them — the

most commonly cited renditions are those collected by Barbeau (1916:41—

45, 1917:82-86; but cf. also Lanctot 1916:142-145).

It should be clear that we cannot expect much — except amusement —

from any attempt to chase down isolated motifs and the like. Instead, we

have to look for the overall configuration and structure of the tale. This is

the chief methodological issue, and one that I believe needs insisting upon.

3.2 The philological model

Before we turn to more general questions of stemma construction and com­

parative methodology, there is still the troubling question of titles. A minor

matter, to be sure, but one that cannot be ignored.

I have found no trace in the Grimm tradition of the English title which

A much more problematic parallel which should at least be mentioned is the Metis version recorded by Honigmann in 1943 at Fort Nelson (1953:320-323). Here, the first part of the story is completely different (it is the episode of the grateful dead, who returns at the end to announce the settling of accounts) while the remainder replicates the slaying of the dragon and an interloper's attempts to displace the hero.

Individual sections of the plot recur in many combinations and contexts. The miraculous conception, for instance, brought about by a fish (a truite rouge first appearing in a dream) which is to be cut into pieces, serves as the opening part of the long Montagnais tale of Kamikwakushit (kindly drawn to my attention by Jose

fj",°V ^ ard recorded o n the Lower North Shore of the St. Lawrence (1977:78-92) Among the Assiniboine, long the closest allies and neighbours of the Plains Cree, Lowie recorded one text (1909:205-206) which only begins with the hunt and the transformation (into trees) but then develops the jealousy complex to the fullest, the rescued brother shoots the rescuer and only revives him after returning to his wife. Lewie's collection also includes one of the briefest and most fragmentary versions of the tale (1909:162), retaining only the double twin births and the encounter with the witch.

1001 NIGHTS 387

attaches to the Cree text and which has a familiar-sounding, appropriate ring to it: "The Twins of the Fisherman". This title would seem to suggest

the French tradition, with collections from Brittany and Lorraine printing titles such as "Les deux fils du pecheur" or "Les fils du pecheur" (Luzel 1870; Cosquin 1876) but those stories which I have been able to review are

more distant than the Grimm. It seems quite likely, moreover, that the title could derive straight from one of the popular collections which began to appear in some profusion late in the 19th century.

Turning at last to the methods of philology proper, it seems self-evident that we cannot put any weight on an argument ex nihilo (such-and-such a motif not found in this version . . .) and that the only reliable arguments are the tried-and-true ones of textual criticism and their descendents in comparative linguistics, notably

- subgrouping by shared innovations (especially by shared peculiarities

or errors); and, - the principle of the lectio dijjicilior.

3.2.1 Innovations

Had we more texts in Cree, it might be revealing to review the various neologisms for the tools of chivalry — helmets, lances, chain-mail and the

rest — and try to deal with their linguistic form. Cultural items, too, may be important indicators in this respect, es­

pecially if they are awkward, irrelevant, inexplicable, contradictory and

incidental to the plot. It goes without saying that minor cultural adjustments (such as the

appearance of the ling, a fish specific to northern North America) may be discounted, although they may sometimes be difficult to distinguish from matters of cultural importance, such as the insistence on the likeness of the

twins, their dogs and their horses. Considerable weight thus seems to attach to such a doubly alien figure

as a pikwaci-kohkos 'wild pig, boar'; the specific animal aside, the only other context in which I recall the prenoun pikwaci 'wild, unbroken' is that

of horses. It is all too easy in such matters, as Keesing (1989) usefully reminds

us, to jump to conclusions which are not borne out by closer analysis or

remain without acceptance among those with deeper cultural and linguistic

knowledge. In one of the texts told by ka-mimikwatowet, for example, the swineherd bargains for a place before, and ultimately half-inside, the

prince's bed-chamber so that she can sing his song; when he finally hears it,

he signals recognition by an antiphonal response. The term for his response

is as Cree as the concept of a proprietary song being used for recognition:

388 H.C. WOLFART

. . . kd-nakamosit esa onakamoyiniw, kd-naskwahamawdt esa ndha nete, wist e-nakamot. (WG-03) '. . . when she softly sang his song, that one "sang the chorus to her" over there, he too was singing.'

In one of Peter Vandall's counselling texts (Ahenakew 1987:46), for exam­

ple, this same stem naskwahamaw- 'respond to someone, sing in response to someone' is used in an entirely and unambiguously traditional context. From the perspective of Cree literature, then, it may come as something of

a shock that questioning songs occur in exactly the same context, with the spot before the king's bed-chamber purchased by the girl and the king under

the influence of a sleeping draught, in a tale which the Grimms recorded in 1807 (Bolte and Polivka 1912(3):37-40). It would be premature, therefore,

to rely exclusively on ethnographic information and to regard the personal

song as the means of recognition as a peculiarly Cree motif.

3.2.2 Lectio difficilior

A striking example of the lectio difficilior principle occurs in the Arabian Nights text told by ka-wihkaskosahk. The incantation,

nikotwdsik iskwdhtem, pdskihtepayih! (S340-6, S340-8) 'Six door, go open!'

appears twice in the scene in which the evil Englishman instructs the boy-

hero to open the cave. Although syntactically unexceptional (cf. such inde­clinable numeral phrases as nistw-dskiy 'a three-year period, three years'),

the first part of this incantation seems odd both semantically and prag­matically; it is not known to the Cree speakers I have questioned, and the

etymology which follows may strike some readers as far-fetched.

Recall, however, that there is no such incantation in the standard ver­

sion of the Aladdin tale (cf. Littmann 1921), and that ka-wihkaskosahk's text as recorded by Bloomfield combines elements of both the Aladdin and

the A H Baba stories. Now, if the cave in the latter is opened, in French, by Sesame, ouvre-toi!, it would only take a mis-hearing of the uninterpretable

Sesame as the familiar sixieme to account for the puzzling Cree phrase — and to show at the same time that the antecedent version of the tale must have been told in French.

3.2.3 A comparative method?

Having surveyed the usefulness and reliability of both motifs and terms, we face one more promise and another fundamental complication: the fact

1001 NIGHTS 389

that we possess multiple tellings "of the same text", recorded four years apart.

Let us begin with a simple case: an exotic animal. The earlier version specifies the animals hunted:

ekwa mistahi ki-miyweyihtam e-nocihciket . . . e-nitawi-nocihdt, nikotwdw apisimososwa awekd ci aya, pikwaci-kohkosa (WG-33) 'Now he greatly liked hunting . . . He went hunting either for deer or that, boar.'

The later version elaborates on the locale but omits the prey:

. . . , e-ki-miyweyihtahk e-nocihciket, ite oma misi-sakdw, ekote mdna e-isi--sipwepayit, . . . (WG-64) '. . . , he liked hunting, and would ride off to the great forest, . . .'

In terms of narrative structure, there is nothing noteworthy on either side of the Atlantic about hunting for deer.

A more intriguing parallel is offered, once again, by the means of recog­nition. W h e n the twins finally return to town together, the younger twin's wife recognizes him by the necklace/collar worn by his dog:

kd-nahapipayihot awa, kd-wdpamdt ohi dsay e-ki-cdpiskahdt oh 6t[aJ aya, cdpiskdkanisa, . . . (WG-33) 'When she bent down [to the dog], she saw those [little beads] which she had put around his neck, this necklace there, . . .'

"ana acimosis kd-tdpiskahk anihi, niya e-ki-tdpiskahak,"... (WG-64) ' "This dog wore these things as a necklace/collar, I myself had put them around his neck," . . .'

— then the second version goes on to list also the ring on the hero's finger and the decorations which had been tied, Cree-fashion, on the horse.

Lulled into a sense that two versions "of the same text", told by the same narrator a mere four years apart, would agree in the salient features

and thus provide us with a benchmark for a comparative method of texts, we come to the denouement — ours, not that of the text.

The transition scene which links the two major parts of the plot (the slaying of the dragon and the escape from the witch) is pivotal in all versions of the tale. While the chastity theme is not always taken to the same level of elaboration, it is remarkable that in the two Cree texts under study there is no mention at all of the doubly-sharpened sword which the older twin places between himself and the princess, who takes him to be her husband.

In the earlier (1982) text, the older twin, having seen his sword tarnish and asking about his brother in every town, has no sooner arrived at the

390 H.C. WOLFART

right town than the princess runs towards him and addresses him as her husband; he draws the proper inference, explains to her that he is the elder twin and that she has mistaken him. There is no hint of the chastity theme, but at least the two encounter one another and there is a chance of confusion.

In the later (1986) text, the older twin also sees his sword tarnish and asks about his brother in every town, but when he arrives at the right town, he simply stays at an inn ( kapesiwikamik) and gets all his information from the inn-keeper:

"tfmehki oh aya, kahkiyaw kiskiwehona nayestaw apihtawanohk k-akoteki'?" (WG-64) ' "Why are these, all the flags flying at half-staff?" '

The scene is thoroughly modern, and there is no mention at all of the princess!

4. The Translation M ode of Transmission

That Old World tales found their way into the New World, and that they travelled repeatedly over a long period- these are well-established obser­vations which are hardly open to dispute.

As to the various modes of transmission, on the other hand, there are hints in the texts themselves and in the ethnographic literature of a missionary /teacher route, and these hints are now confirmed, document­fashion, by the manuscripts of Pere Calais, which further illustrate one of the specific modes of transmission: through translation by a French­speaking agent of instruction.

The text from the Arabian Nights which ka-wihkaskosahk told to Bloom­field in 1925 and the European-based texts which ka-mimikwatowet recorded for Freda Ahenakew between 1982 and 1986 throw further light on the trans­mission process; the latter, in particular, illustrate another of the specific modes of transmission: through translation by a Cree-speaking agent of instruction. Unlike the Calais manuscripts, these texts are told in literary Cree and richly deserve the kind of philological study which only a text in the language permits.

To prove the existence of a translation mode of transmission is not the same as circumscribing its domain, much less demonstrating its exclusivity. The discrepancies in crucial matters exhibited by two texts of the same nar­rator, intended to be "the same text", lead us to an ambiguous conclusion. There may well be a single transfer of information . from the page printed in English or French to a spoken performance in Cree. But after that one first time, missionary-style, the voyageurs have it, hands down.

1001 NIGHTS 391

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