Page:The Grateful Dead.djvu/118

102 portrait is also found in each, and both state the time of Jean's exile as seven years. II. differs from all the other versions in placing the later adventures of the story at Calais rather than at the court of the heroine's father. In II., as in VI., the ghost announces himself at the first meeting, which is undoubtedly a modification of the original story. Thus the two forms are sufficiently independent of one another, in spite of their common use of an animal as the hero's friend.

Jean de Calais VIII., though like VI. from a Breton source, differs from all the other variants, chiefly in transposing the burial and the ransom. Jean Carré, sent out by his godmother as a sea-captain, ransoms an English princess with her maid, and marries the former. After two years, when a son has been born to them, Jean goes on another voyage, and adorns the stern of his vessel with portraits of his wife, the child, and the maid, which he is begged to show while anchored at London. He does so, and is received by the king as a son-in-law. One day he sees a poor debtor's body dragged along the street, pays the debts, and has it buried. He then sets out with a fleet to seek his wife, and is cast overboard by a Jew, who is the pilot; but he is saved by a supernatural man, who carries him to a green rock in the sea. The princess refuses to go to England when the fleet arrives, and is wooed by the Jew so persistently that after two years she promises him marriage At this juncture Jean, who has been asleep during the whole interval, is awakened by his rescuer and carried over the sea, where the man explains that he is the ghost of the debtor. Jean is first recognized by his little son, the Jew is burned by the gendarmes, and all ends well.

The transposition mentioned above is clearly a change due to the individual narrator or some local predecessor, since everywhere else the burial takes place before the