Note 175.1 — Chapter XXI · THE STORY AS A WHOLE. THE PROBLEM OF ITS PLACE OF ORIGIN. CONCLUSION.

Turning for a moment to the saga forms assumed by the Rescue incident, there is one instance wherein contamination by a local legend may have taken place, though to an altogether smaller extent. All our information points to an eastern origin for the legend of Saint George. I have already discussed the cause of the appropriation of the Rescue incident to the Christian martyr; and I need not repeat what was then said. Mr. Baring-Gould’s theory ascribes the tale to a misunderstanding of the words of a definite hagiologist. Whether we accept that theory or not, the only difference will be one of date at which the legend became current; it will not alter the geographical direction in which we must look for its origin. As preserved in some of the songs and legends of the Balkan peoples, it shows traces of being affected by the story, handed down to us by Diodorus Siculus and by Tzetzes the scholiast, of the Rescue of Hesione by Herakles. “Troyan, the white city” of the Bosnian ballad, inevitably recalls to us the Troy of Laomedon. Diodorus knew nothing of the version preserved by Tzetzes, which represents the slaughter of the monster as effected from the inside; or, if he did, he suppressed it, either as less probable or less artistic. It is clear from the story of Kleostratos recorded by Pausanias, and from the ancient vase referred to in a note on an earlier page,175.1 that the incident of a dragon-slaughter was current in antiquity in both forms. It may be suggested that, with growth in civilisation, the fight face to face gradually superseded the ruder notion of the hero being swallowed and fighting his way forth from the serpent’s belly. Probably, therefore, the feat ascribed to Saint George in Bosnian song and Bulgarian legend is that of Herakles, rather than that of Perseus contaminated by that of Herakles. The tale of Troy was, like the story of Perseus, much more than a local legend. It was the common property of the classical world, and may well have formed part of the inheritance of all the Balkan nations. The intrusive barbarians who settled from time to time during the decadence of the empire about the Danube and the Balkans, must also have had their legends of dragon-slaying, whose essential identity with those of the original population would be recognised. The confusion thus caused would render it all the easier to substitute a new hero consecrated by religion, and consequently having claims upon belief which the older heroes had ceased to wield. Yet the previous details would not be all effaced; and in such as were preserved we should find evidence of the double procession. Thus the interference of “the thundering Elijah” bears witness to Slavonic influences, for Elijah as a saint is but a Christian disguise of the pagan Slavonic thunder-god. In the same way the name of Troyan enables us to say which of the classical Rescue legends it is that has been worked up, with the Slavonic tradition, into the ballad of Saint George. The names and special details connected with the feat of Perseus are conspicuously absent.