Looking at the matter from another point of view, we find that Richars, Lion de Bourges, Dianese, Old Swedish, Rittertriuwe, and Sir Amadas form a group by themselves, [215] and are uncompounded with any one of the themes with which The Grateful Dead is most frequently allied. Oliver and Lope de Vega are treated under the compound with The Ransomed Woman, where on account of the rescue of the hero by the ghost they probably belong; [216] and Icelandic I. and II. are clearly of that type. Treu Heinrich [217] shows the combination of the central theme with The Water of Life, and can in the nature of the case have no direct connection with the other romance stories under consideration, even though it belongs to a class in which The Ransomed Woman sometimes appears. [218] In view of these discrepancies of position with reference to compounds which are clearly established, we are certainly not justified in assuming that The Spendthrift Knight has had anything more than a superficial relationship to The Grateful Dead. To make it a basis of classification or to attach any considerable weight to its appearance here and there would be contrary to the only safe method of procedure, which is to follow the evidence of events in sequence rather than isolated traits. The very fact that none of the compounds with The Poison Maiden contains any such motive as this of the knight and the tourney shows that it must be comparatively late and really an interloper in the family. As to the way by which it entered the cycle, one must conclude that it was afloat in Europe before the thirteenth century, [219] and furnished a very natural opening for a tale in which a youth goes into the world to seek adventure or profit. Were a lady to be won by the help of the ghost, it would magnify the hero's part, if he were given an opportunity to take some very direct share in the wooing. So in the group of which Richars and Sir Amadas are members the new theme supplied the means of winning a lady, which would otherwise be lacking. In Oliver and Lope de Vega it has perhaps supplanted the ransom of a maiden, which is the trait to be expected, if they are rightly placed among the variants of the type The Grateful Dead + The Ransomed Woman. It will be noted that in the two Icelandic tales, which conform closely to the type, the tourney does not appear. There seems to be reason, therefore, for supposing that the new material touched our central theme at least twice, combining with the prototype of the Amadas group and of the Icelandic folk-stories. The authors of Oliver and Treu Heinrich may have adopted it consciously, and so these variants should be left out of account.