Note 23 — Chapter VII · The Relations of The Grateful Dead to The Spendthrift Knight, The Two Friends, and The Thankful Beasts.

Now in Jewish23 the hero is saved from shipwreck24 by a stone, carried home by an eagle, and there met by a white-clad man, who explains the earlier appearances. This is mere reinforcement of the tale by triplication, and implies nothing more than a certain vigour of imagination on the part of the story-teller. In Servian IV.,25 where the hero spares a fish which he has caught, there appears, on the contrary, to be actual combination with The Thankful Beasts as a motive. The fish comes on the scene in human form, and fulfils the part of the grateful dead till the very end, when it leaps back into its element. As for the variants of the compound type with The Ransomed Woman there is considerable diversity, yet all of them have merely substitution, not combination. So in Jean de Calais II., VII. and X.,26 which are closely allied with other members of the group so named, the beast appears, but in one case as a white bird, in the second as a fox, and in the third as a crow. That this is anything more than a substitution due to the story-teller’s individuality cannot be admitted, though knowledge of The Thankful Beasts as a motive is not barred out. Simrock II. and VIII.27 are likewise nearly related to one another and to Jean de Calais, and they have the same adventitious substitution. Simrock V. and Oldenburgian are a similar pair,28 while Simrock III.,29 which is otherwise allied to Bohemian, cannot be shown to have any vital connection with The Thankful Beasts as a motive. Of all these tales it can be said that they show some influence from such a theme without actual combination. Finally, all the variants of the type The Grateful Dead + The Water of Life, which have the animal substituted,30 belong to a well-defined and centralized group31 which has had independent existence for centuries. Here the entrance of the beast is of considerable importance to the classification and development of the theme.