Page:The Grateful Dead.djvu/177

Rh Calais, and they have the same adventitious substitution. Simrock V. and Oldenburgian are a similar pair, while Simrock III., which is otherwise allied to Bohemian, cannot be shown to have any vital connection with The Thankful Beasts as a motive. Of all these tales it can be said that they show some influence from such a theme without actual combination. Finally, all the variants of the type The Grateful Dead + The Water of Life, which have the animal substituted, belong to a well-defined and centralized group which has had independent existence for centuries. Here the entrance of the beast is of considerable importance to the classification and development of the theme.

Of the part which The Thankful Beasts as a motive has played in connection with The Grateful Dead it must be said that, on the whole, it has been of very secondary importance. It illustrates, as do The Spendthrift Knight and The Two Friends, how one current theme may touch and even influence another at several different points without becoming embodied with it. This trait or that may be absorbed as the motives meet, yet the two waves may go their way without mingling.