Hello. Stories are an important part of being human, and understanding which stories were
told by our ancestors allows us to understand their views on particular parts of life. And
in this video which is the 2nd in a series of videos about the oldest stories of humanity,
I’m going to look at some of the oldest folktales and fairy tales told by our Proto-European
ancestors, and see what they can tell us about how our ancestors lived. So welcome to the
oldest folktales of the Proto-Europeans, and welcome to Crecganford. Before I begin, I’ve
explain that in part one of the video series, it gives an account of how we know these stories
are old and their origins, and if you haven’t watched part one of this series then I’ll
link that here now, if you want to understand the process more fully. But in synopsis, and
very much layman terms, by using DNA evidence, it helps track the migration of tribes, which
when put alongside language trees, which show how language evolution, and an index of story
types called the ATU, or Aarne Thompson Uther Index, we can make a good estimation of where
a story originated, and the age of that story. And this analysis was applied to the 275 magical
Folk Tales in the ATU, and the result was that 100 tales seemed old, coming from an
oral tradition, and four of these seemed to originate from the time of the Proto-Indo
Europeans, making them potentially over 6,000 years old, maybe even 7,500 years old in one
particular case. Now these four stories were The Smith and the Devil, The Animal Bride,
The Grateful Animals, and The Boy who stole the Orge’s Treasure, and in the first video
we looked at what this meant, this meant in the importance of them, look at metallurgy
and looking after animals, and the benefits these must have brought people in those times.
But the research also found ten other stories looked as they originated as the Proto-Europeans
migrated into Europe, so maybe not as old as the Proto-Indo Europeans, but still at
least 4,000 years old and perhaps as old as 6,000 years with links to the Proto-Italic-Celtic,
the Proto-Italic-Celtic-Germanic, and the Proto-Western Europeans. And today we will
look at some of these stories to see if they can help us understand more about how the
Proto-Europeans thought and lived. And when looking at these stories we have to put ourselves
in a mindset of a Proto-European, when understanding a story was important to help guide acceptable
behaviours in a world where there was no formal constitution, and oral traditional played
a key role in knowledge transfer within a tribe, and so these stories and their true
meaning were probably understood far more readily when originally told many thousands
of years ago, but let’s see what we can uncover. The first of these ten I will look
at is Beauty and the Beast. Now this is a story that is definitely aimed at the females
of a tribe, as it is in effect it is the telling of a female fantasy. And if you don’t know
the story an abridged version goes a bit like this. A young girl gets lost in a forest,
and finds a castle belonging to a beast, who seems a bit grumpy and angry with life, and
she is scared and feels trapped, and through various plot twists, manges to swap places
with her father as prisoner of the beast, and this allows her to go back home. In her
home village her suitor, a strong man popular with the other ladies, says he will kill the
beast, but then she realises through more plot twists the beast isn’t such a bad person.
And there is a little scuffle, the beast gets hurt, and beauty nurses him better, and realises
she is in love with him. When she acknowledges this the beast turns into a prince, and they
all live happily ever after, apart from her original suitor who doesn’t get the girl.
And this story is the presentation of the average female’s psychological preference
for a man. I what I mean by this is that the beast here is showing predatory dominance,
and beauty encounters this mysterious and aggressive male, and tames him. Beauty, in
effect representing woman, isn’t interested in the man who isn’t the beast, she wants
to get the beast, to make him love her, she wants to pacify his beastness, his anger.
And this is actually a common fantasy amongst women today, with findings by Google engineers
who study what people search for on the internet, finding out what women searched for, and found
that women like to look for erotic romances featuring vampires, werewolves, surgeons,
pirates, and billionaires, which may make you relaise why vampire movies and pirates
of the Caribbean, and fifty shades of grey do so well. This story is a telling of the
inherent desire of women that has lasted millennia, to find a “badboy” and tame him. Yes,
that is a scenario has been played out for thousands of years. And that is what Beauty
and the Beast is about. The next story we can look at is known as the Supernatural Helper,
and a version we tell today is Rumpelstiltskin. The story in summary goes as follows. One
day a father boasts to a king that his daughter can spin gold out of straw, in the hope the
king will marry her, but the daughter can’t and is locked up, and there makes a deal with
a little magical man who can. But the king keeps asking for more golden thread to be
spun and daughter eventually has to promise to give the little man her first born child.
Meanwhile the king is so happy with all the gold the man’s daughter has produced that
he marries her, and as if by magic she becomes pregnant and has a child. The little man turns
up saying I’m going to take your child unless the daughter of the man, who is now the Queen,
can guess his name in the next three days. And on the third day the little man is spotted
singing and dancing by one of the guards and saying his name. The Queen is told, and when
the little man comes to collect the baby the Queen says his name, Rumpelstiltskin. And
in anger and due to a dodgy floor board, he stamps his foot, which flips up a floorboard,
and splits in two. And everyone, apart from Rumpelstiltskin, lives happily ever after.
So what is this story about? As it isn’t particularly obvious. Well first the name
Rumpelstiltskin means “little rattle stilt”, named after a goblin that made noises, but
this version, with a goblin, is still far younger than the source tale, and there are
has similar versions across the world, in England it is called Tom Tit Tot, Scotlandi
it is called Whuppity Stoorie in Scotland, and Gilitrutt in Ireland. But versions are
found, and we must not get distracted by this newer version of the story. Instead, if we
break the story down, we have three men, the father of the daughter, the king, and the
little man, all of who act foolishly, of over confidence, wanting something that needs a
miracle to happen, and the cost of this, certainly to the daughter was significant, being locked
up, potentially losing her first child. But here we also see she overcomes these issues
through being alert, finding information to protect herself. And thus another story focus
more towards women, particularly daughters in a patriarchal society, must use her influence
and knowledge to protect herself and her children from the actions and desires of foolish men.
Be alert, be informed, and then you will have yourself some protection in a world where
others are trying to dictate your path. The third tales we will look at today is Godfather
Death, and is an interesting tale, about a man who was looking for a god-father for his
son, sometimes called a foster-father by some cultures. He goes out for a walk and bumps
into god and the devil, as you do, and rejects both of them, but finds death, and allows
him to be his son’s godfather. Death makes his god son into a famous doctor, and tells
him that when the son visits his patients, death will appear standing by the head or
feet of the patient, if he stands at the head the patient will live, and if he stands at
the feet the patient will die. Time passes and the doctor is called to see the king who
is very ill, and their death is their standing at the kings feet, so the Doctor knows there
is an impending death, but the doctor turns the king around in bed, and tricks death,
and keeps the king alive. Death tells the doctor not to trick him again or the doctor
himself will die. The king is happy and allows the doctor to marry his daughter, who herself
then becomes ill, which is a bit suspicious but not part of the story, and death appears
standing by her feet, suggesting death is imminent, and the doctor again turns her around
in the bed so her head is by death, suggesting she will live. After this Death then takes
the doctor, his god son, to a cave, and shows him how he knows how long people live, and
shows the doctor his lifeline, which is very short. Death’s god sons pleads for an extension,
but death watches his god sons life disappear, and the god son dies. This story has a number
of forms, and whilst you might like to thing this is about death, it isn’t, the motif
is about not to trick people into making an outcome you don’t deserve. Don’t cheat,
as if you do and it is found out, then there will be a price to pay, a price that could
take more away from you than you received, potentially leaving you with nothing. It’s
a tale about being honest and not cheating, which is an absolute must, don’t lie. Again,
a message that most modern day psychologists would iterate to you if you want to be a better
person. The penultimate tale I will look at today is How the Devil Married three sisters,
and there are other similar tales called “Fitcher’s Bird” or “Rescued by Sister”, in fact
there are 22 tales of this type within the ATU index, and so is a popular type. The plot
is that a man kidnaps three sisters, one at a time, and each one he takes back to his
castle and gives them the keys to his castle and an egg, but they are also told they can
have the freedom of the castle but not to look behind a specific door. The first two
sisters look behind the door, are shocked at what they see and drop the egg, which leaves
a clue that they were there, and each are killed by the kidnapper. The third sister
doesn’t drop her egg, and revives the two sisters, and escapes. And the man’s castle
is destroyed for his crimes, probably with the man in it. Now whilst this tales has curiosity
and its consequences as a theme, think of eve, the snake, and the apple in the garden
of Eden, as do a number of tales in this category, the main theme here is that you are not guilty
of transgression if it is for the greater good, but just don’t get caught doing it.
Be careful, be curious, find out information but don’t be obvious about it, maintain
a low profile. Those who stand out get picked on. Again a common understood concept in modern
psychology. The final tale I’ll look at in this video, although I will mentioned the
rest of the ten tales after this, but the last one I’ll look at in detail in this
video is called The Lazy Boy, although also known as Foolish Hans, or Peter the Fool,
or Lazy Jack. It is about a boy who completes some tasks, but he keeps losing his rewards
on his way home. His final reward for work is a donkey and he decides to carry it home,
and this makes a rich lady, who was mute, laugh at him and she finds the power of speech,
and so they marry, have kids, and live happily ever after, or until one of them dies. Here,
looking after what you earn is important, no matter how you look after it. Because if
you do people will find the fact you can earn attractive, that you have potential, especially
in the times of the proto-European culture, a woman who sees a man with potential, will
find them a capable and attractive partner. And once more, modern psychology will underline
the fact that women looking for a man, will find a poor man with potential more attractive
than a rich man whose boring. The other stories that were uncovered by this analysis are called
Friends in Life and Death, The Grateful Dead, The Clever Horse, sometimes called Ferdinand
the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful, and then there is The Dance Among Thorns,
and finally Strong John or Strong Hans. I’ve also received a few requests from viewers
to look at other tales, and so I will cover these in a future video, so keep an eye out
for those. But let’s summarise what we’ve found out, these stories, thousands of years
old, focus on qualities of a person to get a husband or wife, to stay honest, to be curious,
but not to stand out. These are qualities that are still applicable today, and to find
they were being told so much and so widespread, all that time ago, just makes me believe that
our ancestors really knew about what made people work, something I feel we don’t really
talk about so much today comparatively. But the other piece of advice is that all you
men out there looking for a women, I suggest aim to be a billionaire or surgeon, or if
that fails, a pirate… just because becoming a werewolves or vampires seems like a more
challenging career path. And with that advice, I’ll see you in my next video, please stay
safe, stay well, and this was Crecganford.