"Bear's Son Tale" (German:das Märchen vom Bärensohn, Bärensohnmärchen)[1] refers to an analogous group of narratives that, according toFriedrich Panzer [de]'s 1910 thesis, represent thefairy tale material reworked to create the Anglo-Saxon poemBeowulf's first part, theGrendel-kin Story. Panzer collected over 200 analogue tales mostly from Eurasia.[2]
TheBear's Sonmotif (B635.1) is exhibited only generally, not reliably.[3] Exceptions include versions of "Jean de l'Ours",[4] and theGrimms' fairy tale "Strong Hans" or "Der Starke Hans [de]".Beowulf does not explicitly reveal a bear origin for its hero, but his name and great strength connect him to the animal closely.
Most of the tales are formally catalogued as eitherAarne-Thompson-Uther folktale type 301, "The Three Stolen Princesses"[a][b] or ATU type 650A, "Strong John" or "Starker Hans".[7][8] Their plotlines are similar, with some differences;[7] in the latter, the hero is subjected to tests by ordeal.[8]
"Bear's Son Tale" has thus become only an informal term for tale type classification in folkloristics, but scholars inBeowulf criticism continue to assert the usefulness of the term in their studies.[9][10]
Studies comparing the poemBeowulf to the Bear's Son Tale see these common core characteristics: a hero is raised by or descended from a bear, with bear-like strength. He and companions must guard a dwelling against a monster (which Panzer calls "Der Dämon im Waldhaus"[11]). The companions are defeated, but the hero wounds the creature, sending him to flight. In pursuit, the hero descends into a netherworld or underground domain. The hero often has a second round of adversaries.[12]
Other common elements are a captive princess, betrayal by a close friend or ally of the hero, andmagicalweapons.[12][13] Some of these elements are paralleled in the Grendel story inBeowulf, others are not.
The betrayal element (F601.3[14]) transpires in the fairy tale version (seeJean de l'Ours) as follows: After the hero descends to the world underground and rescues the princess, he is betrayed by his companions, who instead of pulling him up by a rope, either cut it or release it so he falls to the bottom.[15][16] The parallel to this inBeowulf, (according to Panzer and Chambers) is that after seeing blood come up from Grendel'smere (lake), the Danes only wait untilnones (3 PM), and then they abandon the hero at the lake.[17][18]
The hero in the Bear's Son Tale may have a magic sword (motif D1081,[14] usually found in Type 301A) or a walking-stick (Type 301B).[c] The magic sword inBeowulf is supposedly represented by the sword of the "ancient giants' sword" (ealdsweord eotenisc) that Beowulf discovered in Grendel's mother's lair.[21][22]
Some significant elements of the folktale missing inBeowulf (listed by Chambers) are: the captive princess(es), one of whom he marries, the hero's rescue by a "miraculous helper", his return to the Upper World under an assumed identity, and his retribution against his treacherous companions.[23][22]
The princess or three princesses to be rescued are lacking inBeowulf,[d] but this absence has been rationalized byW. W. Lawrence, who theorized thatromantic love elements are superfluous and out-of-place in historical epics and had to be truncated.[24][25]
Among elements considered vital to the epic are the loss of the ogre/demon's arm, and the trail of blood which leads the hero to the demon's lair (Lawrence (1928), p. 175, cited byBarakat (1967), pp. 1–2). These are not paralleled in any obvious way in the Bear's Son Tale.[26]
Regarding Beowulf wrenching Grendel's arm off, Robert A. Barakat stated that no counterpart was to be found in the Bear' Son Tale of "Juan del Oso" (Spanish version ofJean de l'Ours).[e][21] This was because there was no mention of "actual physical damage [Juan] inflicted" on the devil during the barehanded wrestling phase. However, Juan did cut off one of the devil's ears afterwards with his weapon.[27]
For a folktale analogue to Grendel's severed arm, commentators have looked on Celtic (Irish) tale of "The Hand and Child" type. The parallel had been recognized already in the 19th century by several writers,[f][28] butCarl Wilhelm von Sydow is generally credited with developing the analysis which took notice.[29][30]
Beowulf determines Grendel's lair by following a trail of blood. Although this is not specifically mirrored in the Bear's Son Tale, the hero is able to track the adversary to a hole in the ground (or a well), and a trail of blood has been speculated.[g][21] Chambers found that an Icelandic Bear's Son Tale, "Bjarndrengur" ("Bear-boy") parallels this exactly, and Bear-boy and his companions follow the blood-trail of the giant who had been grabbed by the beard but who has torn away.[h][31]
Friedrich Panzer [de]'s monumental study,Studien zur germanischen Sagengeschichte, Part I:Beowulf, sought to prove thatBeowulf was an eighth century Anglo-Saxon reworking of the "Bear's son" motif, which has been present since antiquity and widely disseminated.[32][33] Later, the Panzer hypothesis on Beowulf was supported byW. W. Lawrence andR. W. Chambers, who elucidated and expanded on it.[32]
John F. Vickrey, who took up the thesis in 2009, wrote that there had been very few studies focusing on the folkloric origins ofBeowulf for 40 years previous to his writing.[i][34]
J. R. R. Tolkien was very interested in the idea of the bear-son folktale underlyingBeowulf,[35] and pointed to several minor but illuminating characteristics supporting the assumption: Beowulf's uncouthness and appetite, the strength of his grip, and his refusal to use weapons against Grendel.[36] He also sawUnferth as a link between folktale and legend, his (covert) roles as smith and treacherous friend standing behind his gift to Beowulf of the "hafted blade" thatfails.[37]
Critics of Panzer's thesis have argued however that many of the incidents he sees as specific to the Bear's Son Story are in fact generic folktale elements; and that a closer analogue toBeowulf is to be found inCeltic mythology and the story of the 'Monstrous Arm'.[38]
Panzer lists some 202 examples of Bear's Son Tales in his study,[2][j]
The "Strong John" subgroup includes more than 400 tales counted in the Baltic-Scandinavia area. The tale remained current in French Canada, but its original may no longer survive in France.[39]
Panzer's list did not include any North American examples, but "Bear's son" tales have been known to have disseminated to native North American populations, and these are considered to have European origins, an example being theAssiniboine story published as "The Underground Journey" byRobert H. Lowie in 1909.[40][41][42]
Also, there have been attempts to associateKing Arthur with the bear, and thus with the Bear's Son Tales. An attempt to make the connection by asserting Arthur's name as based on the rootarth- meaning "bear" inWelsh has been refuted.[48] Therefore, a more elaborate explanation has been advanced, which postulates Arthur's prototype to be the mythologicalArcturus "guardian of the bear" ofconstellation lore.[49][50]
Forpsychoanalysis, the bear-parents represent the parents seen in their animal (sexual) guise[51] – the bear as the dark, bestial aspect of the parentalarchetype.[52] Their offspring, represented by Tolkien inSellic Spell as "a surly, lumpish boy...slow to learn the speech of the land",[53] is the undersocialised child. And in the underground struggle,Géza Róheim argued, we find a representation of theprimal scene, as encapsulated in the infantile unconscious.[54]
^"The Three Stolen Princesses" is the standardized title as catalogued by Uther. However, Stith Thompson inThe Folklore (1977) had referred to Type 301 variously as "Bear's son and John the Bear" pp. 32–33, 183 and "Princesses" at pp. 52, 287, Index.[5]
^The third revision of the Aarne-Thompson classification system, made in 2004 by German folkloristHans-Jörg Uther, subsumed both subtypes AaTh 301A and AaTh 301B into the new type ATU 301.[6]
^To be more precise, the magic sword given to the hero by a princess is more typical of Type 301A (the "fruit d'or" type), but it usually lacks the "bear's son" motif. A heavy iron walking-stick forged by himself is the weapon of the hero inJean de l'Ours (John of the Bear), which is Type 301B. This is shown by example tales and analysis by symbols given by Delarue.[19] In some Mexican versions, the weapon is amachete.[20][21]
^The type 301, "The Three Stolen Princesses" to which Jean de l'Ours tales belong typically feature three. InDer Starke Hans there is one princess.
^Bakarat refers to it English as "John of the Bear", but he gives the Spanish titles for his Mexican versions as well.
^Barakat only states "the devil must have left a trail"; it is unclear if he meant an implicit fact the storyteller did not bother to articulate or a fact that used to be explicit but lost in transmission.
^Chambers spells it "Bjarnrengur". Chambers also registers a Faroese folktale that is analogous, in which the heroe is called "Øskudólgur", or "ash-raker", a version ofAskeladden or male Cinderella.
^Among the "honorable exceptions", those who discussed "Bear's son" were John D. Niles (1999), "Pagan Survivals and Popular Belief", pp. 131, 140–141 n6; and Fulk an Cain,History of Old English Literature, p. 203.
^Panzer's own list at the beginning is numbered up to 202, 184 from Europe, numbers 185–200 from Asia, one from Africa, and one from Brazil. Barakat credits Panzer with 221 examples.[32]
^Uther, Hans-Jörg.The types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography, Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Folklore Fellows Communications (FFC) n. 284. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia-Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004. p. 177.
^abJohn, Bierhorst (2016), Duggan, Anne E.; Haase, Donald; Callow, Helen J. (eds.),"Bear's Son",Folktales and Fairy Tales: Traditions and Texts from around the World, vol. 1 (2 ed.), ABC-CLIO, p. 105,ISBN9780313334429
^Puhvel (2010), p. 4, note 9: "While more recent folklorists prefer to call this folktale 'The Three Stolen Princesses', classified by Aarne as Type 301, it would seem more appropriate in a consideration involving analogy and parallelism withBeowulf to use the name 'The Bear's Son', employed by Panzer and other[s].
^Vickrey (2009), p. 209: "I shall continue to use the termBear's Son for the folktale in question; it is established in Beowulf criticism and certainly Stitt has justified its retention".
^Barakat, Robert A. (1965). "The Bear's Son Tale in Northern Mexico".The Journal of American Folklore.LXXVIII (310): 330.JSTOR538440: "European variants hero a magic sword or walking stick; Mexican versions give him a machete",Barakat (1965), p. 330
^Boas, Franz (1912), "Comparative notes on New-Mexican and Mexican Spanish Folk-tales",Journal of American Folklore,25:254–258,JSTOR534821 (cited by Espinosa (1014))
^Thompson, Stith (1919),"John the Bear",European Tales Among the North American Indians: A Study in the Migration of Folk-tales, Language Series, Vol. II, No. 34, Board of Trustees of Colorado College, pp. 334–345
Andersson, Theodore M. (1998), Bjork, Robert E.; Niles, John D. (eds.),"Sources and Analogues",A Beowulf Handbook, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 125–48,ISBN9780803261501
Barakat, Robert A. (January 1967). "John of the Bear and 'Beowulf'".Western Folklore.26 (1): 1.doi:10.2307/1498482.JSTOR1498482.
Barakat, Robert A. "The Bear's Son Tale in Northern Mexico." I:The Journal of American Folklore 78, no. 310 (1965): 330-36. doi:10.2307/538440.
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Ting, Nai-tung. "AT Type 301 in China and Some Countries Adjacent to China: A Study of a Regional Group and its Significance in World Tradition". In:Fabula 11, Jahresband (1970): 54-125, doi:https://doi.org/10.1515/fabl.1970.11.1.54
