The
Master Thief
Since
making his first appearance in Sanskrit tales of
the first millennium B.C., the character known to
folklorists as the master thief has become a fixture
of European and Asian folklore.
He figures in stories told everywhere from
Korea to Norway and even turns up in the New World
as Jack, of “Jack
and the Beanstalk” fame and High John, the black
slave who tricks his master into accepting the blame
for losing the pig John has stolen from him.
Though
his name and national origin may change according
to the teller, the master thief remains a cunning
rascal, able to steal the blanket off a sleeping
man—and then convince the man he never owned a blanket.
He (almost never she) is first cousin to the classic
trickster, having something of the trickster’s cleverness,
irreverent sense of humor, and love of shaking up
the Establishment. But where such archetypal tricksters
as North America’s Coyote and Raven are children
of chaos, creating change for the sake of change,
the master thief usually has some self-serving,
profit-making point behind the chaos he creates.
His goal can be as simple as swindling a bolt of
cloth from a merchant foolish enough to wager with
Till Eulenspiegel—a Teutonic trickster, master thief,
and political symbol in one—or as lofty as winning
the hand of a princess, as in some Celtic master
thief variants.
But
no matter the harm and confusion he causes with
his thefts and swindles, the master thief generally
remains such a good-natured fellow that even his
victims seldom stay angry at him; thus master thief
tales generally have a good deal of sly humor to
them.
Like
the trickster, the master thief often represents
the triumph of the little man against higher, more
powerful—but less clever—forces. Robin Hood, after
all, became a popular folk figure not because he
was a thief but because he stole from the rich to
give to the poor. From Asia to America, the master
thief is almost always a commoner taking satisfying
advantage of the rich, highborn, and pompous, a
fact that goes a long way toward explaining his
worldwide popularity even today.
-
J.S
