multiform and widespread, are yet unmistakably the offspring of a single parent form, or better, of a chance union between two motives.[1] Thus Simonides and Jewish recall the combination of The Grateful Dead with The Ransomed Woman, since they have the hero rescued from drowning by the ghost, and they suggest one point of union between the two themes. It therefore seems best to include them in our list, not only for the sake of completeness, but because they point to the reason which sometime and somewhere gave rise to a more developed form of the motive,—to the märchen as we shall study it. A consideration of these basal principles can be undertaken, however, only after the story theme in its various ramifications and modifications has been thoroughly discussed.
The probability that The Grateful Dead once existed in a simple, uncompounded form, which became the parent on one side of the more important combined types, is strengthened by the minor compounds in which it is found. How can the correspondences of detail seen in a considerable number of different compounds, as far as they run parallel, be otherwise explained? Surely it is more reasonable to believe in the existence of such a parent form than to suppose that an originally complicated form was hacked and hewn asunder to produce new compounds. This will become clearer, I hope, as we proceed.
In Greek, a boy was sold to a pasha, who betrothed him to his daughter. Because of the mother's objections, however, he was sent away as a shepherd, while the girl was promised to another pasha's son. The hero fed his flock under the shelter of the castle, and was summoned by the maiden, who gave him her betrothal ring in a
- ↑ One can conceive of separate generation of a very siniiple story under similar conditions, but not, I think, that a series of events showing combination of themes or detailed correspondence would so arise.
