The two images of death which occur in the last story rival each other through the field of middle-age legend and romance. When we hear of a man being borne along in a boat, or lying deep in slumber beneath a mountain, we may let our minds wander back to Balder sailing across the ocean in his burning ship _Hringhorni_, and to the same Balder in the halls of Hel’s palace. The third image of death is the blazing pyre unaccompanied by any sea-voyage. One or other of these three allegories meets us at every turn. If the hero has been snatched away by fairy power to save him from dying, and the last thing seen of him was in a boat--as Arthur disappears upon the lake Avalon--the myth holds out the hope of his return, and sooner or later the story of this return will break off and become a separate legend. Hence the numerous half-unearthly heroes, such as Lohengrin, who come men know not whence, and are first seen sleeping in a boat upon a river. These are but broken halves of complete myths, which should have told of the former disappearance of the knight by the same route. Both portions really belong to the tale of Lohengrin; he went away first in a ship in search of the holy grail, and in the truest version[132] returns in like manner in a boat drawn by a _swan_. In some tales he is called the Knight of the Swan. He comes suddenly, in answer to a prayer to Heaven for help, uttered by the distressed Else of Brabant. But he does not return at once again to the Paradise which has sent him to earth. He remains upon earth, and becomes the husband of Else, and a famous warrior; and part of another myth entwines itself with his story. Else must not ask his name; but she disobeys his imperative command, and this fault parts them for ever. Here we have Cupid and Psyche, or Prince Hatt and his wife, over again. The boat appears once more drawn by the same swan; Lohengrin steps into it, and disappears from the haunts of men. We have already seen how, through the Valkyriur, the swan is connected with ideas of death. It remains to notice how they are naturally so connected by the beautiful legend that the swan sings once only in his life, namely, when he is leaving it--that his first song is his own funeral melody. A much older form of the Lohengrin myth is referred to in the opening lines of _Beowulf_, where an ancestor of that hero is said to have been found, a little child, lying asleep in an open boat which had drifted, no one knows whence, to the shore of Gothland. Death being thus so universally symbolized by the River of Death, it is easy to see the origin of the myth that ghosts will not cross living water. It meant nothing else than that a ghost cannot return again to life. Even witches cannot do so, as we know in the case of Tam O’Shanter, that when he reached the Brig’ o’ Doon the pursuit was baffled.