The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story

by Gordon Hall Gerould

Russian I. is likewise peculiar in several respects. The younger of two brothers angers his parents by going to the wars without their permission. He is killed. Later he appears to his brother, asking him to implore pardon of their mother, whose anger prevents him from resting quietly in his grave. The elder brother thus succeeds in giving peace to the ghost. Later, when he marries a merchant’s daughter, whose first two husbands have been killed by a dragon on the wedding night, he is saved by the ghost of the dead, which keeps watch in the chamber with a sword and kills the nine-headed dragon.

This tale stands almost alone[11] in giving the two chief characters personal relations, since it is nearly always a total stranger whom the hero benefits. That actual burial of the dead does not come in question is not so remarkable, as various changes have been made in this trait. One story,[12] indeed, which otherwise has no likeness, similarly makes the dead man uneasy in his grave. The beginning of Russian I. has thus suffered considerable modification. The ending is also different from the normal type in that the division of the property and the woman has entirely disappeared.

Russian II. has also some peculiarities, though none which is difficult to explain. A youth named Hans receives three hundred rubles from his uncle, who has taken his inheritance, and goes into the world. In another province he ransoms with his whole stock of money an unbeliever, who is being bled by the people. He has the poor man baptised, but is not able to save his life, so sorely has he been wounded. The people, however, pay for proper burial. Hans goes on and is joined by an angel, who proposes that he take him as uncle and divide with him whatever they get while in one another’s company. They come to a city where the king proposes that Hans marry his daughter, and to this the hero agrees at his companion’s advice, despite the protests of the citizens, who say that the princess has already strangled six bridegrooms. On the wedding night the uncle keeps watch, and slays a dragon which is approaching to kill the young man. After two months the pair set out for home with the uncle. On the way they are saved by the old man from robbers, and get a store of gold. When they arrive at the place where the uncle first appeared, he calls for a fulfilment of their agreement, and saws the bride asunder. Young dragons come out of her; but, when she has been washed and sprinkled with water, she is made whole. The angel thereupon parts with the couple.

For the burial of the dead we have in this tale the interesting substitution of an unsuccessful attempt of the hero to save a man’s life by paying his entire inheritance as ransom. That the man dies and is buried shows how the change probably arose. Strangely enough, as in the case of Tobit, an angel appears in the rôle of the grateful dead, and, even more oddly, takes the form of the hero’s uncle, who gave him the money with which he set forth on his journey. The recurrence of the angel in this and in one other variant[13] inclines me to the belief that the essential feature of the reward in the original story was that it came from heaven. The remainder of Russian II. has no characteristic unusual in the tales where the woman is actually divided to get rid of the snakes or dragons.

In Russian III.[14] the youngest of three brothers rescues a swimming coffin from the sea and takes it on his ship. From the coffin comes a man clothed in a white shirt, who enters the service of his rescuer, and helps him win a beautiful princess as wife. A six-headed dragon has hitherto killed all her bridegrooms on the wedding night, but it is overcome by the hero through his obedience to the advice of his servant. The latter cleanses the bride’s body of the dragon brood and goes away. Here the opening has been modified, though not beyond recognition, since the rescued man is clearly enough the grateful dead.

Russian IV., taken like the preceding from a folk-book, differs from that in only minor points, though the ampler form in which I have found it makes it of more importance. The three sons of a czar go out in separate ships to see the world. The youngest, named Sila, rescues a swimming coffin, which his brothers have not heeded, and buries it on shore. There he leaves his companions, and goes on alone till joined by a man dressed in a shroud, who says that he is the rescued corpse and proposes that Sila win a certain Princess Truda as wife by his aid. The hero is dismayed when he sees the walls of her city decorated with the heads of countless former suitors, but he is told by his servant not to fear. On the bridal night he is counselled to keep silence, and, when his wife presses her hand on his breast, to beat her, as she is in league with a six-headed dragon. Sila obeys, the dragon appears, and the servant cuts off two of its heads. Two more heads are cut off on the second night, and the remaining two on the third. The bride is not completely cleansed, however, till the end of a year, when the servant cuts her in two, burns the evil things that emerge from her body, and sprinkles her with living water to make her well again. He then disappears.

Here the grateful dead appears with perfect clearness, as he did not in Russian III. The course of events by which the lady is won does not differ materially from that of Russian II. Presumably III. would follow the same procedure, had we an adequate summary. III. and IV. are like I., and different from II., in omitting all mention of any division of property or of the woman between hero and assistant. The division for the sake of cleansing in IV. is, however, actual.

Not without contamination from another source, Russian V. and VI. still belong to the class containing variants with The Poison Maiden. In Russian V. the only son of a rich man went out into the world to seek his fortune. On the road he gave a large sum of money for two horses. Later he stopped at an inn, where the widow of the landlord was weeping because she had no money to pay the debts of her husband, who was cursed by all the people, though he had been dead two years. The hero gave all his money to save the memory of the dead man, and proceeded. Soon he met two unsatisfied creditors, who still cursed the dead landlord, and to them he gave his two horses. Not long afterward he was joined by a man, who accompanied him on condition of receiving half of what they might win together. They came to a place where a lord offered a thousand rubles to anyone who would watch his daughter’s corpse over night in a chapel. The hero undertook the adventure, and received payment in advance. At dark his companion came to him, and gave him a cross as protection. At midnight the lady came out of her coffin, but could not find the man because he held the cross. The same adventure was repeated the next night. On the third night the hero, according to his companion’s advice, got into the coffin when the vampire rose, and would not get out for all her entreaties, being protected by the cross. So in the morning both were found alive, and were betrothed. Then came the companion, cut the maiden into halves, took out her entrails, and put her together again, when she became very beautiful. Next day he called the hero aside, explained his identity with the dead landlord, and disappeared.

Russian VI. differs from the above in several points, but is closely allied to it. There were two brothers, one good and the other stingy. The former expended in benevolence all his wealth, save a hundred rubles, while the latter grew richer and richer. A poor man borrowed a hundred rubles from the miser, calling St. George as witness that he would pay; but he died in debt. The rich brother came to the widow, and said that he would get his money from St. George if not from the dead man. He pulled down an image of the saint from the wall, dug up the corpse, and spat upon them both. At this juncture the good brother came by, and gave his last hundred rubles to put the matter right. He then went to a large city, where the king’s daughter had eaten all the deacons who watched with her dead body. So when volunteers were called for to stay with her, the hero offered to undertake the task at the advice of an old man, who promised to pray for his safety on condition of receiving half his winnings. He received payment in advance from the king, and divided with the old man, by whom he was given a sanctified coal, a taper, a cross, and a scapulary, together with advice how to act. So he entered the chapel, lighted his taper, closed his eyes, made the sign of the cross, and enclosed himself in a circle marked with the coal near the head of the bier. At cockcrow the vampire came out all blue and grinning; but, though she yelled horribly, she could not touch the man in the circle, who put the cross in the coffin. At the second cockcrow she tried to get into the coffin, and unavailingly begged him to take out the cross. At the third cockcrow he put the scapulary on her, whereupon she rose and thanked him, promising to be his wife and servant. So in the morning the hero married her and received the kingdom from her father. To their chamber that night came the old man, and recalled the agreement to divide. He cut the lady into halves, minced her flesh on the table, and blew on the bits, whereupon she came together more beautiful than ever. The helper then threw off his gaberdine, and showed himself to be St. George.

In the two stories just summarized The Grateful Dead is clear enough, though in VI. St. George has ousted the ghost from part of its proper functions, just as the angel does in Tobit, Russian II., and Simrock IV., God in Siberian, and various saints elsewhere. The introduction in VI. is a unique trait, as far as I know. In both the variants the main features of the theme appear without distortion, including the picturesque cleansing of the woman by actual division. The Poison Maiden, however, has been replaced by a story of similar character, but of different content, which I have not elsewhere found compounded with The Grateful Dead. A vampire infests a church (or a churchyard). A soldier is sent to watch nights, and to try to dislodge her. He successfully counters her tricks, and finally gets hold of something belonging to her, which he refuses to return. Thereupon she is reduced to submission, promises him happiness, and is married to him with the consent of the king.[15] This tale, it will be evident, bears a strong likeness to The Poison Maiden in the figure of the heroine, though it certainly is independent. The vital difference between the two is the absence of any helping friend in the story of the vampire. Because of the lack of this figure it seems improbable that the tale was compounded with The Grateful Dead without the intermediary stage in which The Poison Maiden appears. I regard the vampire as usurping the place of the possessed maiden, and the two Russian variants as a secondary growth. Given the normal form of the compound as it appears in Russian II., for instance, there would be no difficulty in substituting an even more gruesome figure for that of the heroine there depicted, and in making the hero’s danger lie in a prenuptial attack on her part.