Note 19 — Chapter VI · The Grateful Dead and The Water of Life or Kindred Themes.

These nine variants are, it will be seen, related in very different degrees to The Grateful Dead. What a debased type of the märchen they represent is shown by the fact that in no less than five19 the burial of the corpse, which is the most fundamental trait of the theme, has been lost. Yet for two reasons it is clear that they are really scions of the stock. In the first place, wherever the burial has been cut away, other elements of the motive in its simple form have been retained. Thus in Hungarian I. and Rumanian II. the deeds of the old beggar (or Christ) make his identity with the ghost unquestionable; in Straparola II., despite its sophistication, the wild man fills the same rôle, while his explanations at the end show that the burial has been merely blurred; in Sicilian both the agreement to divide and the division of the woman as a test are introduced; and in Treu Heinrich there is double division in a way, since the hero divides his property with his faithful follower to begin with and afterwards agrees to an exchange of hospitality with the helpful knight, going so far as actually to give him two of the four gifts received from the princess. In the second place, certain variants without the burial are very closely allied with others which retain it,20 as will be seen in a moment. Thus all those treated here may safely be admitted to the group.