It follows from this that the compound The Grateful Dead + The Ransomed Woman is quite independent of the one discussed in the previous chapter, and could not have proceeded from it as Hippe thought.[58] It would have been next to impossible for that combined type to divest itself of the features peculiar to The Poison Maiden, and to absorb in their place those of The Ransomed Woman without leaving some trace of the process. Thus the existence of the compound as an independent growth is assured. In this connection it is interesting to note that the rescue of the hero from drowning in consequence of an act of treachery (or from an island) occurs in all the variants of the type save four, Transylvanian, Trancoso, Gasconian, and Straparola I.,[59] but in no other version of The Grateful Dead as far as I know.
From this general type developed minor varieties with traits borrowed from The Water of Life, The Thankful Beasts, and The Two Friends, or some such tale. Thus very complex variants arose. The question of the connection which these subsidiary elements sustain to the central theme cannot properly be discussed until they have been seen in other combinations. The part they play in the development of the story, it is evident, must have been a secondary one both in importance and in time.
[1] See above, p. 1.
[2] See above, pp. 2 and 5.
[3] Pp. 170–175.
[4] P. 173.
[5] See also the school drama cited by Köhler, Germania III. 208 f. The elements of Der gute Gerhard, foreign to The Ransomed Woman, I have treated in the Publications of the Modern Lang. Ass. 1905, xx. 529–545.
[6] The same is true of the story related of St. Catharine, analyzed by Simrock, pp. 110–113, and cited by Hippe, p. 166, from Scala Celi, by Johannes Junior (Gobius), under Castitas. Hippe, as shown by his scheme on p. 181, places this under “Legendarische Formen mit Loskauf.” As a matter of fact, it is plainly a specimen of The Calumniated Woman.
[7] Hippe’s “Lithuanian II.”