He hoisted his silken sail of red,
And o’er the salt sea on he sped.
The knight on his back a red cloak threw,
And fared to the lime-tree without ado.
He kissed himself the lime-tree’s feet,
Which straight became a maiden sweet.
W. F. H.
Corresponding poetical stories of the redeeming power of the kiss are to be found in the literature of many countries, especially, for example, in the Old French Arthurian romances (Lancelot, Guiglain, Tirant le blanc) in which the princess is changed by evil arts into a dreadful dragon, and can only resume her human shape in the case of a knight being brave enough to kiss her. This kiss is called le fier baiser. From French the subject migrated to Italian literature, in which it was taken up and made use of first in Carduino, later on in Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato. The hero, after many perilous adventures, reaches an enchanted castle where a young and beautiful maiden is sitting by a tomb. She tells him she can be released if he will venture to lift the stone from the tomb and kiss what then appears. Without giving it a second thought, the knight opens the tomb, and a horrible serpent with hissing tongue and venomous breath darts forth. Trembling with fear, he fulfils his promise, and that very instant the monster is transformed into a lovely fairy who overwhelms her benefactor with recompenses. This motif formed the subject of a drama in the last century by Gozzi in La donna serpente: fiaba teatrale tragicomica.
Finally many folk-stories on this subject may be quoted. In the tale of “Beauty and the Beast,” the transformed prince begged the young maiden he had carried off on his back for a kiss. “No,” answered she, “how could I kiss you who are so ugly and have seven horns on your forehead?” Then the beast went its way, and she saw it no more till one day she found it lying dead under a bush in the garden, whereupon she wept as she had never wept before, and cast herself down on the beast and kissed it. Then it returned to life, and the ugly beast became the handsomest prince her eyes could see. He then told her that he had been bewitched by a wicked fairy, and could not be delivered unless a maid fell in love with him and kissed him, despite his ugliness.
In this case the kiss redeems from death, and likewise death itself is nothing more than a great kiss of affection. When a human being quits this earthly life it is God who takes His child in His arms, kisses it, and carries it away from earth to brighter and more blissful spheres.
This highly poetical and beautiful conception of death has found expression in Italian, where, instead of the word “die,” one can say, “fall asleep in the Lord’s kiss” (addormentarsi nel bacio del Signore). And this has got flesh and blood in an old legend of the saints, where it is told of St Monica that, as she lay dying on her couch, a little child whom nobody knew came and kissed her on her breast, and straightway, as if the child had called her, she bowed her head and breathed forth her last sigh.
The kiss of affection follows man even after death; with a kiss one takes leave of the lifeless body.
In Genesis we read that when Jacob was dead, “Joseph fell upon his father’s face and wept upon him and kissed him”; and it is told of Abu Bekr, Mahomet’s first disciple, father-in-law, and successor, that, when the prophet was dead, he went into the latter’s tent, uncovered his face, and kissed him.
In the curious poem of Ebbe Tygesøns dödsridt, when the knight’s horse carries his corpse back to his betrothed, it is said: