Note 162.1 — Chapter XXI · THE STORY AS A WHOLE. THE PROBLEM OF ITS PLACE OF ORIGIN. CONCLUSION.

To elucidate the matter, I have compiled and placed in an Appendix tables of the variants accessible to me. I do not, of course, pretend that they are complete. Statistics of the kind never are; and they must not be taken for more than they are worth. Still, I have no reason to think that they would be seriously modified by the addition of other variants. If we glance at Table A we shall see that out of 110 examples (comprising stories properly belonging to the cycle, and also stories wherein the Rescue of Andromeda is the only incident belonging to the Legend of Perseus) forty-four represent the Helpful Beasts as congenital with the heroes, while four others represent some of the Beasts as congenital, the rest of them being obtained in another way. By congenital I mean born of the same material which causes the birth of the heroes, as in the case of the fish, where one part given to the woman originates the children, and another given to a mare or a bitch originates the foals or the puppies. This, the most savage conceit of the manner in which the Helpful Beasts were obtained, is thus found in more than forty-one per cent. of the stories. They are told throughout the whole of Europe, from Donegal to Georgia, from Sweden to Greece. One of them, indeed, has been carried, as we may assume, from Portugal to Quilimane, where the origin of the Helpful Beasts is reproduced by the natives in the most intensely savage form of all; for the woman gives birth not only to the heroes but to their dogs, and even their spears and their guns. In ten cases in the table the Beasts are given by their parent animals, while in ten others (or eleven, if we add, as we probably may, the Servian case162.1) they attach themselves to the heroes out of gratitude.162.2 The total percentage of stories in which the Beasts attach themselves, or are given by the parent animals out of gratitude, to the heroes is thus nearly twenty. In sixteen cases, less than fifteen per cent., they are obtained by exchange of some other animals, or of arms or corn. In nine cases, or little more than eight per cent., they are acquired from conquered foes; while in only eight cases, a still smaller percentage, they are obtained in the classical way from a mysterious personage. If we add the two classes of exchange and gift by a mysterious personage together, we obtain twenty-four cases, or a little under twenty-two per cent., of which three alone properly belong to the Perseus group: that is, contain more than one of the four chief trains of incident which compose it. One of these three is the Tuscan story I have already indicated as probably a direct descendant of the classical tale. The rest of the twenty-four come from different parts of European Russia, Transylvania, Bohemia, Germany, Italy, the Celtiberian Peninsula, Brittany, and Achill Island, two variants having been carried to North America, possibly by the French.