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)
We come now to the various forms of Jean de Calais, which make up
a little group by themselves. The ten examples of the story that I
have been able to find differ from one another sufficiently to make
separate analyses of most of them necessary.
The version by Mme. de Gomez (I.) runs as follows: [136] Jean,
the son of a rich merchant at Calais, while on a journey, comes to
the city of Palmanie on the island of Orimanie. There he pays the
debts and secures the burial of a corpse which is being devoured by
dogs. He also ransoms two slave girls, one of whom he marries and takes
home. The woman is the daughter of the King of Portugal. While taking
her to her father's court, Jean is separated from her by a treacherous
general, but is saved by the grateful dead, and enabled to rejoin his
wife. Later the ghost, who appears in the form of a man, demands half
of their son according to the agreement of division which they have
made. When Jean gives him the child to divide, the stranger praises
his loyalty and disappears.
This story has all the characteristics of the type The Grateful Dead
+ The Ransomed Woman + the demand that the hero's son be divided. In
general outline it is scarcely distinguishable from Lithuanian II.,
save that the hero Jean is a merchant's son instead of a prince. In
details, however, it differs considerably. For example, Jean marries
one of the captive maidens as soon as he buys her; there is no question
of signs by which the hero is recognized by his wife's father or by the
princess herself; and the ghost is less dilatory in his demands. Some
of these differences are doubtless to be accounted for through the
unfaithfulness of the rendering, which is semi-literary.
At all events, Jean de Calais III., IV., and V., all three of which
were heard on the Riviera, have several changes from I., though they
vary from one another only in very minor matters. [137] A single
analysis will suffice for the three. Jean de Calais, the son of a
merchant, on his first voyage gives all his profits to bury the corpse
of a deceased debtor. On his second he ransoms a beautiful woman (with
or without a companion), and lives with her in poverty because of his
father's displeasure. On a subsequent voyage he bears her portrait on
the prow of the ship, where it is seen by her father. A former suitor
meets him on his return to court with his wife (in III. goes with
him) and throws him into the sea either by violence or by a ruse. He
is cast up on an island (in III. is carried thither in a boat by the
ghost in human form), whence he is conveyed by the ghost, on condition
of receiving half of his first son, or half of what he loves best,
to the court just as the princess is to marry the traitor. By a ruse
he enters the palace and is recognized. Later the ghost appears,
but stays Jean when he is about to sacrifice his son.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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