Page:The Grateful Dead.djvu/117

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The Ransomed Woman.
101

with a very poor ship, and is compelled by an English captain to ransom a beautiful maiden with all his cargo. The hero's mother is again angry at this seemingly bad bargain, but she does not forbid his marrying the girl. Juan is now sent to Portugal by his wife with a portrait on a flag, a handkerchief, and a ring. At the same time she tells him that she has been called Marie Madeleine. When the King of Portugal sees the portrait, he sends the hero back with a general to fetch Marie, who is his daughter. The general pitches Juan overboard and goes for the princess, whom he persuades to marry him after seven years. At the end of that time, a fox comes to Juan on an island, where he has lived, and bargains to rescue him for half of all he has at present and will have later. The hero arrives in Portugal, is recognized by the king, tells his story, and has the general burnedAfter a year the fox appears and demands payment, but, when Juan is going to divide his child, it says that it is the soul of the dead man whom he buried long before.

The two variants are chiefly peculiar in that they introduce a new element into the compound,—The Thankful Beast. This substitution of some beast for the ghost has been encountered twice before[1] in connection with Jewish and Servian IV., and must receive special treatment later on.[2] For the present it is sufficient to remark the variation from all other forms of Jean de Calais except X.[3] In both II. and VII. Jean makes two journeys,[4] as in III., IV., and V., as against I. and VI. The attitude of the parent differs widely in the two. The maiden whom the hero marries is a Portuguese princess, which is the prevailing form of the tale. The

  1. See pp. 27 and 57.
  2. See chapter vii.
  3. See pp. 104 f.
  4. II. is the only version which has Jean make his first two voyages on land, a trait which contradicts the general testimony of the tales throughout the chapter.