Note 23 — Chapter III · Tales with the Simple Theme and Miscellaneous Combinations.

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,23 as Luzel, to whom the tale was recounted by a Breton peasant, indeed briefly noted.24 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.