The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story

by Gordon Hall Gerould

The elements of these variants, apart from those due to the main compound, are as follows. In Bohemian the hero is given a flute and a captive princess by his helper, and escapes with them from prison. Later he is cast into the sea by a rival, but is rescued by the helper and given a wishing ring. By means of this ring he turns first into an eagle and afterwards into an old man, and succeeds in winning the princess by building and painting a church. In Simrock I. the hero is rescued by the helper after being cast overboard by a rival, and is given the power of obtaining his wishes. Thereby he paints three rooms to the liking of the princess, and is recognized by her. Simrock III. differs from this only in making the helper do the painting and in having one room painted instead of three. In Simrock VII., finally, the hero releases a princess by hewing trees, separating grain, and choosing his mistress among three hundred women, all without aid. Later he is rescued from the sea and recognized by means of a ring and a handkerchief.

The first three of these variants clearly show in the subsidiary elements just enumerated their relationship to The Water of Life. They lack the quest for some magical fountain or bird, to be sure, but they preserve the quest for the lady, which is an important factor in the märchen. Of the three, Bohemian has the most extended and probably the best presentation of the details of the difficult courtship; and it gives the hero that power of metamorphosis which was noted in four variants of the type The Grateful Dead + The Water of Life simply. It may, therefore, on the basis of general and particular resemblance be classed with Polish, Hungarian I., Rumanian II., and Treu Heinrich.[40] Along with it, of course, go the briefer Simrock I. and Simrock III. There is this important difference between the two sets of tales, that in the simpler form the princess is won by the hero’s success in bringing something from a distance, in the more complicated form by building and decorating. Yet the resemblance is sufficient to warrant the classification proposed.

With Simrock VII. the case is altogether different. There the subsidiary elements are connected with The Lady and the Monster rather than The Water of Life proper, yet not with that theme as it appears in combination with The Poison Maiden,[41] since in that group the hero disenchants the princess by guessing some secret, here by performing two feats of prowess or discrimination and by choosing the proper lady from a host of maidens. With Straparola II., however, which has the simpler combination The Grateful Dead + The Lady and the Monster, the resemblance is very close,[42] as both have the happily directed choice. The complicated Simrock VII. thus falls into the same category with reference to this matter as Straparola II., Sicilian, and Harz II., and the group having the form The Grateful Dead + The Poison Maiden + The Water of Life (The Lady and the Monster specifically).

A summary of our three categories will be of service in discussing their relations to one another and to the themes with which The Water of Life or The Lady and the Monster are combined.

Class I.
	Polish.
	Hungarian I.
	Rumanian II.
	Treu Heinrich.
	Bohemian.		(With The RansomedWoman.)
	Simrock I.
	Simrock III.
Class II.
	Sicilian.
	Harz II.
	Straparola II.
	All recorded variants with The PoisonMaiden.
	Simrock VII. (With The RansomedWoman.)
Class III.
	Maltese.
	Venetian.
	All variants with The Thankful Beasts.

Class I. forms a territorially homogeneous group, all the members of it coming from eastern and central Europe. It is not altogether homogeneous in content, but preserves the theme of The Water of Life proper in a form where the hero wins a princess by means, among other feats, of metamorphosis. Class II. is the most widespread of all territorially, as its members come from all parts of Europe. It has instead of The Water of Life proper what must be regarded, in the present state of the evidence, as the closely allied theme of The Lady and the Monster. Class III., the most compact of all in the region that it inhabits, preserves The Water of Life better than any other group, though not without frequent admixture and, in many instances, the loss of some elements.

It has been stated above[43] that it would be hard to imagine such various traits coming from a single type of story. This becomes even more evident from the tabulation just made. To suppose that The Grateful Dead first united with The Water of Life, and that this compound gave rise to the varieties, as enumerated, would involve us in the direst confusion. If such were the case, how could Class II. with its introduction of The Lady and the Monster be explained? Why, moreover, should one variant having The Ransomed Woman fall into Class II., while three others fall into Class I.? Such an assumption, it is clear, would be self-destructive.

The only alternative is to suppose that The Water of Life entered into combination with simple or compound types of The Grateful Dead at more than one time and in more than one region. That The Grateful Dead united with The Poison Maiden and The Ransomed Woman rather early and quite independently abundant evidence goes to show; that The Water of Life is an independent motive and that, like at least two of the other themes, it was of Asiatic origin has likewise been made clear; that the latter could not have united with The Grateful Dead so early as did The Poison Maiden and The Ransomed Woman is proved by the discrepancies noted above. If it be assumed, on the contrary, that after the compounds The Grateful Dead + The Poison Maiden and The Ransomed Woman had arisen, both they and the simple theme in one or another form came into connection with one or another form of The Water of Life our difficulties are in great measure resolved.

With this in mind let us consider the three categories. Sometime before the fourteenth century[44] The Water of Life, perhaps in a rather peculiar form, came into contact with The Grateful Dead, both simple and combined with The Ransomed Woman,[45] in eastern or central Europe. With each form it seems to have united, giving rise in the century named to the German romance of Treu Heinrich and the legend of Nicholas by Gobius, as well as, sooner or later, to the folk-tales with which it has been found combined in those regions within the past hundred years. The territorial limitation of the resulting type is a point in the favour of the proposed theory, though I cannot but be aware that this may be disturbed by a variant outside the seemingly fixed circle. Yet even so, the relation of the variants of Class I. to the themes concerned appears to be pretty definitely established. With Class III. the matter is even simpler. According to my view, some form of The Grateful Dead, more or less confused with one of the countless versions of The Thankful Beasts met with a very clear type of The Water of Life in southern or south-western Europe by or before the thirteenth century.[46] With this it united and gave rise to an Old French romance (later turned into Dutch) and to a considerable body of folk-tales, which have not strayed far from the point of departure save in one instance,[47] where the means of transmission is not difficult to ascertain. Apparently the thankful beast was not absolutely in solution, since in Maltese and Venetian the human ghost resumes its characteristic rôle.[48] With Class II. the case is different and more difficult of explanation. Here the compound has no definite territorial limits, and it is besides of a very complicated character. We have to suppose that The Lady and the Monster, a märchen allied to The Water of Life, was afloat in Europe somewhat before the early sixteenth century.[49] There it met and united with The Grateful Dead, in its simple form on the one hand, giving rise to three of our variants, and on the other hand separately with the compounds having The Poison Maiden and The Ransomed Woman. The former double compound must have been made fairly early,[50] since it has been found in such widely separated countries as Rumania and Ireland, and furnished one of the most important elements to the making of a sixteenth century English play, Peele’s Old Wives’ Tale. The second of the double compounds is unfortunately represented on our list by a single folk-tale only, and may possibly be a later formation.

Such, then, seems to be the relationship of The Water of Life and allied motives to the main theme of our study,—purely subsidiary and relatively late. The theory which has been proposed involves the necessity of placing the entrance of the Semitic märchen into Europe not much earlier than the twelfth century, though such matters of chronology must be left somewhat to speculation; it shows the points of contact between the various motives concerned; and it avoids contradictions of space and time. Writer and reader may perhaps congratulate themselves on finding so clear a road through the maze. Should subsequent discovery of material necessitate modification of the views here expressed, it should be welcomed by both with equal pleasure.