The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story

by Gordon Hall Gerould

The second variant is the Annamite tale. Two poor students were friends. One died and was buried by the other, whose fidelity was such that he remained three years by the tomb. He dreamed that his friend came to him and said that he should gain the title of trạng nguyên. So he built a chapel by the tomb, where the dead friend often appeared to him. When the king heard of his loyalty, he was praised and rewarded with a title. After his death the two friends appeared to their son and daughter, bidding them marry.[3]

The third story is Servian VI. An uncle of Adam, who honoured God and the “Vile,”[4] was so good a man that God came to him in human form one day. After a battle between the good and evil in the world, the latter would not bury the slain. The Vile told Tuegut that this would not do, so he hitched up his wagon and carried the slain to their graves. Then God came to earth, told him to put all he possessed in his wagon, and carried him on a cloud to heaven, where he was made the constellation now called Driver Tuegut’s Heavenly Wagon.

Of these three tales the Annamite does not fulfil the usual condition that the dead man shall be a stranger to the one who does the good action. Together with Simonides, all of them vary widely in the reward given the hero. In Simonides he is warned against embarkation, and thus saved from shipwreck; in the Jewish he is actually rescued from a storm-tossed vessel by the ghost, which masquerades as a rock and an eagle, and afterward promises him further rewards here and hereafter; in the Annamite he is provided with earthly glory; and in Servian VI. he becomes a part of the galaxy of heaven. Only the underlying idea is the same,—that the burial of the dead is a pious act and a sacred duty, which will meet a fitting reward.[5] This belief is so widespread and ancient that it is not difficult to surmise how stories inculcating the duty might have grown up independently in many lands. At the same time, the very diversity of reward in these simple tales allies them to one or another of the compound types, which, though multiform and widespread, are yet unmistakably the offspring of a single parent form, or better, of a chance union between two motives.[6] Thus Simonides and Jewish recall the combination of The Grateful Dead with The Ransomed Woman, since they have the hero rescued from drowning by the ghost, and they suggest one point of union between the two themes. It therefore seems best to include them in our list, not only for the sake of completeness, but because they point to the reason which sometime and somewhere gave rise to a more developed form of the motive,—to the märchen as we shall study it. A consideration of these basal principles can be undertaken, however, only after the story theme in its various ramifications and modifications has been thoroughly discussed.

The probability that The Grateful Dead once existed in a simple, uncompounded form, which became the parent on one side of the more important combined types, is strengthened by the minor compounds in which it is found. How can the correspondences of detail seen in a considerable number of different compounds, as far as they run parallel, be otherwise explained? Surely it is more reasonable to believe in the existence of such a parent form than to suppose that an originally complicated form was hacked and hewn asunder to produce new compounds. This will become clearer, I hope, as we proceed.

In Greek, a boy was sold to a pasha, who betrothed him to his daughter. Because of the mother’s objections, however, he was sent away as a shepherd, while the girl was promised to another pasha’s son. The hero fed his flock under the shelter of the castle, and was summoned by the maiden, who gave him her betrothal ring in a beaker, though pretending not to know him. The next day she asked her parents to let the two suitors go into the world with a thousand piasters apiece, and see which came back with the most money. So they were sent forth. The pasha’s son remained in a city enjoying his money, while the shepherd went on till he met an old man, to whom he told his story. The man gave him a thousand piasters more, and told him to buy an ape in a town hard by. He succeeded in doing this, and brought the ape back to the old man, who cut it in pieces, much to the youth’s disgust, and made eye-salve of the brain. With this he sent the hero away after exacting a promise of half of what was obtained. The youth won a thousand piasters by curing the blind, and later a great sum, besides thirty ships, by healing a very rich man. With this wealth he returned to the old man, and with him to the city where the pasha’s son had sojourned. The latter agreed to let the shepherd’s seal be burned on his arm in return for the payment of his debts; but, while the hero and the old man sailed home, he rode fast by land with the story that his rival was dead. The shepherd arrived at home just in time for his rival’s wedding, and at the end of it showed the bride her ring. She recognized her lover, called her parents, and, after the hero had told his story and proved it by the seal on his rival’s arm, married him. That night the old man knocked on the door of their chamber, and demanded that the bride be divided. According to his promise, the hero prepared to cut her in twain, when the intruder said that he wished only to test his fidelity, explaining that he was God, Who had taken him under His protection because his father had sold him in order to keep the lamp burning in honour of his saint.

In this variant the elements of The Grateful Dead have been merged with a story about how a young man of low birth won a princess by overcoming another suitor in spite of the treachery of the latter. As I have met with but one example of this, from Lesbos,[7] I will summarize it briefly. A princess becomes enamoured of the son of her father’s gardener, and refuses to marry the son of the first minister. So the two suitors are sent out to a far country with the understanding that the one who returns first shall have the princess. On the way the gardener’s son helps an old beggar-woman, whom his rival has spurned, and is told by her how to cure a sick king (by boiling him and sprinkling him with a certain powder). For this service the youth obtains a ring of bronze, which has the virtue of giving whatever its possessor desires. By means of this he gets a wonderful ship, and sails to the city where the minister’s son, through extravagance, has fallen into poverty. He provides him with a wretched ship, in which to return home, on condition that he may mark him with his ring. The minister’s son reaches home in his crazy vessel, and is about to marry the princess, when the hero appears on his beautiful ship of gold, exposes his rival, and weds the lady. The remainder of the story, which tells how the magical ring was lost and afterward recovered, does not concern us. It will be seen that Greek has preserved only the later part of The Grateful Dead at all clearly, though that combination with a tale of the type of the Lesbian narrative has actually taken place is evident from the part which the helper plays. He not only obtains a promise of division, but calls for its fulfilment. His first appearance is, however, quite unmotivated, while the old woman of the Lesbian story serves the purpose, according to a common formula, of showing the hero’s kindness in contrast to his rival’s hard heart. The point common to the two tales, which led to their combination, is without doubt this helping friend.

In Servian V. a youth on a journey pays his all to rescue a debtor from hanging. By his new-found friend the youth is led to the wondrous Vilaberg, where he is left with the admonition that he must not speak. He disobeys, and is made dumb and blind by an enchantress; but he is cured by the man whom he rescued, who plays on a pipe and gives him a healing draught. So he dwells for some years in the mountain with one of the ladies as his wife, but afterward goes home, though every summer he returns to his friends in the Vilaberg.

Here we have our theme combined with a form of The Swan-Maiden,[8] which occurs in only one other case, as far as I am able to discover. The reason for the combination is not far to seek. The latter part of the tale represents the reward of the rescuer by the rescued. That the benefit does not take the form of actual burial need not disturb us. The man was at least far gone towards death, and he was a debtor—a trait found in about two-thirds of the variants known to me. Moreover, the supernatural character of the comrade is indicated by the adventure into which he leads the youth. The tale has been partly rationalised, that is all.

Esthonian I.[9] shows a different combination, which is unique as far as I know. In a gorge not far from the village of Arukäla (near Wesenberg) a howling was heard every night for years. Finally a bold man went by night to the place and found the skeleton of a murdered king, which told him that it had howled thus for a hundred years because it had not been buried with holy rites. The next day the man took the bones to a priest, and, while burying them, discovered an enormous treasure.

As Schiefner said,[10] when he first printed the story, it recalls the Grimms’ Der singende Knochen,[11] which in turn is a compound of The Water of Life, with the idea of murder discovered by means of a dead man’s bones. The Esthonian tale has, however, only the latter circumstance, combined with a simple form of The Grateful Dead. The hero’s reward is immediate—he finds gold in the earth while digging the grave; and the ghost does not appear. The variant is thus of no great significance.