Orimanie. There he pays the debts and secures the burial of a corpse which is being devoured by dogs. He also ransoms two slave girls, one of whom he marries and takes home. The woman is the daughter of the King of Portugal. While taking her to her father's court, Jean is separated from her by a treacherous general, but is saved by the grateful dead, and enabled to rejoin his wife. Later the ghost, who appears in the form of a man, demands half of their son according to the agreement of division which they have made. When Jean gives him the child to divide, the stranger praises his loyalty and disappears.
This story has all the characteristics of the type The Grateful Dead + The Ransomed Woman + the demand that the hero's son be divided. In general outline it is scarcely distinguishable from Lithuanian II., save that the hero Jean is a merchant's son instead of a prince. In details, however, it differs considerably. For example, Jean marries one of the captive maidens as soon as he buys her; there is no question of signs by which the hero is recognized by his wife's father or by the princess herself; and the ghost is less dilatory in his demands. Some of these differences are doubtless to be accounted for through the unfaithfulness of the rendering, which is semi-literary.
At all events, Jean de Calais III., IV., and V., all three of which were heard on the Riviera, have several changes from I., though they vary from one another only in very minor matters.[1] A single analysis will suffice for the three. Jean de Calais, the son of a merchant, on his first voyage gives all his profits to bury the corpse of a deceased debtor. On his second he ransoms a beautiful woman (with or without a com-
- ↑ Thus III. makes the princess a daughter of the King of Portugal, as in I.; IV. gives no names whatever; and V. makes the heroine's father King of England.
