Lamba story-tellers had in their tradition of fable other motifs besides living, green trees to express these same ideas about unity and separation. Sometimes they used those other motifs suppletively with trees to form the same pattern. Clement Doke recorded the evidence of this in such tales as “The Story of the Sons of Squeezer and Mr. Water-Lizard,” where the pattern of the two trees is represented by three nominal motifs, only one of them a living tree, and the other two a pair of wooden flutes:
Mr. Squeezer had three children; and he carved two flutes. He said, “My children, don’t blow the ‘going-right-away,’ blow the ‘near-at-hand.’ ” When one of the children went, he blew, “Ne ne near near e near near e...!” But the honey-guide didn’t come. Then he took the flute ‘going-right-away,’ and blew, “Away ay...” Behold, a honey-guide flew down. (Away) flap flap flap, ...
Here the two flutes bear the burden of signifying union and separation, notions associated directly with the trees of other tales. The flute named “near-at-hand” is designed to assure the continued community of father and sons, while “going-right-away” separates them:
...(and) they (the bees) are sitting in a tree. When he had gone swish swish swish swish, he said, “Indeed, ah! ah!” (and) he found that the bough was growing stretched out over the middle of a pond. Then he arrived, and put down his weapons, and lit a fire; then he climbed. When he had chopped with the axe chop chop, lo, the head flew off whirr into the pond. Then he climbed down, and undressed, and dived in to look for the axe.
Appetite, the same consideration that drove Adam and his Lamba counterpart to violate the preternatural’s tree, also drives the first son of this story to use the flute of separation, for while there is safety in the flute “near-at-hand,” it gets its user nothing to eat nor any hope of discoverying food. A meeting with a preterhuman beneath the tree must inevitably follow, for the traditional story-pattern dictates it; the only uncertainty is which species of unreal creatures in Lamba fable will appear:
While he was searching in the water, he came upon a Water-Lizard [crocodile] lying. It said, “Who are you?” He said, “I am the son of Squeezer!” It said, “First squeeze me, let us feel!” He said, “I do not know how, he who knows how to squeeze is my father.” Then it swallowed him.
The remaining two sons of Squeezer go the same way into the belly of Mr. Water-Lizard. Then their father goes in search of them:
Where the father was, he thought, “Now (my) children are finished, I myself remain.” Then he hastened to blow the ‘going-right-away.’ It sounded, “Away ay...!” And the honey-guide came, and led the way to the tree. Then he hastened to climb, and chopped his axe into it, slip! and it fell in. Then he dived in to look (for it). And he came upon Mr. Water-Lizard. He said, “Who are you?” He said, “I am Squeezer.” He said, “First squeeze me, let us feel!” And he caught (him) and squeezed. Lo, a child and an axe. And he squeezed (again). Lo, a child and an axe. And he squeezed (yet again). Lo, a child and an axe. And he cast (the Water-Lizard) on the land, and went to the village with his children.
Squeezer has a famous elder cousin in the eponymic hero of an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf. The meaning of the personal name ‘Beowulf’ has been disputed, but in view of the story-pattern which Beowulf shares with African and ancient Near Eastern fable, it is certainly reasonable to see an apian reference in the first part of the name, and so to associate Beowulf with (wild) bees. In any case, the hero Beowulf also overcame water-monsters, named ‘Grendel’ and ‘Grendel’s dam,’ by “knowing how to squeeze.” Like Water-Lizard, Beowulf’s pair of swallowing monsters also haunted a pool under a grove of unnamed trees (the only stand of trees mentioned in the story) where one particular tree leans suggestively over the water. Before Beowulf sees this place for the first time, his patron Hrothgar tells him certain rumours about Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and their underwater home:
Ic þæt londbuend, leode mine, 1345
selerædende secgan hyrde,
þæt hie gesawon swylce twegen
micle mearcstapan moras healdan,
ellorgæstas. Ðæra oðer wæs,
þæs þe hie gewislicost gewitan meahton, 1350
idese onlicnes; oðer earmsceapen
on weres wæstmum wræclastas træd,
næfne he wæs mara þonne ænig man oðer;
þone on geardagum Grendel nemdon
foldbuende; no hie fæder cunnon, 1355
hwæþer him ænig wæs ær acenned
dyrnra gasta. Hie dygel lond
warigeað wulfhleoþu, windige næssas,
frecne fengelad, ðær fyrgenstream
under næssa genipu niþer gewiteð, 1360
flod under foldan. Nis þæt feor heonon
milgemearces, þæt se mere standeð;
ofer þæm hongiað hrinde bearwas,
wudu wyrtum fæst wæter oferhelmað.17
I have heard my people who live in that land 1345
and who have houses there say
that they have seen two such
huge wanderers keeping watch on the bogs,
alien spirits roaming the wastelands.
Insofar as they could exactly understand, 1350
one of the pair was like a woman. The other hapless creature
endured in man’s shape the loneliness of a hated
outcast condemned to wander in desert places,
though he was mightier than any other man.
In former times, those who dwelt among men
named him Grendel; but they do not know his father, 1355
or whether earlier he begat any other
furtive and baneful spirits. The secret land
which they inhabit is the refuge of wolves, the windy bluffs
and the perilous fens, there where the mountain torrent
plunges into the misty shadow of the cliffs, 1360
joining the waters beneath the earth.
The place where that pool lies is not far hence,
reckoning in miles;
over it hang rimy groves,
and a tree held fast by its roots leans over the water.
The Old English story-teller described the same tree and pool again when Beowulf later approaches the place and prepares to squeeze the witch-like mother of Grendel in an underwater, hand-to-hand combat with her:
he feara sum beforan gengde
wisra monna wong sceawian,
oþ þæt he færinga fyrgenbeamas
ofer harne stan hleonian funde, 1415
wynleasne wudu; wæter under stod
dreorig ond gedrefed.18
He went ahead with a few
wise men to inspect the region,
until suddenly he found the mountain-trees
leaning over the gray rock, 1415
and the joyless tree among them; beneath lay the water,
dreary and troubled.
Plunging into the pool, Beowulf finds the water-monster in the depths and grapples it there just as the Lamba Squeezer did, because like the Lamba Water-Lizard Grendel’s dam and her brood are also proof against cutting implements and conquerable only by squeezing:
wearp ða wundenmæl wrættum gebunden 1531
yrre oretta, þæt hit on eorðan læg,
stið ond stylecg; strenge getruwode,
mundgripe mægenes. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . 1535
. . . . . . . . . .
Gefeng þa be eaxle - nalas for fæhðe mearn -
Gud-Geata leod Grendles modor;
brægd þa beadwe heard, þa he gebolgen wæs,
feorhgeniðlan, þæt heo on flet gebeah.19 1540
The angry fighter threw down the etched sword, 1531
and it lay on the earth
hard and steely. He trusted instead in his own strength
and in the powerful grip of his hand . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . 1535
. . . . . . . . . .
Then the War-Geats’ man resolutely seized
Grendel’s mother by the shoulder,
and raging now, he pressed
his deadly enemy so hard that she fell to the ground. 1540
When they have defeated it, both Beowulf and his Lamba counterpart dredge up the monstrous aquatic cannibal and take it ashore (or its head, the part that eats men). Then the squeezers return to the familiar paths of home in company with their own kind. Their convivial return is counterpoint to the lonesomeness and strangeness of their descent to meet the uncouth creature in the pool:
Ferdon forð þonon feþelastum 1632
ferhþum fægne, foldweg mæton,
cuþe stræte; cyningbalde men
from þæm holmelife hafelan bæron 1635
earfoðlice; heora æghwlæþrum,
felamodigra, feowar scoldon
on þæm wælstenge weorcum geferian
to þæm goldsele Grendles heafod, 20
They went thence by the beaten path 1632
glad at heart, marching along
the familiar road. The king’s valiant men
carried the head from the bluff. 1635
It was heavy work
for four stalwart men
to bear Grendel’s Head on a spear-shaft
to the gold-hall. . . .
Beowulf has much in it besides the story of Mr. Squeezer. Yet one group of motifs distributed discontiguously in Beowulf represents the same narrative paradigm found consolidated as the major part of the Lamba tale: A man of mighty grasp dives alone into a pool under a tree; either he or the tree is associated with wild bees. He finds a cannibal under the water, but acts of hewing or cutting are futile in combat with it and it is ultimately defeated only by pressure. The man with the strong hand squeezes, throws, and lands the monster, then returns home convivially with past companions.
As part of this scheme, the wudu wyrtum fæst at verse 1364 in Beowulf is an Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the trees of separation seen here earlier in both Lamba and ancient Hebrew fable. Under that live tree Beowulf must struggle alone to win or lose everything.
So we have before us now four tales, all sharing the pattern of the separation-story with its central motifs of tree and ogre. In all four tales the ogre under the tree destroys men whose only sin is in their desire to eat and drink; Grendel and Grendel’s mother make the utopian eating-place Heorot as uninhabitable for men as Yahweh made Eden. One of the two Lamba tales ends tragically with destruction of the hungry man, as in Genesis. That happens again under different names in the “Story of the Sons of Squeezer and Mr. Water-Lizard,” but there Mr. Squeezer intervenes after the disappearance of his hungry sons and turns tragedy into salvation by rescuing them from the ogre. Beowulf serves Hrothgar to the same end. The story of Squeezer’s sons and Beowulf are different from the Fall of Man and the “Story of the Man and the Ogre” only because they have a sequel with a redeemer whose powerful grasp saves hungry men from the devouring ogre.
This saviour is in fact only a rank imitator of the ogre, who turns the ogre’s characteristic acts of sunderance upon itself. When Grendel grips the men in Heorot, Beowulf grips Grendel. When Grendel’s mother grips Beowulf in the pool, he grips her; and when subsequently she tries to stab him in the neck, he beheads her. When the water-lizard swallows his sons, Squeezer engulfs the water-lizard in the grip of his hand. When the lizard has taken his sons out of their proper terrestrial ambient and retained them underwater, Squeezer takes the lizard out of its proper aquatic ambient and lays it to rest permanently in the terrestrial world above. By reflecting the ogre’s sundering effects upon itself, the rescuer civilizes its powers in his own person and places them at the service of humanity. His mastery of ogreish techniques not only neutralizes the ogre, it also reunites men with the customary activities and companions from which the ogre had earlier separated them. Squeezer and his sons return to their village in happy camaraderie, while revelry resumes in Heorot. It is a neat trick: from imitating an alien, anti-social power of disintegration a new integration results.
The tree of separation stands where it is expected in this story, towering over the ogre, but where is the tree of unity? As in the Lamba telling, so too in the Anglo-Saxon: once Squeezer and Beowulf have descended into the water, the tree overhanging the pool is not mentioned again. Plainly that tree signifies only separation, and the squeezer’s victory over the man-eater in the pool is the end of separations.
| The Sons of Squeezer Beowulf + redeemer |
The Man and the Ogre The Fall of Man + tree of unity |
Instead of trees, the dominant motifs of object after the struggle underwater are the bodies of the dead monsters and the cutting instruments associated with them: the axes spewed up by the water-lizard when Squeezer grips it, and the marvelous sword which Beowulf finds in his water-ogre’s hoard of looted weaponry:
Geseah ða on searwum sigeeadig bil, 1557
ealdsweord eotenisc ecgum þyhtig,
wigena weorðmynd; þæt (wæs) wæpna cyst, -
buton hit wæs mare ðonne ænig mon oðer 1560
to beadulace ætberan meahte,
god ond geatolic, giganta geweore.21
He saw a lucky sword there among the weapons, 1557
an ancient one made by the voracious titans, with a hard edge,
such as warriors prize. It was the best of swords,
though too ponderous for any other man 1560
to carry into battle,
a fine and splendrous weapon, the handiwork of giants.
The prominence of cutting-tools at the end of the combat suggests where to look for the opposite of the tree that signifies separations. I have already said that the flute “near-at-hand” which Squeezer carved for his sons is the wood of unity in that tale. It is opposed to the African crocodile’s bee-tree in the same manner as the Tree of Life was opposed to the Tree of Knowledge in Eden. The flute called “going-right-away” is at first an intermediate, transitional term between the bee-tree and the flute “near-at-hand.” When Squeezer’s sons play it, it is a device for separating them from their father and from each other. But then Squeezer plays it with just the opposite effect: in order to be reunited with his sons. Both flutes are ultimately devices of unification in the hands of their maker, Mr. Squeezer.
| |
Union | <-> | Separation |
|---|---|---|---|
| - Rescuer | Tree of Life | |
Tree of Knowledge |
| + Rescuer | “Near-at-Hand” | “Going-Right-Away” | Water-Lizard’s Bee-Tree |
The flutes are not trees, but they are wooden. More exactly, they are wood hewn and fashioned to human uses. They in the realm of objects are what the squeezer is among animate creatures, a kind of monster who is in the service of men to inflict ogreish punishments on ogres. He represents the domestication of ferocity. In a similar manner, wood that is hewn and fashioned to human purposes in these tales of ogres brings with it into the service of men those same virtues which it possesses inaccessibly to men while it remains in a natural or wild, unhewn state. No wonder that Squeezer and Beowulf—both of them cutters, carvers, and hewers—have motifs of tools for cutting and the products of their hewing clustered about them: Squeezer with his pair of magic flutes and Beowulf with his two hewn things, Grendel’s fearsome head on the spear-shaft.
The scene with the ogre’s terrible head (the dead engine of its destructiveness) on the pole at verse 1636 ff. signals the triumph of human authority in Beowulf. Yet that scene is only an exact domestic replica of the earlier scene in the wilderness (verses 1357 seqq.) where the live ogre waiting dangerously under the wynleasne wudu represented the ultimate degree of human impotence. Even in death Beowulf’s ogre retains its association with the wood, except that now both are in a hewn state.
But although the pole with the dread head on it is fashioned from wood and fitted with the product of Beowulf’s hewing in the wilderness, it is still only a transitional motif, an equivalent of the Lamba flute “going-right-away” and not the primary wooden artifact that represents human unity in Beowulf. That motif, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the Lamba flutes and the Hebrew Tree of Life, is Heorot itself, Hrothgar’s magnificent wooden banquet-hall, assembly-place, and seat of government, the very home of men’s desire to eat, be merry, and enjoy companionship.
The praise of wooden Heorot in Beowulf is too frequent and too famous to need repeating here. It is, moreover, to Heorot that Grendel’s head is borne on the spear-shaft. Thus, after serving as a bridge between the two arboreal extremes—wild and domestic, hewn and unhewn—the intermediate wooden motif of the spear-shaft is finally assimilated to Heorot, the primary emblem of human unity, as in the Lamba treatment of the second flute.
“The Man and the Ogre,” the Fall of Man, the “Story of the Sons of Squeezer,” and the corresponding part of Beowulf all contain the same cluster of motifs: the ogre, the two kinds of wood, and the confrontation of ogre and solitary man in a place which the ogre holds. The first two tales use these motifs to tell of a comity between man and preternatural that ends in man’s perdition, while the other two stories tell of just the opposite: an enmity that leads to salvation. The difference is achieved by adding certain new motifs to the cluster. The old wood of unity, invariably a live tree, is cut and fashioned for human use, and its carver is a new champion against the exigent old ogre who expelled men from paradise. The ogre correspondingly descends underwater beneath the tree instead of meeting men where it did before, on a common level under the tree of separation.
By elaborating the cluster which they both share, the “Story of the Sons of Squeezer and Mr. Water-Lizard” complements the “Story of the Man and the Ogre.” The one story is an unrelieved tragedy, but the other tells the formula for relieving that tragedy. This complementarity of stories in an oral tradition makes them quite different from much of literary narrative, even when individual literary and oral tales are substantively indistinguishable from each other. Unlike its parallel in Lamba fable, the Hebrew Fall of Man is isolated in a literary canon cut off from the multiforms that would surround it in oral story-telling. That isolation makes Adam’s tragedy in Genesis not only horrible, but also final and hopeless. It is equally horrible in Lamba fable, but there it remains hopeful because the same story exists in multiforms, like the “Story of the Sons of Squeezer,” that provide alternative denouements. Or, to put the matter in another way, the durable grandeur which a tale may gain by its isolation in literature is often bought at the expense of complementarity, whereby in oral fable multiforms of the same story-pattern are playfully combined with other patterns to demonstrate or explore all the patterns’ logical possibilities.
Occasionally literary tradition also shows the effects of complementarity, especially when it is a long tradition that has drawn upon oral fable from time to time. It would seem from the two complementary Lamba tales that the right procedure for overcoming Yahweh’s expulsion of man from the Garden would be to supply the story of Man’s Fall with a sequel wherein a human saviour equipped both with hewn wood and with the preternatural enemy’s own powers could defeat man’s ancient foe. Without entering into the details of apocryphal literature, it is enough to note that the many stories of the Rood-Tree and the heroes associated with it in Hebrew legend from Seth to Christ complement the pentateuchal Fall of Man in a manner quite like the complementarity of our two Bantu stories. Esther Casier Quinn has given a useful account of those legends in her book, The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life.22 So too Christ (who, the apostle Mark tells us [Mark 6:3], was a carpenter) and his redemptive tree of hewn wood on Calvary are the antidote in Christian legend to Yahweh and his green tree of perdition in Eden.