Note 3 — Chapter III · Tales with the Simple Theme and Miscellaneous Combinations.

As a matter of fact, The Poison Maiden exists in a cycle of its own. Any doubt about this and any necessity of studying the theme in detail here is removed by the valuable monograph of Wilhelm Hertz, Die Sage vom Giftmädchen,3 in which the literature of the subject has been marshalled with masterly skill. Starting with the stories of how a maiden, who had been fed with snake-poison, was sent to Alexander the Great from India by an enemy, and how the plot to kill the emperor through her embraces was foiled by the cunning of Aristotle,4 Hertz shows5 that the central idea of the tale is the belief that a man could be killed by sexual connection with a woman who had been nourished on poison. In most of the variants, to be sure, it is the bite of the woman that is venomous, while in others it is her glance or her breath; but these are natural modifications. Without following the study into details, the important fact to remember is that there has existed from early times a tale relating how a man was saved by a watchful friend on his bridal night from a maiden whose embraces were certain death.6 With this in mind we can safely proceed to a consideration of the variants of The Grateful Dead which have similar features.