III. KING OF THE FISHES

This is practically the Perseus legend of antiquity, which has been made the subject of an elaborate study by Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, 3 vols., London, 1894-6. Mr. Hartland distinguishes four chains of incidents in the story:

Not all the variants, which are very numerous, running from Ireland to Cambodia, include all these four incidents. The Greek Perseus legend, for instance, has not the Life Token. Cosquin, i., 67, knows of only eighteen which have the full contingent, one in Brittany, two in Greece, one in Sicily, four in Italy, one each—Basque, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Danish, and Swedish; two German; one Lithuanian; and a Russian variant. There must be many more in Bolte's notes to Grimm, 60. These are sufficient to prove that the whole concatenation of incident is European, though it is difficult to understand how the Medusa incident got tacked on to the preceding three, with which it is very loosely combined, the only point of connection being with the Life Token. Strangely enough, in the ancient form of the folk-tale, the Gorgon is an almost essential part of the story, though the Life Token has disappeared, and the Supernatural Birth only applies to the hero and not to his animal companions. In the modern European folk-tales these animal friends are rather supernumeraries and are occasionally replaced by the formula of the Grateful Animals, to whom the hero does some service during his wanderings, in reward for which they rescue him from some extremity. In some ancient variants of the Perseus legend there are traces of the Substituted Champion in the form of Pentheus, a former suitor of Andromeda, who had failed to meet the dragon.

It would be impossible here to consider the folk-lore analogies of the four chief incidents of the tale which have occupied Mr. Hartland for three fairly large volumes to develop, out of which have grown two more (Primitive Paternity, London, 1910). It is only necessary here to refer to a few points in their relation to the tale itself. The Supernatural Birth, which is also treated by M. Saintyves (?) is found attributed to heroes among all nations; it is only of significance in the story here in its bearing upon the Life Token of the hero, which is connected with it. With regard to the Life Token, Major Temple has a full analysis in the notes to Wide Awake Stories, 1884, pp. 404-5, under the title of the "Life Index," and is closely connected with the idea of the External Soul, which Sir James G. Frazer has studied in his Balder, London, 1913, pp. 95-152. The Fight with the Dragon is celebrated outside folk-tales in the lives of the saints (whence St. George, the titular saint of England, gets his emblem) in the saga of Siegfried, and in the poetry of Schiller, where it is made the subject of a moral apologue. The Medusa-witch, who transforms into stone, or destroys life in other ways, is quite a familiar figure in folk tales, but is usually thwarted, as here, by some means of cure.

The chief interest, however, of the "King of the Fishes," from a folk-tale point of view, is the remarkable similarity of the later folk-tales with the Greek legend, from which they are separated by so many centuries. The absence of the Life Token in the Greek version and the comparative insignificance of Medusa in the modern tales are sufficient evidence that these latter are not directly derived from the former. Yet even Mr. Hartland, who is a strong adherent of the anthropological treatment of folk-tales, fully agrees that this particular tale must have, at one time, been composed in artistic unity, if not containing all the four chains of incidents at least containing two of them (Legend of Perseus, iii., 151). It should be added that Rassmann and the Grimms connect the folk-tales with the Siegfried saga (Bolte, i., 547, 555).