Tobit, a righteous Jew, is carried captive to Nineveh. He gives many alms to his brethren, bread to the hungry, and clothes to the naked (cf. Gypsy version); "and if I saw any of my nation dead or cast about the walls of Nineve, I buried him." So his goods are taken from him. Yet again one day he leaves his meat to go and bury a strangled Jew. That same night he was blinded by the droppings of sparrows. He sends his son Tobias to Rages in Media to recover ten talents of silver entrusted to a friend; and Tobias finds a travelling companion, who really is "Raphael, that was an angel." On the way Tobias catches a fish (a crocodile, say the commentators, but query, rather a dragon or râkshasa?), and by Raphael's advice takes its heart and liver and gall. They lodge near Rages with Tobias's cousin Raguel, whose daughter, Sara, has had seven husbands. Asmodeus, the evil spirit, has killed them all before they have lain with her, and her maids reproach her with having strangled them (cf. the Russian version). Raguel offers Sara's hand to Tobias (cf. Armenian and Russian versions); and Tobias, by Raphael's advice, makes a fumigation with the heart and the liver of the fish, which drives Asmodeus into the utmost parts of Egypt. Next morning Raguel sends to inquire if Tobias is alive, and learns he is (cf. Gypsy and Russian versions). After recovering the ten talents Tobias returns home with Sara and Raphael (cf. Gypsy and Russian versions), cures his father's blindness with the fish's gall, and offers to Raphael half of all that he has brought (chap. 12, vv. 2, 5; cf. most versions).
"'But I,' is the answer, 'am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels . . . . Now therefore give God thanks, for I go up to him that sent me.'
"And when they arose they saw him no more" (cf. Gypsy, Armenian, Straparola's, Gaelic, Old English, and other versions).
Plainly the folktale is not derivable from the Book of Tobit;[1] no, the Book of Tobit becomes rightly intelligible only by means of the folktale. The burial of the dead
- ↑ Laura Gonzenbach gives as a Sicilian folktale "The History of Tobià and Tobiòla" (No. 89, vol. ii., pp. 177-181), which must be borrowed directly from the Book of Tobit. Reinhold Köhler, who annotated her stories so admirably has, rather strangely, no note upon this one. The source, perhaps, seemed too self-evident.
