The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story

by Gordon Hall Gerould

The peculiar form of the burial in this variant will be at once evident, though the reason for it is not clear to me. Disenchantment by decapitation is a common phenomenon in folk-lore and romance;[49] but though the blow on the head, which the hero gives the old man in our tale, surely stands for beheading, it is hard to see where any unspelling process comes in. It is perhaps best to suppose the trait a confused borrowing, without much meaning as it stands. The ransoming of the woman is closely connected with the benefits done the old man. That it occurs on the same journey has been shown by the variations in Jean de Calais to be a matter of little consequence. With respect to the standard and the ring, by which the hero restores his wife to her father, and later to himself, the tale is perfectly in accord with the prevalent form of the compound type; and so also in regard to the rescue of the hero by the ghost. No hint is given of any agreement of division between the hero and the ghost. The chief peculiarity of the variant, however, is the means by which the heroine is won. The feat recalls Simrock I.,[50] even in details like the demand on the part of the bride for mural decoration. It again shows the combination of the present type with a theme akin to The Water of Life.

Simrock III. has several points of contact with the above. Karl, the son of an English merchant, on his first voyage to Italy pays the debts of a merchant who has died bankrupt. On his way home he buys two sisters from some pirates at an inn. His father casts him off, so he marries the older of the maidens, who tells him that she is a princess. They start for Italy together, and on the way meet an Italian prince, who is a suitor for the wife’s hand. The hero is cast overboard, but is brought to land by a great bird, which tells him that it is the ghost of the man whom he has buried. It directs him to go to court and give himself out as a painter. The bird again comes to him there with a dagger in its beak, and tells him to cut off its head. Unwillingly Karl obeys, and sees before him the spirit of the dead man. The ghost paints the room in which they are standing with the hero’s history. So on the wedding-day of the princess with the traitor, Karl explains the meaning of the pictures and wins his bride again.

This Swabian story has preserved the decapitation[51] in much better form than Bohemian, though the reason for its introduction is still hard to understand. The ghost is obviously released from some spell when it is beheaded, and is thus enabled to help the hero to better advantage than before. The episode also occurs in a more logical position than in Bohemian. It replaces the more ordinary and normal test of the hero by the ghost. Probably the introduction of it in the two cases is sporadic, though some connection between the two is conceivable. As far as The Grateful Dead and The Ransomed Woman proper are concerned, the variant has no peculiarities of special importance, being of the type in which the hero and heroine set out for court together.[52] It contains, however, the feat by which the bride is won, in the same form as in Simrock I. and Bohemian, which is due to an alliance with the type of The Water of Life. Yet it differs from them in making the ghost appear first as a bird, which connects it with Jean de Calais II., VII., and X., and with Simrock II. and VIII., variants that have the thankful beast playing the rôle of ghost.[53]

Simrock VII., together with some other peculiarities, again has the feat of winning the bride, though it is a feat of another sort. Wilhelm catches a swan-maiden, and later releases her from an enchanted mountain by hewing trees, separating grain, and finding his wife among three hundred women. Thus by her help he breaks the spell, and carries her back home. Later they journey together to her father’s court. On the way Wilhelm pays the debts of a corpse, and has it buried. They meet two officers of the king, who toss Wilhelm overboard from the ship in which they sail, but he is saved by the ghost of the dead man and brought to court. He is recognized by the princess, and proves his identity to her father by means of a ring and a handkerchief.

The most salient point here is the fact that the maiden is not ransomed at all, but instead is captured like any other swan-maiden. We have already met with the theme of The Swan-Maiden in combination with The Grateful Dead in simple form;[54] but Servian V. has evidently nothing to do with Simrock VII., since the part played by the borrowed motive is different in each. In the former it is introduced as the reward bestowed on the hero by the ghost, while in the latter the swan-maiden simply replaces the ransomed maiden, as is shown by the subsequent events of the story, which follow the normal order as far as she is concerned. The feats by which the hero disenchants her are essentially like those in Bohemian, Simrock I., and Simrock III., though they are differently placed. Probably the introduction of this new material accounts for the transposition of the ransoming and the burial, as the latter is in other respects regular. It is curious to observe that the process of changing about various features, thus begun, continued in other ways, as in the matter of the signs by which the hero is recognized by his father-in-law and his wife. These things go to show, however, that back of the variant must have existed the compound type in a normal form.

In Simrock V. the thankful beast again appears, but in a less complicated setting than in the case of Jean de Calais II., VII., and X., or Simrock II., III., and VIII. A widow’s son on his way home from market pays the debts of a corpse and buries it, thus using all his money. The next time he goes to market, he gives all his proceeds to ransom a maiden, whom he marries. She does embroidery to gain money, and one day holds out a piece of it to the king, who is passing. He recognizes her as his daughter, and accepts the hero as son-in-law. The young couple start back home for the widow, but on the way the servants cast the young man into the sea. He escapes, however, to an island, where he is fed by an eagle. Later the eagle declares itself to be the ghost of the dead man, and brings its benefactor to court.

Oldenburgian is a similar tale. A merchant’s son while on a voyage pays thirty dollars to bury a man, and also buys a captive princess with her maid. Though ill-received by his father on his return, he marries the girl. Later he goes on another voyage, with his wife’s portrait as the figure-head of his ship. This is recognized by the king, who sends him back for the princess in the company of a minister. The latter pitches him overboard, goes on for the princess, and does not tell her of her loss till they arrive at court. She finally consents to marry the traitor after five years. Meanwhile, the hero lives on an island, whither on the day appointed for the princess’s bridal comes the ghost of the dead in the form of a snow-white dove. It takes him to the court, where he is recognized by a ring, a gift from his bride, which he drops into a cup that she offers him.

Of these two variants, Oldenburgian is much better preserved than the Tyrolese story (Simrock V.). The latter is dressed in a homely fashion, which probably accounts for some of the changes, since the gap between the visits to market and the romantic or miraculous features of the couple’s later adventures was too wide to be easily bridged. The disappointed suitor is not mentioned, which leaves the attempt on the hero’s life without motivation, and clearly indicates some loss.[55] The trait is distinctly marked in Oldenburgian, as are all the other events connected with The Ransomed Woman, though Simrock V. provides an entirely original reason for the voyage of the young couple,—their wish to get the hero’s mother. The features concerning the rescue by the ghost and the hero’s return to court are better preserved again in Oldenburgian, though both lack the agreement to divide, which is probably obscured as elsewhere by the prominence given the rescued woman. The most striking similarity between the two, however, lies in the fact that the ghost first appears as a bird. This clearly shows the existence of a type of The Grateful Dead + The Ransomed Woman, on which The Thankful Beasts has had some influence.

It remains to consider the general relations of the variants discussed in this chapter. The wide variety in detail of the incidents concerned with the history of the hero’s wife, yet the essential uniformity which they show, would indicate clearly, for one thing, that The Ransomed Woman is a motive originally quite independent of The Grateful Dead,—that the type of story which is our present concern is a true compound. It would even be possible to reconstruct the independent theme in a form not unlike the Wendish folk-tale cited in the beginning of the chapter. The hero, while on a journey, ransoms a princess, takes her home, goes on another journey with some sign that attracts her father’s notice, goes back to her and is cast into the sea by some man who hopes to marry her himself, is rescued, and returns to court to claim his bride, usually by means of a token.

The points of contact between this motive and The Grateful Dead would seem to be, first, the journey which the hero undertakes at the opening of the plot. It will be noted that in the compound he usually makes two voyages, burying the dead on the first and ransoming the maiden on the second, though the two are sometimes welded. The second point of contact, I take it, was the rescue of the hero. In each story he did a good act for which he was rewarded in some way. It has been shown that this reward sometimes took the form of a rescue in the simple form of The Grateful Dead[56] and in the compound with The Poison Maiden.[57] What more natural than that it should lead to another combination with a story where the hero was saved from death? The difference in the case of the latter, of course, would be that the agency of rescue was of little importance. Could Simonides be shown to have anything more than a literary life in mediaeval Europe, I should be inclined to think that the rescue in that tale, even though the tale itself is not necessarily connected with The Grateful Dead as we know the theme, might have had some influence on the union. As the matter stands, however, it is probably better to believe that the two motives were united in eastern Europe, the one being Oriental and the other of uncertain derivation. That each motive had a wife as part of the hero’s reward must be taken for granted, and it must have helped to combine them.