Note 81 — Lohengrin

In fairy tales, which are adapted to infantile ideation, and especially to the infantile sexual theories (compare Freud in the December number of Sexuelle Probleme), the birth of man is frequently represented as a lifting of the child from a well or a lake (Thimme, l. c., p. 157). The story of “Dame Holle’s Pond” (Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, I, 7) relates that the newborn children come from her well, whence she brings them forth. The same interpretation is apparently expressed in certain national rites; for example, when a Celt had reason to doubt his paternity, he placed the newborn child on a large shield and put it adrift in the nearest river. If the waves carried it ashore, it was considered as legitimate, but if the child was drowned, this was proof of the contrary and the mother was also put to death (see Franz Helbing, “History of Feminine Infidelity”). Additional ethnological material from folklore has been compiled by the author in his “Lohengrin saga” (p. 20 et seq.).