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)
Lotharingian runs as follows: A king has three sons. He sends them
successively to seek the water of life. Two of them refuse to help a
shepherd on the way, and rest from their search in Pekin. The third,
who is deformed, aids the shepherd, and receives from him some arrows,
which will pierce well whatever they strike, and a flageolet, which
will make everyone dance within hearing of it. Arrived at Pekin, the
humpback pays the debts of a corpse, and has it buried. He goes on till
his money is exhausted. When he is about to shoot a fox one day, he is
stayed by pity, and is directed by the creature to the castle where
the water of life is to be found. There he is detained by an ogre,
and wins battles for him by the aid of the magical arrows. There
is a princess in the castle, who refuses to marry the ogre. The
hero makes her dance, and obtains from the ogre as recompense the
promise of whatever he wishes. He asks for the most beautiful thing
there and the right to circle the castle three times. So he takes
the princess, a phial of the water of life, as well as the uglier of
the two mules and of the two green birds, as the fox has told him,
and flees away. He meets the fox again, and is warned not to help
any one in trouble. Nevertheless, he rescues his two brothers from
the scaffold in Pekin, and is cast into a well by them. They go home,
but are not able to heal the king. Meanwhile, the prince is saved by
the fox, and is made straight of body. He goes home, and at his coming
the king becomes young again, while the brothers are burned. So the
prince marries the lady.
In Tuscan we learn that the youngest of three princes, while wandering,
paid the debts of a man whose corpse was being insulted. When he had
buried the man, he found himself without a farthing, and so slept in
the forest. In the morning he was greeted by a hare (lieprina) with
a basket of food in its mouth. He took this gladly, and reflected
that the creature must be the soul of the man whom he had buried. He
then came to an inn, and took service with the host, whose beautiful
daughter he soon discovered to be a princess, who had been bought while
an infant. After winning her love, the hero went on into two kingdoms,
where he obtained a magical purse and a wonderful horse from two ugly
daughters of innkeepers. With these possessions he returned to the
princess, and started with her for his home. On the way he saved from
death his two older brothers, who had gone out to seek adventures at
the same time as himself. They repaid the kindness by trying to drown
him and by carrying the princess off home, where only by feigning
illness could she frustrate their plan that she choose one of them as
husband. Meanwhile, the hero was rescued from drowning by the hare,
and came home. By pretending to be a physician he obtained access to
the princess, was recognized, and then revealed himself to his father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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