Page:The Grateful Dead.djvu/102

86 goes to Spain and attends church, where the king recognizes by his clothing, his ring, his book, and his whistle that he has news of the lost princess. Iain then returns to England for the maiden, whom he is to marry. While going with her to Spain he is left on a desert island by a general, who has secreted himself on the ship; but after a time he is rescued by a man in a boat, to whom he promises half of his wife and of his children, if he shall have any. In Spain the princess, who has gone mad, recognizes him when he plays his whistle. So they are married, and the general burned. When three sons have been born, the rescuer appears and asks for his share; but as soon as Iain accedes he declares himself to be the ghost, and disappears.

Apart from the dressing of the story, which is unusually good, the variant follows the normal course. The several signs by which the hero is recognized by the king and the princess mark the imaginative wealth of the Celt, though the appearance of a ring, and the fact that the hero is left on a desert island by an infatuated general, show a close correspondence with Hungarian II. The introduction of the children as part of the property to be divided is interesting, since it shows the connecting link by which the simple compound now under consideration passed into combination with the theme of The Two Friends. Gaelic, however, clearly belongs where it is here placed. The healing of the princess at the hero's coming reminds one of the similar trait in Spanish.

Breton III. is peculiar in several ways. A young man, who had been unjustly cast off by his parents, put himself under the protection of St. Corentin and the Virgin. To an old woman he gave all his stock of money that she might bury her husband and have