Chapter III · 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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.