Note 34 — Chapter VI · The Grateful Dead and The Water of Life or Kindred Themes.

It will at once be recognized that all of these variants are of one type as far as the traits just specified are concerned. The basal element is the hero’s success in winning an enchanted princess either by accomplishing difficult feats or answering riddles. The water of life, as such, appears in only one story, Irish II., and there not as the prime goal of the hero’s quest, but merely as the object of a subsidiary labour. Clearly these tales not only form a group by themselves, but have in combination with The Grateful Dead and The Poison Maiden a theme which is not properly The Water of Life. This theme is as clearly The Lady and the Monster,34 which is closely allied to The Water of Life, but is essentially distinct. It has already been found compounded with the simple form of The Grateful Dead in the somewhat degenerate and literary Straparola II.,35 though the method by which the enchanted princess was won in that variant was different from that given in the present group.