look into a magnificent garden which was surrounded by a high wall. It belonged to a dreadful witch. The wife saw a beautiful bed of rampions [radishes]. She was seized with an uncontrollable longing to eat rampions so that she wasted away and looked wretched and answered anxious questions by saying: "Oh, if I cannot get some of those rampions to eat that grow in the garden back of our house, I shall die." Her husband climbed into the garden of the enchantress and, at any cost, dug up some rampions and brought them to his wife. She made them into a salad at once and ate it with a great relish.
The enchantress afterwards desired of the man that, for the rampions, he should give her the child that his wife would bear. The enchantress came at once to take the child away and she named it Rampion. The further fate of Rampion with the long hair, and her final rescue by a prince, we need not go into.
Sexual transposition is also suggested in a passage in the fairy tale, "Everything Depends on God's Blessing" (Afanassiew—A. Meyer, No. 22, p. 95).
A devil relates how he has made a czarina (princess) sick; she is blind, deaf and confused. In order to make her well one must take the cross from a particular church, pour water over it, wash the princess with this water and give it to her to drink. Under a special stone sits a frog (masculine sex animal) which must be caught and a piece of the Host, which he has stolen, taken from his mouth. This the princess must eat.
The hero of the story follows these instructions, makes the princess well, and she becomes his bride.
Whoever understands the nature of the "complex" of which we have spoken in our work ("Diagnostische Associationsstudien," etc.) will understand the language of this fairy tale!
The mention of the Host in this connection suggests that the love-feast of Christ, as it is now celebrated as a devout communion, may be erotically colored. However, a digression into religious erotics would lead us too far afield.
The "History of Wassilissa with the Golden Braid and Ivan-from-the-Pea" (Afanassiew—A. Meyer, No. 26, p. 130) contains a further example. In it a splendid fairy-tale language relates of the wonderfully beautiful Wassilissa, who languished in her dungeon, her heart oppressed by sadness, until her father, the
