The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story — John Shaqi
The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk StoryGerould, Gordon Hall
General
The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story
Gerould, Gordon Hall
Dead -- Folklore; Folk literature -- Themes, motives; Grateful dead (Tale)
A solitary folk-tale now demands attention--my Breton II. The
Grateful Dead in a simple form is here combined with a story told of
Gregory the Great, [59] as Luzel, to whom the tale was recounted by
a Breton peasant, indeed briefly noted. [60] The Breton tale runs as
follows: A rich lord and lady had no children. While the lady was
praying to St. Peter in a chapel that was being repaired, she fell
a victim to a young painter, and had by him a son, who was named
after St. Peter. When the boy was twelve years of age, he carried
St. Peter across a stream one day, while his shepherd companion carried
Christ. The companion died soon after. Pierre then set forth to visit
his patron in Paradise. On his way he stopped overnight at the house of
an old woman, whose husband lay unburied because there was no money to
pay the priest. Pierre gave all his money for the interment, and went
on. When he came to the sea, a naked man, who said that he was the
dead, carried him across to a point near the gates of Paradise. There
he found Peter, and was shown the glories of heaven by the Saviour,
as well as Purgatory and Hell. In the last he saw a chair reserved
for his mother, but by his entreaties induced the Lord to grant her
a release on condition of doing penance himself for her. So he was
told to put on a spiked girdle, to throw the key of it into the sea,
and not to take it off till the key should be found. After donning
this instrument Pierre was carried by the ghost back to his own land,
where he lived on alms--first on the public ways, and later, without
discovering himself, in his father's castle. During his father's
absence he was killed at the command of his mother, but was dug up
alive by his father and treated with respect. One day at a feast
he found the key in the head of a fish. When the girdle was opened,
he died, and his soul was borne to heaven by angels.
Two Danish variants present a curious but not inexplicable combination
of The Grateful Dead with Puss in Boots, as was noted by Koehler. [61]
Danish I. relates how a youth pays three marks, which is his all,
to bury the body of a dead man, for whose interment the priest has
demanded payment in advance. He is then joined by another youth,
who is the ghost of the dead, and goes to a certain city. There, by
giving himself out as a prince at the advice of his companion, who
provides him with proper trappings, he wins the hand of a princess. In
Danish II. an old soldier pays his last three marks to prevent three
creditors from digging up a corpse. He is joined by a pale stranger,
who takes him in a leaden ship to a land where he marries a princess,
who is fated to marry no one save a man who comes in this way. The
stranger secures, by a lying ruse, a troll's castle for the hero, and,
after explaining that he is the ghost of the buried debtor, disappears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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