Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/300

282 The hero who, after discovering that his youngest sister is a Strigla, has fled with his mother, the queen, from the palace where they were in imminent danger of being devoured, comes to a castle occupied by forty dragons. The prince straightway attacks them single-handed and slays, so he thinks, all of them, but in reality one has only feigned to be dead and so escapes to a hole beneath the castle, of which Jack now becomes the master. The remaining dragon however ventures forth, when the prince is gone out to the chase, and makes love to the queen, and after a while dragon and queen knowing that the prince would be incensed at their intrigue conspire to kill him. To this end the queen on her son's return pretends to be ill, and in response to his enquiries tells him that the only thing that can heal her is 'immortal water ,' which, as her paramour, the dragon, knows, is to be found only in a distant garden guarded by one or more other dragons. The prince at once undertakes to obtain the desired remedy, and is directed by a witch (who in some versions appears as the impersonation of his [Greek: tychê] or 'Fortune') whither to go and how to deal with the dragons. These accordingly he slays or eludes, and so returns home unhurt bringing the immortal water. Then once more the dragon and the queen take counsel together, and the pretence of illness is repeated with a demand this time for some immortal fruit or herb known to be guarded in the same way as the water; and once more the prince sets out and circumvents the dragons in some new fashion.

Between such stories and the ancient fable of Heracles' journey to the land of the Hesperides in search of the golden apples, and of his victory over the guardian-dragon Ladon, the connexion is self-evident. Whether that connexion is one of direct lineage, is less certain. More probably, I think, a form of this same story was already current in an age to which the name of Heracles was as unknown as that of the modern Jack; and just as the story of Peleus and Thetis became the classical example