The Grateful Dead Part 1

The Grateful Dead.

by Gordon Hall Gerould.

INTRODUCTION.

The combination of narrative themes is so frequent a phenomenon in folk and formal literature that one almost forgets to wonder at it. Yet in point of fact the reason for it and the means by which it is accomplished are mysteries past our present comprehension. If we could learn how and where popular tales unite, if we could formulate any general principle of union or severance, we should be well on the way to an understanding of the riddle which has. .h.i.therto baffled all students of narrative, namely, the diffusion of stories. We have theories enough; our immediate need is for more studies of individual themes, careful and, if it must be, elaborate discussions of many well-known cycles. Happily, these are acc.u.mulating and give promise of much useful knowledge at no distant day.

One principle has become clear. Since motives are so frequently found in combination, it is essential that the complex types be a.n.a.lyzed and arranged, with an eye kept single nevertheless to the master-theme under discussion. Collectors, both primary and subsidiary, have done such valiant service that the treasures at our command are amply sufficient for such studies, so extensive, indeed, that the task of going through them thoroughly has become too great for the una.s.sisted student. It cannot be too strongly urged that a single theme in its various types and compounds must be made predominant in any useful comparative study. This is true when the sources and a.n.a.logues of any literary work are treated; it is even truer when the bare motive is discussed.

The Grateful Dead furnishes an apt ill.u.s.tration of the necessity of such handling. It appears in a variety of different combinations, almost never alone. Indeed, it is so widespread a tale, and its combinations are so various, that there is the utmost difficulty in determining just what may properly be regarded the original kernel of it, the simple theme to which other motives were joined. Various opinions, as we shall see, have been held with reference to this matter, most of them justified perhaps by the materials in the hands of the scholars holding them, but none quite adequate in view of later evidence. The true way to solve the riddle appears to be this: we must ask the question,--what is the residuum when the tale is stripped of elements not common to a very great majority of the versions belonging to the cycle? What is left amounts to the following,--the story reduced to its lowest terms, I take it.

A man finds a corpse lying unburied, and out of pure philanthropy procures interment for it at great personal inconvenience. Later he is met by the ghost of the dead man, who in many cases promises him help on condition of receiving, in return, half of whatever he gets. The hero obtains a wife (or some other reward), and, when called upon, is ready to fulfil his bargain as to sharing his possessions.

Nowhere does a version appear in quite this form; but from what follows it will be seen that the simple story must have proceeded along some such lines. The compounds in which it occurs show much variety. It will be necessary to study these in detail, not merely one or two of them but as many as can be found. Despite the bewildering complexities that may arise, I hope that this method of approach may throw some new light on the wanderings of the tale.

Of my debt to various friends and to many books, though indicated in the body of the work, I wish to make general and grateful acknowledgment here. My thanks, furthermore, are due to the librarians of Harvard University for their courteous hospitality; to Professor G. L. Kittredge for his generous encouragement to proceed with this study, though he himself, as I found after most of my material was collected, had undertaken it several years before I began; and to Professor R. K. Root for his help in reading the proofs.

CHAPTER I.

A REVIEW.

To Karl Simrock is due the honour of discovering the importance of The Grateful Dead for the student of literature and legend. In his little book, Der gute Gerhard und die dankbaren Todten, [1] he called attention to the theme as a theme, and treated it with a breadth of knowledge and a clearness of insight remarkable in an attempt to unravel for the first time the mixed strands of so wide-spread a tale. Using the Middle High German exemplary romance, Der gute Gerhard, as his point of departure, he examined seventeen other stories, all but two of which have the motive well preserved. [2]

Unhappily, the versions which he found came from a limited section of Europe, most of them from Germanic sources. Thus he was led to an interpretation of the tale on the basis of Germanic mythology. This, though ingenious enough and very erudite, need not detain us. It was done according to a fashion of the time, which has long since been discarded. Simrock took the essential traits of the theme to be the burial of the dead and the ransom from captivity. [3] "Wo nur noch eine von beiden das Thema zu bilden scheint," he said, "da hat die Ueberliefertung gelitten." Here again he was misled by the narrow range of his material, as later studies have shown. Nearly all the versions he cited have the motive of a ransomed princess, though the majority of the stories now known to be members of the cycle do not contain it.

Three years after the publication of Simrock's monograph Benfey treated some features of the theme in a note appended to his discussion of The Thankful Beasts in the monumental Pantschatantra. [4] Though he named but a few variants, he found an Armenian tale which he compared with the European versions, coming to the conclusion not only that the motive proceeded from the Orient but also that the Armenian version had the original form of it. That is, he took the ransom and burial of the dead, the parting of a woman possessed by a serpent, and the saving of the hero on the bridal night as the essential features. This was a step in advance.

George Stephens in his edition of Sir Amadas [5] held much the same view. He added several important versions, and scored Simrock for admitting Der gute Gerhard, saying that he could not see that it had "any direct connection" with The Grateful Dead. [6]

He was at least partly in the right, even though his statement was misleading. According to his Opinion, [7] "the peculiar feature of the Princess (Maiden) being freed from demonic influence by celestial aid, is undoubtedly the original form of the tale."

In a series of notes beginning in the year 1858 Kohler [8] supplied a large number of variants, which have been invaluable for succeeding study of the theme. Nowhere, however, did he give an ordered account of the versions at his command or discuss the relation of the elements--a regrettable omission. The contributions of Liebrecht, [9] though less extensive, were of the same sort. In his article published in 1868 he said that he thought The Grateful Dead to be of European origin, [10]

but he added nothing to our knowledge of the essential form of the story. The following decade saw the publication by Sepp of a rather brief account of the motive, [11] which was chiefly remarkable for its summary of cla.s.sical and pre-cla.s.sical references concerning the duty of burial. Like Stephens he a.s.sumed that the release of a maiden from the possession of demons was an essential part of the tale. In 1886 Cosquin brought the discussion one step further by showing [12]

that the theme is sometimes found in combination with The Golden Bird and The Water of Life. He did not, however, attempt to define the original form of the story nor to trace its development.

By all odds the most adequate treatment that The Grateful Dead has yet received is found in Hippe's monograph, Untersuchungen zu der mittelenglischen Romanze von Sir Amadas, which appeared in 1888. [13]

Not only did he gather together practically all the variants mentioned previous to that time and add some few new ones, but he studied the theme with such interpretative insight that anyone going over the same field would be tempted to offer an apology for what may seem superfluous labour. Such a follower, and all followers, must gratefully acknowledge their indebtedness to his labours.

Yet one who follows imperfectly the counsels of perfection may discover certain defects in Hippe's work. He neglects altogether Cosquin's hint as to the combination of the theme with The Water of Life and allied tales, thus leaving out of account an important element, which is intimately connected with the chief motive in a large number of tales. Indeed, his effort to simplify, commendable and even necessary as it is, brings him to conclusions that in some respects, I believe, are not sound. Though he states the essential points of the primitive story in a form [14] which can hardly be bettered and which corresponds almost exactly to the one that I have been led to accept from independent consideration of the material, [15] he fails to see that he is dealing in almost every case, not with a simple theme with modified details but with compound themes. Thus he starts out with the "Sage vom dankbaren Toten und der Frau mit den Drachen im Leibe" [16]

and explains all variations from this type either by the weakening of this feature and that or by the introduction of a single new motive, the story of The Ransomed Woman. He would thus make it appear [17]

that we have a well-ordered progression from one combined type to various other combined and simplified types. Such a series is possible without doubt, but it can hardly be admitted till the interplay of all accessible themes, which have entered into combination with the chief theme, is investigated. Hippe pa.s.ses these things over silently and so gives the subject a specious air of simplicity to which it has no right.

I should be the last to deny the necessity of treating narrative themes each for itself, and I have nothing but admiration for the general conduct of Hippe's investigation; but I wish to show that his methods, and therefore his results, are at fault in so far as he does not recognize the nature of the combinations into which The Grateful Dead enters. Traces of other stories, unless their presence is obviously artificial, must be carefully considered, since in dealing with cycles of such fluid stuff as folk-tales it is certainly wise to give each element due consideration. Certain minor errors in Hippe's article will be mentioned in due course, though my constant obligations to it must be emphasized here.

Since the appearance of Hippe's study no one has treated The Grateful Dead with such scope as to modify his conclusions. Perhaps the most interesting work in the field has been that of Dr. Dutz [18]

on the relation of George Peele's Old Wives' Tale to our theme. He follows Hippe's scheme, but gives some interesting new variants. Of less importance, but useful within its limits, is the section devoted to the saga by Dr. Heinrich Wilhelmi in his Studien uber die Chanson de Lion de Bourges. [19] Though he added no new versions, the author studied in detail the relationship of some of the mediaeval forms to one another, basing his results for the most part on careful textual comparison. His gravest fault was the thoroughly artificial way in which he mapped out the field as a whole, a method which could lead only to erroneous conclusions, since he cla.s.sified according to a couple of superficial traits. An English study by Mr. F. H. Groome on Tobit and Jack the Giant-Killer [20] unhappily was written without regard to the previous literature of the subject, and simply rehea.r.s.es a number of well-known variants.

In this brief review I have touched only on such studies of The Grateful Dead as have materially enlarged the knowledge of the subject or have attempted a discussion of the theme in a broad way. In the following chapter reference will be made to other works, in which particular versions have been printed or summarized.

CHAPTER II.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The following list of variants of The Grateful Dead includes only such tales as have the fundamental traits, as sketched above, either expressed or clearly implied. Thus Der gute Gerhard, for example, is not mentioned because it has only the motive of The Ransomed Woman, while one of the folk-tales from Hungary is admitted because it follows in general outline one of the combined types to be discussed later, even though the burial of the dead is obscured. I cite by the short t.i.tles which will be used to indicate the stories in the subsequent discussion. The arrangement is roughly geographical.

Tobit.

In the apocryphal book of Tobit. According to Neubauer, The Book of Tobit, a Chaldee Text from a unique MS. in the Bodleian Library, 1878, p. xv, Tobit was originally written in Hebrew, although the Hebrew text preserved was taken from Chaldee. Neubauer (p. xvii) quotes Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, (2nd ed.) iv. 466, as saying that the book was written in the time of Hadrian, and he concludes that it cannot be earlier because it was unknown to Josephus. The correspondence with Sir Amadas, and thus with The Grateful Dead generally, seems to have been first noted by Simrock, p. 131 f., again by Kohler, Germania, iii. 203, by Stephens, p. 7, by Hippe, p. 142, etc.

Armenian.

A. von Haxthausen, Transkaukasia, 1856, i. 333 f. A modern folk-tale. Reprinted entire by Benfey, Pantschatantra, i. 219, note, and by Kohler, Germania, iii. 202 f. A somewhat inadequate summary is given by Hippe, p. 143; a better one is found in Arch. f. slav. Phil. v. 43, by Kohler, who mentioned the tale again in Or. und Occ. ii. 328, and iii. 96. Summarized also by Sepp, p. 681, Groome, Folk-Lore, ix. 228 f., and mentioned by Wilhelmi, p.45.

Jewish.

Reischer, Schaare Jeruschalajim, 1880, pp. 86-99. Summarized by Gaster, Germania, xxvi. 200-202, and from him by Hippe, pp. 143, 144. A modern folk-tale from Palestine.

Annamite.

Landes, Contes et legendes annamites, 1886, pp. 162, 163, "La reconnaissance de l'etudiant mort." A modern folk-tale.

Siberian.

Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der turkischen Stamme Sud-Siberiens, 1866, i. 329-331. See Kohler, Arch. f. slav. Phil. v. 43, note.

Simonides.

Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 27, referred to again in ii. 65 and 66. Retold by Valerius Maximus, Facta et Dicta, i. 7; after him by Robert Holkot, Super Libros Sapientiae, Lectio 103; and again by Chaucer in the Nun's Priest's Tale, Cant. Tales, B, 4257-4294. For the relationship of Chaucer's anecdote to those in Latin see Skeat, note in his edition, Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, 1892, ii. 274, and Petersen, On the Sources of the Nonne Prestes Tale, 1898, pp. 106-117. Connected with The Grateful Dead by Freudenberg in a review of Simrock in Jahrbucher des Vereins von Alterthumsfreunden im Rheinlande, xxv. 172. See also Kohler, Germania iii. 209, Liebrecht in Heidelberger Jahrbucher der Lit. lxi. 449, 450, and Sepp. p. 680. Not treated by Hippe.