The soul of a dead girl speaks through a tree, again, in a Lithuanian ballad, Nesselmann, Littauische Volkslieder, No 378, p. 320. The girl is drowned while attempting to cross a stream, carried down to the sea, and finally thrown ashore, where she grows up a linden. Her brother makes a pipe from a branch, and the pipe gives out sweet, sad tones. The mother says, That tone comes not from the linden; it is thy sister's soul, that hovers over the water. A like idea is met with in another Lithuanian ballad, Rhesa, Dainos, ed. Kurschat, No 85, p. 231. A sister plucks a bud from a rose-bush growing over the grave of her brother, who had died from disappointed love. How fragrant! she exclaims. But her mother answers, with tears, It is not the rosebud, but the soul of the youth that died of grief.
Though the range of the ballad proper is somewhat limited, popular tales equivalent as to the characteristic circumstances are very widely diffused.
A Polish popular tale, which is, indeed, half song, Wojcicki, Klechdy, ed. 1851, II, 15 (Lewestam, p. 105), Kolberg, Pieśni ludu Polskiego, p. 292, No 40 a, b, c, approaches very close to the English-Norse ballad. There were three sisters, all pretty, but the youngest far surpassing the others. A young man from the far-off Ukraine fell in with them while they were making garlands. The youngest pleased him best, and he chose her for his wife. This excited the jealousy of the eldest, and a few days after, when they were gathering berries in a wood, she killed the youngest, notwithstanding the resistance of the second sister, buried her, and gave out that she had been torn to pieces by wolves. When the youth came to ask after his love, the murderess told him this tale, and so won him by her devoted consolations that he offered her his hand. A willow grew out of the grave of the youngest, and a herdsman made a pipe from one of its boughs. Blow as he would, he could get no sound from the pipe but this:
'Blow on, herdsman, blow! God shall bless thee so.
The eldest was my slayer, the second tried to stay her.'
The herdsman took the pipe to the house of the murdered girl. The mother, the father, and the second sister successively tried it, and the pipe always sang a like song, Blow, mother, blow, etc. The father then put the pipe into the eldest sister's hands. She had hardly touched it, when blood spattered her cheeks, and the pipe sang:
'Blow on, sister, blow: God shall wreak me now.
Thou, sister, 't was didst slay me, the younger tried to stay thee,' etc.
The murderess was torn by wild horses.
Professor Bugge reports a Norwegian tale, Grundtvig, III, 878, which resembles the ballad at the beginning. There were in a family two daughters and a son. One sister was wasteful, the other saving. The second complained of the first to her parents, and was killed and buried by the other. Foliage covered the grave, so that it could not be seen, but on the trees under which the body lay, there grew "strings." These the brother cut off and adapted to his fiddle, and when he played, the fiddle said, My sister is killed. The father, having heard the fiddle's revelation, brought his daughter to confess her act.
There is a series of tales which represent a king, or other personage, as being afflicted with a severe malady, and as promising that whichever of his children, commonly three sons, should bring him something necessary for his cure or comfort should be his heir: (1) 'La Flor del Lililá,' Fernan Caballero, Lágrimas, cap. 4; (2) 'La caña del riu de arenas,' Milá, Observaciones sobre la poesia popular, p. 178, No 3; (3) 'Es kommt doch einmal an den Tag,' Müllenhof, Sagen, u. s. w., p. 495, No 49; (4) 'Vom singenden Dudelsack,' Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen, I, 329, No 51. Or the inheritance is promised to whichever of the children finds something lost, or rich and rare, a griffin's feather, a golden branch, a flower: (5) 'Die Greifenfeder,' Schneller, Märchen und Sagen aus Wälschtirol, p. 143, No 51; (6) 'La Flanuto,' Bladé, Contes et proverbes populaires recueillis en Armagnac, p. 3, No 1; (7) Wackernagel, in Haupt's Zeitschrift, III, 35, No 3, == 'Das Todtebeindli,' Colshorn, C. u. Th., Märchen u. Sagen, p. 193, No 71, == Sutermeister, Kinder-u.-Hausmärchen aus der Schweiz, p. 119, No 39. Or a king promises his daughter to the man who shall capture a dangerous wild beast, and the exploit is undertaken by three brothers [or two]: (8) 'Der singende Knochen,' Grimms, K. u. H. märchen, I, 149, No 28 (1857); (9) 'Die drei Brüder,' Curtze, Volksüberlieferungen aus dem Fürstenthum Waldeck, p. 53, No 11; (10) 'Der Rohrstengel,' Haltrich, Deutsche Volksmärchen aus dem Sachsenlande, u. s. w., p. 225, No 42. With these we may group, though divergent in some respects, (11) 'Der goldene Apfel,' Toeppen, Aberglauben aus Masuren, p. 139.[142] In all these tales the youngest child is successful, and is killed, out of envy, by the eldest or by the two elder. [There are only two children in (6), (7), (8); in (4) the second is innocent, as in the Polish tale.] Reeds grow over the spot where the body is buried (1), (2), (10), (11), or an elder bush (3), out of which a herdsman makes a pipe or flute; or a white bone is found by a herdsman, and he makes a pipe or horn of it (5-9); or a bag-pipe is made of the bones and skin of the murdered youth (4). The instrument, whenever it is played, attests the murder.
Among the tales of the South African Bechuana, there is one of a younger brother, who has been killed by an older, immediately appearing as a bird, and announcing what has occurred. The bird is twice killed, and the last time burnt and its ashes scattered to the winds, but still reappears, and proclaims that his body lies by a spring in the desert. Grimms, K. u. H. m. III, 361. Liebrecht has noted that the fundamental idea is found in a Chinese drama, 'The Talking Dish,' said to be based on a popular tale. An innkeeper and his wife kill one of their guests for his money, and burn the body. The innkeeper collects the ashes and pounds the bones, and makes a sort of mortar and a dish. This dish speaks very distinctly, and denounces the murderers. Journal Asiatique, 1851, 4th Series, vol. 18, p. 523.