The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story

by Gordon Hall Gerould

Chapter V.

The Grateful Dead and The Ransomed Woman.

As has already been shown,[1] Simrock regarded as an essential feature of The Grateful Dead the release of a maiden from captivity by the hero. Stephens and Hippe[2] saw that such was not the case. The latter’s treatment of the matter[3] leaves little to be desired as far as it goes, save that it implies a derivation of the compound The Grateful Dead + The Ransomed Woman from the compound treated in the last chapter—a view which I believe erroneous.

The Ransomed Woman appears as a separate tale or in combination with other themes than The Grateful Dead more than once. A prolonged study of the motive would probably yield a rich harvest of examples, though it is sufficient for the present purpose to refer to Hippe’s article as establishing the existence of the form. His Wendish folk-tale[4] and Guter Gerhard, from the latter of which Simrock started his enquiry, are of themselves evidence enough.[5] Neither example has anything whatever to do with The Grateful Dead.[6] The characteristics of The Ransomed Woman will appear as we consider the compound type, which contains folk-tales almost exclusively, as was the case with the type studied in the previous chapter, but in most cases from Western Europe instead of from both Asia and Europe.

Nineteen variants have The Grateful Dead and The Ransomed Woman combined in a comparatively simple form without admixture with related themes. These are: Servian I., Lithuanian I.,[7] Hungarian II., Transylvanian, Catalan, Spanish, Trancoso, Nicholas, Gasconian, Straparola I., Istrian, Gaelic, Breton III.,[8] Swedish, Norwegian I., Icelandic I. and II., and Simrock IV. and VI.

In Servian I. a merchant’s son, while on a journey, ransoms a company of slaves whom he finds in the hands of freebooters. Among them is a beautiful maiden with her nurse. He marries the lady, who proves to be the daughter of an emperor. On a second voyage he ransoms two peasants, who have been imprisoned for not paying their taxes to the emperor. On his third journey he comes to his father-in-law’s court, and is sent back for his wife. He is, however, cast into the sea by a former lover of the princess, and succeeds in getting ashore on a lonely island, where he remains for fifteen days and fifteen nights.[9] Then an angel in the disguise of an old man appears to him, and, on condition of receiving half of his possessions, brings him to court, where he is reunited with his wife. After renouncing his claim, the old man explains who he is, and disappears.

The most striking peculiarity of the variant is the loss of the burial, for which appears rather awkwardly the ransoming of some peasants on the hero’s second voyage. That substitution has occurred is apparent, however, both from the clumsiness of the device by which the original trait is replaced, and from the angel in the form of an old man, who takes the rôle of the ghost. It will be remembered that the same substitution has already been met with in the case of Tobit and Russian II.

In Lithuanian I. is found a variant which, as we shall find, is of a common type. A king’s son pays three hundred gold-pieces, all that he possesses, to release a dead man from his creditors and have him buried. The hero then becomes a merchant, and finds a princess on an island, whither she has been driven by a storm. He takes her to a city, where he makes his home, and marries her. A messenger, sent out by her father to seek her, arrives, takes them aboard ship, and pitches the hero into the sea in order to obtain the offered reward. He is saved by a man in a boat, who says that he is the ghost of the dead, and instructs him how to rejoin his bride. So everything ends happily.

The events as here related follow a very normal course, which is repeated again and again in stories of this type: a burial, a ransom, an act of treachery, a rescue by the ghost, and a happy reunion of the lovers. The agreement between the hero and the ghost, which is found in Servian I., and very frequently elsewhere, is lacking, however. A peculiarity of the variant is the change in status of the hero. He is a prince, but becomes a merchant, thus uniting the two characters given him in the other tales of this class.

Hungarian II. is in some respects more interesting than the variant just cited. A merchant’s son while in Turkey pays the debts and for the burial of a mistreated corpse. After returning home, he goes to England and rescues a French princess with her two maids, but by his cunning saves the gold that he has agreed to pay for them. At her bidding he goes to Paris and tells the king that she is safe. On his return to bring her to her home, where he is to marry her, he is placed on a desert island by a general who is enamoured of the princess. Thence he is rescued by an old man, the ghost of the dead, who takes him to the Continent. He goes to Paris, where he is recognized by the princess, when he drops a ring that she has given him into a beaker. When she comes to him in his room, he threatens to kill her if she does not go away; but when she agrees that he has the right to do so since he has saved her life, he says that his threat was only a test of loyalty. So the story ends happily.