beautiful princess than ever. The next day the comrade explains his identity and disappears.
It will be seen that Andersen simply embroidered the Norwegian tale as was his wont, adding a good many picturesque details, and softening some features. The changes do not materially affect the course of the narrative, nor need they delay us here, interesting though they are of themselves,[1] since the position of the variant with reference to the story-type under consideration is perfectly clear. Norwegian II. demands further attention. Like Esthonian II., Rumanian I, and Irish I., II., and III., it has the form The Grateful Dead + The Poison Maiden + The Water of Life. The burial of the dead is undisturbed, but the agreement between the companions to divide their gains has entirely disappeared, perhaps because the secondary theme takes so large a place. The removal of the poisonous habitants of the bride is clearly indicated, though it has been weakened into a flogging, which is given, however, only just in time to save the bridegroom from death. The subsequent milk bath seems to show a conflict between the conclusions of the two subsidiary motives—the end of The Poison Maiden being release from something like demonic possession, and that of The Water of Life in this form being release from a spell—though perhaps the bath is only a reduplication of the purifying process.
Simrock X. is not unlike the two variants just cited. A king's son wastes his property, and is sent out to shift for himself. He pays the debts of a naked corpse, and has only enough money left to pay his reckoning at his inn. So he takes the body to a wood, and buries it there. As he goes his way, he is met by a man, who becomes his follower and secures three rods, a sword, and a pair of wings from a dead raven. They come to
- ↑ The three rods with which the princess is flogged are found in Harz I. See pp. 69, 70 below.
