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Rh The query at once suggests itself as to whether the simple division of the child or children as part of the hero's possessions gave rise to the introduction of the whole theme of The Two Friends in Oliver and Lope de Vega, or whether the twenty-two folk-tales have merely an echo of the theme as there found. To put the question is almost equivalent to answering it. One sees at once that the former is the case. Lope de Vega derives directly from Oliver and to the author of that romance must be due the combination of the two themes there presented. Reference to the earlier discussion of the variant will show that he was a conscious adapter of his material.

Yet it by no means follows that the suggestion for the combination was not present in the version of The Grateful Dead, which was used in making Oliver. Indeed, it seems probable that this source or prototype had the division of the child in somewhat the form in which it appears in so many tales. That such was the case is likely from the fact that of the twenty-two folk variants which refer to the child all but two are of the type The Grateful Dead + The Ransomed Woman, to which Oliver is approximated. Considering the alterations which the theme was likely to suffer at the hands of a writer who was more or less consciously combining various material in a romance, the wonder is that the type was not more changed than it seems to have been. In point of fact, the position of Oliver and its literary successors as examples of the compound comes out more clearly through this examination of their relationship to The Two Friends.

As to the introduction of the child, the trait by means of which, according to my theory, the actual combination of motives came about, the two folk-tales of the type The Grateful Dead + The Poison Maiden as well as Sir