Note 4.1 — Chapter XVI · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA IN MÄRCHEN.

These tales are closely allied with a type of which, with one exception, I have not found any variants outside the Celtic and Basque populations of the west of Europe. It may be called The Herdsman type. Lod, the farmer’s son, in an Argyllshire tale, is unusually strong. He takes service as herd with a king; and in the course of his day’s work at different times encounters and puts to death two giants and their mother, bringing home his cattle safe and sound as no herd had done before him. A big giant then comes for the king’s daughter, whom a squint-eyed, red-haired cook undertakes to save, his price being the maiden in marriage. The cook hides behind a stone and covers himself with sea-weed. Lod comes upon the scene and meets the heroine weeping. He comforts her, and lying down with his head on her knee he begs her to relieve him of the vermin. If he fell asleep under the lulling influences of this operation she was to waken him by cutting off the point of his little finger. On the giant’s appearance the princess wakens him. He springs up, draws his club, sweeps off the giant’s three heads and throws them contemptuously at the cook, who takes them and the king’s daughter home, as if he himself were the deliverer. A day is appointed for the wedding; but the heroine identifies Lod as the man, and proves it by the point of his finger, which she produces from her pocket. She marries him accordingly, and the cook is burnt to death.4.1 The same story in effect is given by Campbell as a variant of The Sea Maiden, cited in an earlier chapter.4.2 In Ireland the tale appears as that of The Thirteenth Son of the King of Erin. The king having thirteen sons is advised to give one to fate. The eldest is the one on whom the lot falls. His father dismisses him with the gift of a steed of supernatural fleetness; and he hires himself as cowherd to another king. He slays three giants and takes possession of their castles and wealth, among which are a black, a brown, and a red horse. The king’s daughter is to be devoured by “an urfeist, a great serpent of the sea, a monster which must get a king’s daughter to devour every seven years.” Hundreds and hundreds of kings’ sons and champions were anxious to save her, but were so frightened at the terrible urfeist that they would not go near her when she was conducted to the beach in readiness for her death. The hero rides down on the black horse, clad in the black gear he has found in the first giant’s castle. Dismounting, he lays his head in the maiden’s lap and falls asleep, waiting for the monster. While he slept she took three hairs from his head and hid them in her bosom. With his sword of light he took off the serpent’s head, but it rushed back to its place and grew on again. The serpent, however, declined to fight any more that day. In a twinkle it returned to the sea, saying: “I’ll be here again to-morrow, and swallow the whole world before me as I come.” Undaunted by this threat, the hero appeared on the morrow in the blue dress of the second giant and mounted on his brown horse. He laid his head on the lady’s lap and slept as before; and she, taking out the three hairs, compared them with his head, and said to herself: “You are the man who was here yesterday.” He cut the monster in two, but the halves rushed together and were one as before. “All the champions on earth won’t save her from me to-morrow,” cried the urfeist as he plunged into the sea again. The third day the hero donned the third giant’s dress. It had as many colours as there are in the sky, and his boots were of blue glass. The giant’s housekeeper gave him a brown apple, with instructions to throw it into the serpent’s open mouth. The princess identified him as before; and when the urfeist came up out of the sea, “enormous, terrible to look at, with a mouth big enough to swallow the world, and three sharp swords coming out of it, Sean Ruadh threw the apple into his mouth, and the beast fell helpless on the strand, flattened out and melted away to a dirty jelly on the shore.” The red steed bore the victor away from the maiden, though she tried to cling to him and stay him: she only succeeded in retaining one of his blue-glass boots. Then a proclamation was made for all men to come and try on the boot. Sean Ruadh tried to evade the proof. In vain: by his old blind sage’s advice, the king sent men, twenty at a time, to fetch him; but he bound them twenty in a bundle, and the bundles together. At last the king himself went and, kneeling, prayed him to come; and the boot sprang through the air to him and fitted itself on his foot. The princess was downstairs in a twinkle, and in the arms of Sean Ruadh. He put all the other claimants to death without more ado, and wedded her.6.1 This tale, with unimportant variations, has been found more than once during recent years in the west of Ireland. It has been recovered also in Brittany, where one of the variants takes the following form. A noble maiden disguised as a youth becomes page to the queen of France, who falls in love with her, and, being repulsed, sickens and dies. The page’s real sex is disclosed to the king in consequence of a false accusation affecting one of the maids of honour. The king marries her, and she bears him a son. A strange animal appears, called a murlu, is caught and caged, but released by the king’s son, who is, in consequence, compelled to flee from his father’s wrath. The murlu befriends the youth, and takes him to the palace of the King of Naples, where he is engaged as herd. With the murlu’s aid he satisfactorily performs his duties, and overcomes a giant, whose wealth he obtains. The murlu transforms itself into a magical steed, and helps him to conquer in a two days’ fight the seven-headed serpent to which the king’s daughter was to be sacrificed. The herd cuts out the seven tongues and goes away, leaving the heads on the ground. They are carried off by a charcoal-burner, who professes to be the princess’ deliverer. The king is about to give the maiden in marriage, in spite of her protests, to the pretender, when the herd presents himself and, by means of the seven tongues, proves himself the true victor. The charcoal-burner undergoes the usual penalty of his falsehood; and on the occasion of the hero’s wedding the murlu appears, declares itself the King of France’s first wife, condemned for her sin in attempting the page’s virtue to this transformation. The conditions of her punishment are now fulfilled and her expiation complete.7.1