Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/531

Rh of the Knight of the Swan, in which the son of queen Matabrune, CHAP. having married the beautiful Beatrice, leaves her in his mother's charge. After his departure, Beatrice gives birth to six sons and a daughter, each with a silver collar round its neck. These children the stepmother seeks to destroy, but she is cheated by the usual device which substitutes some beast for the human victim. At length Matabrune is informed that seven children may be seen each with a silver collar, and again she decrees their death. They are, however, only deprived of their collars, and the loss changes them into swans, all but the youngest, Helias, whom a hermit had taken away as his companion.^ Helias, of course, avenges his mother's innocence, when she is about to be put to death, and then makes a vow that he will never rest until he has delivered his brothers and sister from the evil inchantment. Having recovered five of the collars, he succeeds at length in restoring five to their human shape ; but one remains spellbound, his collar having been melted to make a drinking-cup for Matabrune. This swan-brother now appears draw- ing a boat, in which Helias embarks, and arriving at Neumagen fights on behalf of the lady who claimed the duchy of Bouillon. His victory makes him duke of Bouillon, but he warns the duchess that if she asks his name he must leave her. In due time the question is of course asked, and instantly, the swan and boat reappearing, Helias vanishes like Eros when seen by Psyche. This romance Mr. Gould, who gives some other versions of the story, regards as a local myth of Brabantine origin, the name Helias being a corruption of the Keltic ala, eala, ealadh, a swan. This is but saying, in other words, that an old myth has been worked into the traditions of European towns, and attached, like the story of the early life of Cyrus, to names undoubtedly historical. The tale itself agrees in all its essential features not only with many Teutonic legends but with the Hindu story of Guzra Bai, the Beatrice of the tale of Truth's Triumph. This beautiful maiden is the Flower Girl, or the Gardener's daughter ; in other words, the child of Demeter playing on the flowery plain of Nysa or Enna, — the teeming source of life as distinguished from the dead or inert matter on which it works. She thus becomes at once, like Beatrice, the mother of many children ; here the number is a hundred and one, this one being as with Beatrice a daughter. These beautiful children awaken the jealousy and hatred of the twelve childless wives to whom the husband of Guzra Bai was already mar-

• In Grimm's story of " The White water, but at the same moment a snow- and the Black Bride," the mother and white swan is seen swimming down the sister push the true bride into the stream.