The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story

by Gordon Hall Gerould

[30] See pp. 135 ff.

[31] See also p. 151.

Chapter VIII.

Conclusion.

In considering the general development and relations of The Grateful Dead, to which we must now turn, it is proper to inquire first of all as to its origin. Hitherto the existence of the story-theme as such has been taken well nigh for granted, though the discussion of variants in simple form necessitated some reference[1] to the point of separation between the märchen and whatever beliefs or social customs lie beyond. Now that the tale has been followed through its various modifications and has been proved by a systematic study of its forms to be, if I may use the expression, a living organism, the debateable land outside can be entered with measurable security.

There can be no doubt that The Grateful Dead as a theme is based upon beliefs about the sacred duty of burial and upon the customs incident to withholding burial for the sake of revenge or recompense. To study these phenomena in detail is not necessary to the scheme of this book, but belongs rather to the province of primitive religion and law. It is sufficient for our purpose to show the nature and extent of such observances and beliefs for the sake of the light which they may throw on the genesis of the tale itself.

The belief that no obligation is more binding on man than that he pay proper respect to the dead is as old as civilization itself. Indeed, it probably antedates what we ordinarily call civilization, since otherwise it could not well be found so widely distributed over the earth in historical times. It evidently rests upon the notion that the soul, when separated from the body, could find no repose.[2] Herodotus tells[3] of the Egyptian law, which permitted a man to give his father’s body in pledge, with the proviso that if he failed to repay the loan neither he nor any of his kin could be buried at all. The story, also related by Herodotus,[4] of Rampsinit and the thief which turns on the latter’s successful attempt to rescue his brother’s body, illustrates again the value that the Egyptians set upon burial. Their notion seems to have been that the more honour paid the dead, the more bearable would be their lot, though it was regarded as unenviable at best.[5] Among the Magi of Persia, though both burial and burning were prohibited because of the sanctity of earth and fire, the bodies of the dead were cared for according to the strictest of codes, being left to the sun and air on elevated structures.[6] In India the Rig-Veda[7] bears witness to similar carefulness in the performance of this sacred duty.

In classical times belief in the necessity of proper burial was widespread. Patroclus, it will be remembered, appears to his friend Achilles, and admonishes him that he should not neglect the dead, at the same time giving a dire picture of the state of the unburied.[8] Pausanias speaks[9] of the conduct of Lysander as reprehensible in not burying the bodies of Philocles and the four thousand slain at Aegospotami, saying that the Athenians did as much for the Medes after Marathon, and even Xerxes for the Lacedaemonians after Thermopylae. The story told by Cicero[10] of Simonides gives definite proof of the concrete nature of the reverential feeling among both Greeks and Romans. Suetonius in his life of Caligula relates that when the emperor’s body was left half burned and unburied, ghosts filled the palace and garden.

An example of the mediaeval belief is found in the Middle High German Kudrun, written at the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth.