An English Chapbook Version of the ‘Eaten Heart’ Story

Abstract

THE story of the 'eaten heart' (AT 992) is known in orally collected versions from India, Hawaii, the Marquesas Islands, North America, Catalonia and the Cape Verde Islands.' It also exists in a variety of literary forms in recorded texts of the Middle Ages and early modern times.2 Some of these are merely allusions, but the majority are fully fledged works in French, Provengal, Italian, Latin, German, Dutch and English. The earliest date from the thirteenth century. There are also Danish and Swedish ballads first printed in the eighteenth century. The inventive and garrulous Madame d'Aulnoy incorporated the theme into a brief episode of her Mimoires de la Cour d'Espagne (first published Paris, 1690), but curiously transposed the roles of husband and wife. To these literary versions may be added an English chapbook version from the early eighteenth century, entitled The Constant, but Unhappy Lovers (London: printed by E.B. near Ludgate, 1707). A copy of this eight-page booklet is held by the British Library and is listed in the British Library Catalogue under 'Butler, Madam' (shelf-mark: 1076.1.22.(14)). To my knowledge, it has not previously been reprinted. The title-page of the booklet, which summarizes the plot, was printed in John Ashton's Chap-Books of the Eighteenth Century.3 However, I was alerted to the existence and subject-matter of this chapbook by the introductory note to the story 'Her Lover's Heart', a retelling of the Indian tale of Raja Rasalu, published in Idries Shah's collection of World Tales.4 The many versions of AT 992 can be divided into two sub-groups: (1) those in which the lover is killed by the jealous husband, and (2) those in which the lover dies separated from his beloved and has his heart sent to her as a token of his love. The English chapbook version belongs to the second sub-group, which also includes: (a) Konrad von Wiirzburg's 'Herzmaere', before 1257, rhyming couplets; (b) Jakemes's Roman du Chdtelain de Couci et de la Dame de Fayel, after 1285, rhyming couplets; (c) a prose version of Jakemes's romance, 15th century; (d) fragments of a Flemish-Dutch poem 'Van den Borchgrave van Couchi' that appears to be dependent on Jakemes, mid 14th century; (e) The Knight of Curtesy and the Fair Lady of Faguell, printed before 1568, stanzaic verse; (f) a Latin exemplum from the Sermones parati de tempore et de sanctis, 14th century, prose. It is obvious simply from the proper names that (b), (c), (d) and (e) are related to each other, while (f) may well be derived from (a). Both of the latter are German by provenance, and both eschew the use of personal names for their characters. The English chapbook version is not derived from The Knight of Curtesy, but is an independent occurrence of the theme. Like most of the literary versions of AT 992, The Constant, but Unhappy Lovers names its dramatis personae and k-1ces them in a carefully sketched historical and geographical setting. The young lady is a Madam Butler, a young gentlewoman at a boarding school in Hackney, whose father forces her to marry a Mr. Harvey, a rich merchant's son near Fenchurch St. She had, however, been courted for above two years by a Mr. Perpoint, a young gentleman of a considerable estate, who then went as a soldier to the wars in Spain and was mortally wounded at the Battle of Almanza (Almansa). The dread