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 Servian I. a merchant's son, while on a journey, ransoms a company
of slaves whom he finds in the hands of freebooters. Among them is
a beautiful maiden with her nurse. He marries the lady, who proves
to be the daughter of an emperor. On a second voyage he ransoms two
peasants, who have been imprisoned for not paying their taxes to the
emperor. On his third journey he comes to his father-in-law's court,
and is sent back for his wife. He is, however, cast into the sea
by a former lover of the princess, and succeeds in getting ashore
on a lonely island, where he remains for fifteen days and fifteen
nights. [113] Then an angel in the disguise of an old man appears to
him, and, on condition of receiving half of his possessions, brings
him to court, where he is reunited with his wife. After renouncing
his claim, the old man explains who he is, and disappears.
The most striking peculiarity of the variant is the loss of the burial,
for which appears rather awkwardly the ransoming of some peasants on
the hero's second voyage. That substitution has occurred is apparent,
however, both from the clumsiness of the device by which the original
trait is replaced, and from the angel in the form of an old man,
who takes the role of the ghost. It will be remembered that the
same substitution has already been met with in the case of Tobit and
Russian II.
In Lithuanian I. is found a variant which, as we shall find, is of
a common type. A king's son pays three hundred gold-pieces, all that
he possesses, to release a dead man from his creditors and have him
buried. The hero then becomes a merchant, and finds a princess on an
island, whither she has been driven by a storm. He takes her to a city,
where he makes his home, and marries her. A messenger, sent out by
her father to seek her, arrives, takes them aboard ship, and pitches
the hero into the sea in order to obtain the offered reward. He is
saved by a man in a boat, who says that he is the ghost of the dead,
and instructs him how to rejoin his bride. So everything ends happily.
The events as here related follow a very normal course, which is
repeated again and again in stories of this type: a burial, a ransom,
an act of treachery, a rescue by the ghost, and a happy reunion
of the lovers. The agreement between the hero and the ghost, which
is found in Servian I., and very frequently elsewhere, is lacking,
however. A peculiarity of the variant is the change in status of the
hero. He is a prince, but becomes a merchant, thus uniting the two
characters given him in the other tales of this class.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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