Note 25 — Chapter VI · The Grateful Dead and The Water of Life or Kindred Themes.

Let us now consider the tales where a thankful beast plays the part of the grateful dead through at least a portion of the narrative, and where there is still no trace of either The Poison Maiden or The Ransomed Woman. The change of beast for ghost is so obvious and easy that the separation of these variants from the preceding appears at first sight to be of merely formal use. Yet thus considered, they may serve to define the sub-divisions already noticed. Nine such versions have come to my knowledge: Walewein, Lotharingian, Tuscan, Brazilian, Basque I., Breton IV., V., and VI., and Simrock IX. All but one are folk-tales, and that, curiously enough, an episode in a thirteenth century25 Dutch romance translated from the French.26