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)
In the two stories just summarized The Grateful Dead is clear enough,
though in VI. St. George has ousted the ghost from part of its proper
functions, just as the angel does in Tobit, Russian II., and Simrock
IV., God in Siberian, and various saints elsewhere. The introduction
in VI. is a unique trait, as far as I know. In both the variants
the main features of the theme appear without distortion, including
the picturesque cleansing of the woman by actual division. The
Poison Maiden, however, has been replaced by a story of similar
character, but of different content, which I have not elsewhere found
compounded with The Grateful Dead. A vampire infests a church (or a
churchyard). A soldier is sent to watch nights, and to try to dislodge
her. He successfully counters her tricks, and finally gets hold of
something belonging to her, which he refuses to return. Thereupon she
is reduced to submission, promises him happiness, and is married to
him with the consent of the king. [81] This tale, it will be evident,
bears a strong likeness to The Poison Maiden in the figure of the
heroine, though it certainly is independent. The vital difference
between the two is the absence of any helping friend in the story of
the vampire. Because of the lack of this figure it seems improbable
that the tale was compounded with The Grateful Dead without the
intermediary stage in which The Poison Maiden appears. I regard the
vampire as usurping the place of the possessed maiden, and the two
Russian variants as a secondary growth. Given the normal form of the
compound as it appears in Russian II., for instance, there would be
no difficulty in substituting an even more gruesome figure for that
of the heroine there depicted, and in making the hero's danger lie
in a prenuptial attack on her part.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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