Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/189

Rh related on the one hand to the "dragon slayer" group of märchen, on the other hand to the Expulsion and Return formula tales. In many versions of the latter (the most famous being that of Romulus and Remus) the hero is one of twins, and, after sharing for a while with his brother, strife breaks out between them. In the folk-tale this strife leads to final reconciliation, or is indeed a means of unravelling the plot. In the hero-tale on the other hand the strife mostly ends with the death or defeat of the one brother. It would seem that when the folk-tale got associated with a definite hero (generally the founder and patron of a race) and became in brief a hero-tale, the necessity of exalting the race hero brought about a modification of the plot. If this is so the folk-tale group of the "two brothers" must be looked upon as older than the corresponding portion of the Expulsion and Return hero-tales, and not as a mere weakened echo of the latter. To return to the twin-brother features. The Peredur-Perceval sage has a twin-sister, and is parallel herein to the Fionn sage in one of its forms he will unspell if he succeeds. Stier, No. I. (not p. 67, as Grimm erroneously indicates) follows almost precisely the same course as Grimm's 60, save that there are three brothers. Gaal, p. 195, has the magic gold bird opening, but none of the subsequent adventures tally. Schott, No. 11, is also cited by Grimm, but mistakenly; it belongs to the faithful-servant group. Very close variants come from Sweden (Cavallius-Oberleitner, Va, Vb) and Italy (Pentamerone, I. 7 and I. 9). The Swedish tales have the miraculous conception opening, which is a prominent feature in tales belonging to the Expulsion and Return group (e.g., Perseus, Cu-Chulaind, and Taliesin), but present otherwise very nearly the same incidents as Grimm. The second of the Italian versions has the miraculous conception opening so characteristic of this group of folk-tales, and of the allied formula group, the attainment of riches consequent upon eating the heart of a sea dragon, the tournament incident (though without the disguise of the hero), the stag hunt, wherein the stag, an inimical wizard haunting the wood, is a cannibal and keeps the captured hero for eating. In the story of the delivery by the second brother, the separating sword incident occurs. The first version opens with what is apparently a distorted and weakened form of the hero's clearing a haunted house of its diabolical inmates (see infra Ch. VII., Gawain) and then follows very closely Grimm's Two Brothers, save that the alluring witch is young and fair, the whole tale being made to point the moral, "more luck than wit." Straparola, a 3, is a variant of the dragon fight incident alone. It is impossible not to be struck by the fact that in this widely spread group of tales are to be found some of the most characteristic incidents of the Perceval and allied Great Fool group. The only version, however, which brings the two groups into formal contact is O'Daly's form of the Great Fool.