TALES WITH THE SIMPLE THEME AND MISCELLANEOUS COMBINATIONS.
Of the tales enumerated in the previous chapter, over one hundred in
number, all but seventeen fall into well-defined categories as having
The Grateful Dead combined with one or more of three given themes:
The Possessed Woman, The Ransomed Woman, and The Water of Life. Of
these seventeen variants, moreover, only four can be regarded as
having the simple motive of The Grateful Dead; and they are in part
doubtful members of the family.
The first of them is Simonides, thus related by Cicero: "Unum de
Simonide: qui cum ignotum quendam proiectum mortuum vidisisset eumque
humavisset haberetque in animo navem conscendere, moneri visus est
ne id faceret ab eo, quem sepultura adfecerat; si navigavisset, eum
naufragio esse periturum; itaque Simonidem redisse, perisse ceteros,
qui tum navigavissent." The source of Cicero's story we do not know,
but in all probability it was Greek. Whether it really belongs to
our cycle, being so simple in form and nearly two centuries earlier
in date than any other version yet unearthed, is a matter for very
great doubt. It may have arisen quite independently of other similar
tales in various parts of the world, and have no essential connection
with our tale; but it deserves special consideration, not only
from its antiquity, but also from its subsequent history in lineal
descent through Valerius Maximus, and possibly Robert Holkot [37] to
Chaucer. We are at least justified in looking for some influence of so
well-known an anecdote upon better-authenticated members of the cycle.
The three other variants with the simple theme are all folk-tales
of recent gathering. The first of them is Jewish, [38] which runs
as follows: The son of a rich merchant of Jerusalem sets off after
his father's death to see the world. At Stamboul he finds hanging in
chains the body of a Jew, which the Sultan has commanded to be left
there until his co-religionists shall have repaid the sum that the
man is suspected of having stolen from his royal master. The hero pays
this sum, and has the corpse buried. Later during a storm at sea he is
saved by a stone on which he is brought to land, whence he is carried
by an eagle back to Jerusalem. There a white-clad man appears to him,
explaining that he is the ghost of the dead, and that he has already
appeared as stone and eagle. The spirit further promises the hero a
reward for his good deed in the present and in the future life.
The second variant is the Annamite tale. Two poor students were
friends. One died and was buried by the other, whose fidelity was
such that he remained three years by the tomb. He dreamed that his
friend came to him and said that he should gain the title of trang
nguyen. So he built a chapel by the tomb, where the dead friend often
appeared to him. When the king heard of his loyalty, he was praised
and rewarded with a title. After his death the two friends appeared
to their son and daughter, bidding them marry. [39]
The third story is Servian VI. An uncle of Adam, who honoured God
and the "Vile," [40] was so good a man that God came to him in human
form one day. After a battle between the good and evil in the world,
the latter would not bury the slain. The Vile told Tuegut that this
would not do, so he hitched up his wagon and carried the slain to their
graves. Then God came to earth, told him to put all he possessed in
his wagon, and carried him on a cloud to heaven, where he was made
the constellation now called Driver Tuegut's Heavenly Wagon.
Of these three tales the Annamite does not fulfil the usual condition
that the dead man shall be a stranger to the one who does the good
action. Together with Simonides, all of them vary widely in the reward
given the hero. In Simonides he is warned against embarkation, and
thus saved from shipwreck; in the Jewish he is actually rescued from
a storm-tossed vessel by the ghost, which masquerades as a rock and an
eagle, and afterward promises him further rewards here and hereafter;
in the Annamite he is provided with earthly glory; and in Servian
VI. he becomes a part of the galaxy of heaven. Only the underlying
idea is the same,--that the burial of the dead is a pious act and
a sacred duty, which will meet a fitting reward. [41] This belief
is so widespread and ancient that it is not difficult to surmise how
stories inculcating the duty might have grown up independently in many
lands. At the same time, the very diversity of reward in these simple
tales allies them to one or another of the compound types, which,
though multiform and widespread, are yet unmistakably the offspring
of a single parent form, or better, of a chance union between two
motives. [42] Thus Simonides and Jewish recall the combination of
The Grateful Dead with The Ransomed Woman, since they have the hero
rescued from drowning by the ghost, and they suggest one point of
union between the two themes. It therefore seems best to include
them in our list, not only for the sake of completeness, but because
they point to the reason which sometime and somewhere gave rise to a
more developed form of the motive,--to the maerchen as we shall study
it. A consideration of these basal principles can be undertaken,
however, only after the story theme in its various ramifications and
modifications has been thoroughly discussed.
The probability that The Grateful Dead once existed in a simple,
uncompounded form, which became the parent on one side of the more
important combined types, is strengthened by the minor compounds in
which it is found. How can the correspondences of detail seen in
a considerable number of different compounds, as far as they run
parallel, be otherwise explained? Surely it is more reasonable to
believe in the existence of such a parent form than to suppose that
an originally complicated form was hacked and hewn asunder to produce
new compounds. This will become clearer, I hope, as we proceed.
In Greek, a boy was sold to a pasha, who betrothed him to his
daughter. Because of the mother's objections, however, he was sent
away as a shepherd, while the girl was promised to another pasha's
son. The hero fed his flock under the shelter of the castle, and was
summoned by the maiden, who gave him her betrothal ring in a beaker,
though pretending not to know him. The next day she asked her parents
to let the two suitors go into the world with a thousand piasters
apiece, and see which came back with the most money. So they were
sent forth. The pasha's son remained in a city enjoying his money,
while the shepherd went on till he met an old man, to whom he told
his story. The man gave him a thousand piasters more, and told him to
buy an ape in a town hard by. He succeeded in doing this, and brought
the ape back to the old man, who cut it in pieces, much to the youth's
disgust, and made eye-salve of the brain. With this he sent the hero
away after exacting a promise of half of what was obtained. The youth
won a thousand piasters by curing the blind, and later a great sum,
besides thirty ships, by healing a very rich man. With this wealth he
returned to the old man, and with him to the city where the pasha's son
had sojourned. The latter agreed to let the shepherd's seal be burned
on his arm in return for the payment of his debts; but, while the hero
and the old man sailed home, he rode fast by land with the story that
his rival was dead. The shepherd arrived at home just in time for his
rival's wedding, and at the end of it showed the bride her ring. She
recognized her lover, called her parents, and, after the hero had
told his story and proved it by the seal on his rival's arm, married
him. That night the old man knocked on the door of their chamber,
and demanded that the bride be divided. According to his promise,
the hero prepared to cut her in twain, when the intruder said that
he wished only to test his fidelity, explaining that he was God,
Who had taken him under His protection because his father had sold
him in order to keep the lamp burning in honour of his saint.
In this variant the elements of The Grateful Dead have been merged
with a story about how a young man of low birth won a princess
by overcoming another suitor in spite of the treachery of the
latter. As I have met with but one example of this, from Lesbos,
[43] I will summarize it briefly. A princess becomes enamoured of
the son of her father's gardener, and refuses to marry the son of
the first minister. So the two suitors are sent out to a far country
with the understanding that the one who returns first shall have the
princess. On the way the gardener's son helps an old beggar-woman,
whom his rival has spurned, and is told by her how to cure a sick king
(by boiling him and sprinkling him with a certain powder). For this
service the youth obtains a ring of bronze, which has the virtue
of giving whatever its possessor desires. By means of this he gets
a wonderful ship, and sails to the city where the minister's son,
through extravagance, has fallen into poverty. He provides him with
a wretched ship, in which to return home, on condition that he may
mark him with his ring. The minister's son reaches home in his crazy
vessel, and is about to marry the princess, when the hero appears on
his beautiful ship of gold, exposes his rival, and weds the lady. The
remainder of the story, which tells how the magical ring was lost
and afterward recovered, does not concern us. It will be seen that
Greek has preserved only the later part of The Grateful Dead at all
clearly, though that combination with a tale of the type of the Lesbian
narrative has actually taken place is evident from the part which the
helper plays. He not only obtains a promise of division, but calls for
its fulfilment. His first appearance is, however, quite unmotivated,
while the old woman of the Lesbian story serves the purpose, according
to a common formula, of showing the hero's kindness in contrast to
his rival's hard heart. The point common to the two tales, which led
to their combination, is without doubt this helping friend.
In Servian V. a youth on a journey pays his all to rescue a debtor from
hanging. By his new-found friend the youth is led to the wondrous
Vilaberg, where he is left with the admonition that he must not
speak. He disobeys, and is made dumb and blind by an enchantress;
but he is cured by the man whom he rescued, who plays on a pipe
and gives him a healing draught. So he dwells for some years in the
mountain with one of the ladies as his wife, but afterward goes home,
though every summer he returns to his friends in the Vilaberg.
Here we have our theme combined with a form of The Swan-Maiden,
[44] which occurs in only one other case, as far as I am able to
discover. The reason for the combination is not far to seek. The
latter part of the tale represents the reward of the rescuer by the
rescued. That the benefit does not take the form of actual burial
need not disturb us. The man was at least far gone towards death, and
he was a debtor--a trait found in about two-thirds of the variants
known to me. Moreover, the supernatural character of the comrade is
indicated by the adventure into which he leads the youth. The tale
has been partly rationalised, that is all.
Esthonian I. [45] shows a different combination, which is unique as
far as I know. In a gorge not far from the village of Arukaela (near
Wesenberg) a howling was heard every night for years. Finally a bold
man went by night to the place and found the skeleton of a murdered
king, which told him that it had howled thus for a hundred years
because it had not been buried with holy rites. The next day the man
took the bones to a priest, and, while burying them, discovered an
enormous treasure.
As Schiefner said, [46] when he first printed the story, it recalls
the Grimms' Der singende Knochen, [47] which in turn is a compound
of The Water of Life, with the idea of murder discovered by means of
a dead man's bones. The Esthonian tale has, however, only the latter
circumstance, combined with a simple form of The Grateful Dead. The
hero's reward is immediate--he finds gold in the earth while digging
the grave; and the ghost does not appear. The variant is thus of no
great significance.
The group of tales that must next be considered furnishes rather
more important evidence as to the development of the theme. It
is a compound of The Grateful Dead with the motive which we may
call The Spendthrift Knight. As far as I know, the type is purely
mediaeval. The group includes Richars, Lion de Bourges, Dianese,
Old Swedish, Rittertriuwe, and Sir Amadas.
The plot of Richars, as far as it concerns us, runs thus: Richars, in
the pursuit of knightly exercises, wastes all his father's property
as lord of Mangorie. When he hears that the King of Montorgueil has
promised the hand of his daughter to the victor in a tourney, he is
sad at the thought of his inability to engage. Through the generosity
of a provost, however, he is enabled to set out with a horse, three
attendants, and a supply of gold. At the city of Osteriche he spends
part of his money in giving a great feast. In the roof of the house
where he stays he is astonished to see a corpse lying on two beams,
and he learns that it is the body of a knight, who died owing the
householder three thousand pounds. Richars gives everything he has,
even to his armour, to secure the release and burial of the dead
man. He then proceeds to the tourney on a poor horse that his host
gives him, and quite alone, since his attendants have deserted him. On
the way he is joined by a White Knight, who offers him help in the
tourney and places at his disposal his noble steed. Richars wins the
tourney and obtains the hand of the Princess Rose. He now offers the
White Knight his choice of the lady or the property. The stranger,
however, refuses any division, explains that he is the ghost of the
indebted knight, and disappears. [48]
Lion de Bourges runs thus: Lion, son of Duke Harpin de Bourges, was
found by a knight in a lion's den and reared as his son. When he grew
up, he wasted his foster-father's property in chivalry. Finally, he
heard that King Henry of Sicily had promised the hand of his daughter
to the knight who should win a tourney that he had established. So Lion
started for the court, and on the way ransomed the body of a knight,
which he found hanging in the smoke, on account of unpaid debts. At
Montluisant the hero won the favour of the Princess Florentine, and,
before the tourney, obtained from a White Knight the charger which
he still lacked, on condition of sharing his winnings, the princess
excepted. With the help of this knight Lion was victorious and obtained
the princess. He was then asked by his helper to give up either the
lady or the whole kingdom, and did not hesitate to do the latter. At
this, the stranger explained that he was the ghost of the ransomed
knight and disappeared, though he afterwards returned to assist the
hero at need.
According to Dianese, [49] the knight of that name has wasted his
substance. When he hears that the King of Chornualglia (Cornwall)
has promised his daughter and half of his kingdom to the knight who
wins the tourney that he has called, Dianese gets his friends to fit
him out and sets forth. On the way he passes through a town where the
traffic is diverted from the main street because of a corpse which
has long been lying on a bier before a church. He learns that it is
the body of a knight, who cannot be buried till his creditors have
been paid. At the cost of everything he possesses, save his horse,
the hero satisfies the creditors and has the knight buried. When he
has gone on two miles, he is joined by a merchant, who promises him
money, horses, and weapons if he will give in return half of what he
wins in the tourney. Dianese agrees, is fitted out anew, and succeeds
in overcoming all comers in the contest. Thus he obtains the hand
of the princess and half the kingdom. With his bride, the merchant,
and his followers he starts for home; but, when they are only a
day's journey from their destination, he is required by the merchant
to fulfil his promise--to choose between his bride as one half, his
possessions as the other. Dianese takes the lady and rides on. Soon,
however, he is joined by the merchant, who praises his faithfulness,
gives up the treasures, explains that he is the ghost of the debtor
knight, and disappears.
In Old Swedish [50] the daughter and heiress of the King of France
promises to marry whatever knight is victor in a tourney which she
announces. Pippin, the Duke of Lorraine, hears of this and sets out
for France. At the end of his first day's journey he finds lodging
at the house of a widow, who is lamenting because her husband, once
in good circumstances, has died so poor that she cannot bury him
properly. Pippin takes pity on her, and pays for the man's funeral. On
his further journey he falls in with a man on a noble steed, who gives
him the horse on condition of receiving half of whatever he shall
win. Unthinkingly Pippin agrees and wins the tourney with the help of
the horse. After he has married the princess, he is asked by the helper
to fulfil his promise. He offers at first half, then the whole of his
kingdom, in order to keep his bride, and is finally told by the man
that he is the ghost of the dead, while the horse was an angel of God.
Rittertriuwe is of the same romantic character. When Graf Willekin von
Montabour had spent his substance in chivalrous exercises, he learned
that a beautiful and rich maiden had promised her hand to the knight,
who should win a tourney, which she had established. Thereupon he
set forth and came to the place announced for the combats. There he
found lodging in the house of a man, who would only receive him if he
would promise to pay the debts of a dead man, whose body lay unburied
in the dung of a horse-stall. [51] Willekin was moved by this story
and paid seventy marks, almost all his money, to ransom the corpse
and give it suitable burial. He then had to borrow from his host in
order to indulge in his customary generosity. On the morning of the
jousting he obtained from a stranger knight a fine horse on condition
of dividing everything that he won. He succeeded in the tourney above
all the other contestants, and so wedded the maiden. On the second
night after the marriage the stranger entered his room and demanded
a share in his marital rights. After he had offered instead to give
all his possessions, the hero started from the room in tears, when
the stranger called him back and explained that he was the ghost of
the dead, then disappeared.
A brief summary of Sir Amadas, [52] the last of the six variants,
must now be given. Amadas finds himself financially embarrassed,
and sets forth for seven years of errantry with only forty pounds
in hand. This he pays to release and bury the body of a merchant who
has died in debt. When thus reduced to absolute penury, Amadas meets
a White Knight, who tells him that he will aid him on condition of
receiving half the gains. The hero finds a rich wreck on the seacoast,
and so with new apparel goes to the court, where he wins wealth in a
tourney and the princess's heart at a feast. After he marries her and
has a son born to him, the White Knight reappears and demands that the
accepted conditions be complied with. Hesitatingly Amadas prepares to
divide first his wife and afterwards his son, but he is stayed by the
stranger, who explains that he is the ghost of the dead merchant. So
Amadas is at last released from misfortune and lives in happiness.
In all six of these stories we have a knight, who sets out to
win a tourney in which the victor's prize is to be the hand of a
princess. In all of them save Old Swedish he is represented as being
impoverished by previous extravagance, in Richars, Lion de Bourges,
and Rittertriuwe it being expressly stated that he had wasted his
fortune by over-indulgence in his passion for jousting. On his way
to the place appointed for the contest the hero pays for the burial
[53] of a man whose corpse is held for debt. [54] He goes on and
is approached either before (Richars, Lion de Bourges, Dianese, Old
Swedish, and Sir Amadas) or after (Rittertriuwe) he reaches the lists
by a man, who provides him with a horse, by the aid of which he wins
the tourney and the princess. In Dianese the hero is a merchant, in Old
Swedish his estate is not mentioned, but in the other four variants
he appears as a knight (a white knight in Richars, Lion de Bourges,
and Sir Amadas). In Dianese the hero is also provided with armour;
in Richars and Lion de Bourges he is assisted in his jousting by the
White Knight; and in Sir Amadas he finds a wreck on the coast from
which he obtains all things needful. In Richars we find the somewhat
inept conclusion that the hero asks his friendly helper whether
he will take the princess or the property [55] as his share. The
latter responds that he wishes only his horse, explains who he is,
and vanishes. In all the other variants, however, the condition is
made that the hero divide whatever he shall gain. [56]
With reference to Richars and Lion de Bourges, Wilhelmi's careful
discussion [57] has made it clear that, though they agree in many
points as against all the other related versions, not only in respect
to The Grateful Dead, but to the further course of a complicated
narrative, neither one could have been taken from the other. The
difference in the matter of the division between Richars and all the
other variants he neglects, though it strengthens his position. Back
of Richars and Lion de Bourges, earlier than the thirteenth century,
there must have existed a literary work which was their common
source. This hypothetical French romance may be considered as the
foundation of the whole group which we are discussing.
Since Old Swedish agrees with most of the other variants with regard
to the division, and furthermore with Rittertriuwe, in stating
that the hero offered all his property in order to keep his wife,
there seems to be no doubt that it belongs to this particular group,
despite the fact that it says nothing about the hero's poverty. The
connection is not improbable on the score of chronology, if we suppose
that the source of Richars and Lion de Bourges, or some similar tale,
found its way into the North by translation in the first half of the
thirteenth century, a time when translations into Icelandic at any
rate were made in great numbers. Indeed, the names Pippin, Lorraine,
etc., immediately suggest a French source; and the story is not really
a legend at all, though it appears in a legendary, but a narrative
quite in the style of the romans d'adventure.
With reference to Sir Amadas, two points of special interest
appear. The hero is provided the wherewithal for his successful
courtship by means of a wreck to which he is directed by the White
Knight; and he is required to divide his child as well as his wife with
his helper. These peculiarities, together with the different opening,
make it improbable that Richars, as preserved, was the direct source
of the romance, though its author may have known some text either of
that romance, or of Lion de Bourges. It seems more likely, however,
that the source of Sir Amadas was rather the common original of
both those versions. In the present state of the evidence it is
impossible to do more than to show, as I have attempted to do, that
the fourteenth-century Sir Amadas is a member of the little group
under discussion.
The proposed division of the son is peculiarly important in that it
connects the group with the stories in which The Grateful Dead is
compounded with the theme of Amis and Amiloun. Indeed, the general
relationship of The Spendthrift Knight to that theme must be considered
in a later chapter [58] after more important compounds have been
discussed. It will be noted that the group just considered is purely
literary and purely mediaeval. Though it has representatives in Italy,
Germany, Sweden, and England, it is to all intents and purposes French
in source and character. Five of its members are the only variants
treated in this chapter where the question of dividing the hero's
prize is brought up. The group thus stands by itself, and may be
considered as an entity when we come to a discussion of the larger
matters of relationship.
A solitary folk-tale now demands attention--my Breton II. The
Grateful Dead in a simple form is here combined with a story told of
Gregory the Great, [59] as Luzel, to whom the tale was recounted by
a Breton peasant, indeed briefly noted. [60] The Breton tale runs as
follows: A rich lord and lady had no children. While the lady was
praying to St. Peter in a chapel that was being repaired, she fell
a victim to a young painter, and had by him a son, who was named
after St. Peter. When the boy was twelve years of age, he carried
St. Peter across a stream one day, while his shepherd companion carried
Christ. The companion died soon after. Pierre then set forth to visit
his patron in Paradise. On his way he stopped overnight at the house of
an old woman, whose husband lay unburied because there was no money to
pay the priest. Pierre gave all his money for the interment, and went
on. When he came to the sea, a naked man, who said that he was the
dead, carried him across to a point near the gates of Paradise. There
he found Peter, and was shown the glories of heaven by the Saviour,
as well as Purgatory and Hell. In the last he saw a chair reserved
for his mother, but by his entreaties induced the Lord to grant her
a release on condition of doing penance himself for her. So he was
told to put on a spiked girdle, to throw the key of it into the sea,
and not to take it off till the key should be found. After donning
this instrument Pierre was carried by the ghost back to his own land,
where he lived on alms--first on the public ways, and later, without
discovering himself, in his father's castle. During his father's
absence he was killed at the command of his mother, but was dug up
alive by his father and treated with respect. One day at a feast
he found the key in the head of a fish. When the girdle was opened,
he died, and his soul was borne to heaven by angels.
Two Danish variants present a curious but not inexplicable combination
of The Grateful Dead with Puss in Boots, as was noted by Koehler. [61]
Danish I. relates how a youth pays three marks, which is his all,
to bury the body of a dead man, for whose interment the priest has
demanded payment in advance. He is then joined by another youth,
who is the ghost of the dead, and goes to a certain city. There, by
giving himself out as a prince at the advice of his companion, who
provides him with proper trappings, he wins the hand of a princess. In
Danish II. an old soldier pays his last three marks to prevent three
creditors from digging up a corpse. He is joined by a pale stranger,
who takes him in a leaden ship to a land where he marries a princess,
who is fated to marry no one save a man who comes in this way. The
stranger secures, by a lying ruse, a troll's castle for the hero, and,
after explaining that he is the ghost of the buried debtor, disappears.
The traces of the Puss in Boots motive [62] are, I think, sufficiently
clear, especially in the first of the two variants, since the point
of that familiar tale is certainly that the hero marries a woman of
high estate by making himself out as of equal rank, substantiating
his statements by a succession of clever ruses. That the grateful dead
enables him to fulfil the required conditions is an introduction that
could easily replace the ordinary one, especially since a helper of
some sort is necessary to the story. Just what the relation of these
two variants is to other Puss in Boots stories does not here concern
us. From the side of The Grateful Dead, however, it is possible
to see how the combination--found only in two folk-tales from a
single country, it will be observed--may have arisen. The benefits
bestowed on the hero show an essential likeness to those found in a
widespread compound type to be studied in a later chapter, [63] where
the thankful dead helps his friend to obtain a wife by the performance
of some feat. Since the combination now in consideration seems to
be confined to the region about Denmark, while mediaeval and modern
examples of the other are found in many lands, it may be regarded as
a mere variation on the better-known compound type, produced by the
similarity of the two endings. Yet it has to be treated separately,
because it involves an independent theme.
An echo of the simple theme of The Grateful Dead is found in two
English plays--Massinger's Fatal Dowry and Rowe's Fair Penitent. In
the former young Charolais goes to prison to release his father's
body from the clutch of creditors, who wish to keep it unburied
for vengeance. [64] He is rescued by Rochfort, who pays the debts
and gives him his daughter in marriage. The intrigues of love and
vengeance that follow do not concern us. In Rowe's play, which was
based on Massinger's, this part has been curtailed to a few slight
references. Altamont gives himself as ransom for his father's body
to the greedy creditors, who will not allow burial to take place. He
is rewarded by the care and bounty of Sciolto, who becomes a second
father to him.
Stephens was certainly right in connecting [65] the story in The Fatal
Dowry with The Grateful Dead, though it is only a fragment and lacks
some of the most essential features of the complete theme. The ghost,
indeed, does not appear at all, but the part played by Rochfort may
be regarded as a greatly sophisticated reminiscence of that trait,
especially since he not only rescues the hero, but provides him with
a wife. The echo of the theme is too vague for us to distinguish the
form in which it was found by Massinger, though I think that we should
not go far wrong in supposing that he had in mind some narrative,
either popular or literary, nearly approaching the compound type
treated in chapter vi. below. As one of the comparatively few traces
that the motive has left in England this double dramatic use is not
without interest. [66]