the youth is led to the wondrous Vilaberg, where he is left with the admonition that he must not speak. He disobeys, and is made dumb and blind by an enchantress; but he is cured by the man whom he rescued, who plays on a pipe and gives him a healing draught. So he dwells for some years in the mountain with one of the ladies as his wife, but afterward goes home, though every summer he returns to his friends in the Vilaberg.
Here we have our theme combined with a form of The Swan-Maiden[1] which occurs in only one other case, as far as I am able to discover. The reason for the combination is not far to seek. The latter part of the tale represents the reward of the rescuer by the rescued. That the benefit does not take the form of actual burial need not disturb us. The man was at least far gone towards death, and he was a debtor—a trait found in about two-thirds of the variants known to me. Moreover, the supernatural character of the comrade is indicated by the adventure into which he leads the youth. The tale has been partly rationalised, that is all.
Esthonian I.[2] shows a different combination, which is unique as far as I know. In a gorge not far from the village of Arukäla (near Wesenberg) a howling was heard every night for years. Finally a bold man went by night to the place and found the skeleton of a murdered king, which told him that it had howled thus for a hundred years because it had not been buried with holy rites. The next day the man took the bones to a priest, and, while burying them, discovered an enormous treasure.
As Schiefner said,[3] when he first printed the story, it recalls the Grimms' Der singende Knochen[4] which in turn is
- ↑ See Baring-Gould's Curious Myths, 2nd ed. 1869, pp. 561 ff. for a popular account. The philosophical basis of the tale is discussed by Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, 1879, pp. 54 ff. (from Germania, xiii. 161 ff.), and by Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales, 1891, pp. 255-332, 337-347.
- ↑ See Hippe, p. 148
- ↑ Or. und Occ. ii. 176.
- ↑ Kinder- und Hausmärchen, no. 28. See notes (ed. 1856), iii. 55, 56; also Köhler, Kleinere Schriften, i. 49, 54.
