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)
Breton VI. lacks some of the interesting traits of the variant just
given, but embroiders the theme with considerable grace. The three sons
of a king set out to find the princess of Hungary, who has the only
remedy that will cure their father. The eldest forgets his purpose, and
wastes his money in rioting. The second finds him just as he is being
led to death on account of debt, ransoms him, and shares his riotous
pleasures. The third brother, a humpback, goes out with little money,
but on his way procures burial for a man's corpse, which the widow has
been unable to do because of lack of money to pay the priest. The next
day a fox with a white tail meets him, and in return for a bit of cake
leads him to the castle of a princess. There the prince resists the
lady's advances, which he suspects are derisive, and is sent to her
sister's castle, where he has the same experience. When he arrives
at the castle of the third sister, he yields to her proposals,
is given the remedy for his father and a magical sword, and is
told how to go home. On the way he rescues his brothers from the
scaffold by waving his sword, and is robbed and thrown into a well
by them. Thence he is rescued by the fox, which comes at his call,
and before it disappears explains that it is the ghost. Meanwhile, the
older brothers have cured the king by the water of life in a phial;
so when the hero comes home he is not believed. In a year and a day
the princess arrives there according to her promise, and with a little
son. At a feast she proclaims the truth, cuts her husband into bits,
sprinkles the heap of fragments with the water of life, and marries
the handsome youth who at once arises--the humpback transformed. [190]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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