Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/72

 Zulu boy has to "fetch the liver of an Ingogo," a fabulous monster. When the tasks have been accomplished, the adventurer and the king's daughter, Jason and Medea, flee, as usual, from the wrath of the king, being aided (again as usual) by the magic of the king's daughter. And what did the king's daughter throw behind her in her flight, to delay her father's pursuit? Nothing less than the mangled remains of her own brothers. Other versions are given: that of Apollonius Rhodius (iv. 476, cf. Scholia) contains a curious account of a savage expiatory rite performed by Jason. But Grote (ed. 1869, i. 232) says, "So revolting a story as that of the cutting up of the little boy cannot have been imagined in later times." Perhaps, however, the tale, though as old as Pherecydes, is derived from a Folk-etymology of the place called Tomi (τέμνω). While the wizard king mourned over the cast-away fragments of his boy, the adventurer and the king's daughter made their escape. The remainder of the Jason legend is chiefly Greek, though some of the wilder incidents (as Medea's chaldron) have their parallels in South Africa.

We have now examined a specimen of the epic legends of Greece. We have shown that it is an arrangement, with local and semi-historical features, of a number of incidents, common in both savage and European Household Tales. Some moments in the process of the arrangement, for example, the localising of the scene in Colchis, and the attachment of the conclusion to the fortunes of the Corinthian House, are discussed by Grote (i. 244). Grote tries to show that the poetic elaboration and arrangement were finished between 600 and 500 Whatever the date may have been, we think it probable that the incidents of the Jason legend, as preserved in märchen, are much older than the legend in its epic Greek form. We have also shown that the incidents for the most part occur in the tales of savages, and we believe that they are the natural