Page:The Grateful Dead.djvu/170

154. Of the variants just named all except Oliver, Lope de Vega, and Old Swedish actually state that the hero sets out from home on account of his poverty. In the two former the motive of the incestuous stepmother is introduced in place of this, and in Old Swedish the trait is obscured without any substitution, implying that the hero is led merely by ambition to undertake the tourney. On the other hand, the tourney occurs in all save Icelandic I. and II., which are the only folk-tales in the list. The second of these, moreover, makes the hero a merchant instead of a knight; but since the two come from the same island and are in other respects rather similar, this is perhaps not very significant.

Looking at the matter from another point of view, we find that Richars, Lion de Bourges, Dianese, Old Swedish, Rittertriuwe, and Sir Amadas form a group by themselves, and are uncompounded with any one of the themes with which The Grateful Dead is most frequently allied. Oliver and Lope de Vega are treated under the compound with The Ransomed Woman, where on account of the rescue of the hero by the ghost they probably belong; and Icelandic I. and II. are clearly of that type. Treu Heinrich shows the combination of the central theme with The Water of Life, and can in the nature of the case have no direct connection with the other romance stories under consideration, even though it belongs to a class in which The Ransomed Woman sometimes appears. In view of these discrepancies of position with reference to compounds which are clearly established, we are certainly not justified in assuming that The Spendthrift Knight has had anything more than a superficial relationship to The Grateful Dead. To make it a basis of classification or to attach any