Note 95.1 — Chapter XVIII · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA: ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SACRIFICES.

The stories analysed in the first three chapters are abundant evidence that the form assumed by the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head in modern märchen is that of a sojourn in a witch’s dwelling, resulting in death or petrifaction by enchantment, followed by rescue and the annihilation of the witch. This incident is not confined, any more than the others with which we have dealt, to tales of the Perseus cycle—that is, to tales wherein one or more of the other three principal incidents of the Perseus märchen occur. In company with the incident of the Life-token it is frequently found in stories belonging to the type of The Two Sisters who envied their Cadette.95.1 From many of such stories, however, the Life-token appears to have dropped. The Greek märchen of The Tzitzinæna is an example. There, as in the Arabian Nights, a king overhears three maidens boasting what they could do if they could only marry the royal confectioner, the royal cook, and the king himself respectively. The boast of the youngest sister is that she would bear her lord three children—Sun, Moon, and Star. The king gratifies their desires, to the annoyance of his mother, who plays the part of the envious sisters in Galland’s tale. She so arranges matters that when the children (two fair boys and a girl) are born they are thrown into the sea; and after the third abortion, as the king is led to believe, the unfortunate queen is shut up in a foul and noisome prison. The children are found by a solitary monk, and brought up until they are old enough to shift for themselves. He then gives them money and sends them into the world. They settle in the town; and there the eldest buys from a Jew a mysterious casket which contains a green, winged horse. The midwife who had been charged with the destruction of the children now discovers them still living; and in order to put an end to them, she excites in the maiden a desire to possess the golden apple watched in a certain garden by forty dragons. With his enchanted horse the eldest brother obtains for her not only the golden apple, but also, on a second journey, a golden bough on which all the birds of the world gather to sing. He is then sent for the Tzitzinæna to explain what the birds say. On arriving at the Tzitzinæna’s house the horse directs him to call it. The creature replies, “Marble”; and the youth is petrified to the knees. The calls are exchanged until he becomes marble to the girdle. He then remembers that on bidding himself and his brother and sister farewell the monk had given him some hairs from his beard, with directions to burn one of them when in need. He burns one accordingly; and the monk appears, and calls the Tzitzinæna, compelling it to bring a bottle of water of immortality and sprinkle the youth and his steed. By the power of this water they are loosed from the spell. But they have not been the Tzitzinæna’s only victims. In obedience to the monk it delivers them all, and among them the hero’s brother, who had been lost. The Tzitzinæna, thus captured, like the Talking Bird, is the means of revealing the truth to the king and restoring to him his wife and children.97.1 The story is obviously imperfect, whole episodes, like the loss of one of the brothers, being referred to but not detailed. Hence there can be little doubt that it once contained the Life-token. It is doubtless a waif from the coffee-houses of the Levant stranded on Hellenic shores. In a variant from Epirus the errands are to obtain the Flying Horse of the Plain and the Beauty of the Land. The latter had turned many men into stone; but she goes with the hero, becomes his wife, and contrives the solution of the plot, as in the typical tale.97.2