The woman's desire that the survivor shall allow himself to be buried with her, recalls the Norse saga of Asmund and Aswit, who, when they adopted each other as brothers, exchanged a similar promise. Asmund afterwards caused himself to be taken into the barrow with the dead Aswit, but took with him a store of provisions which was sufficient to support him for a time; he was afterwards drawn up by a lucky accident (Suhm's Fabelzeit, ii. 178). A similar custom between man and wife is found in Sindbad's voyages (1001 Nights, ii. 137). The unfaithfulness of the woman after coming to life again, seems originally only to have been intended to express that she had begun a new life and forgotten the old one.
[It is however commonly believed among the dwellers in the North of Scotland that if you save a man's life he will repay you by doing you some great injury. Sir Walter Scott, as usual, seized on this superstition and used it in one of his stories. Mordaunt is trying to save Cleveland, and Bryce remonstrates with him thus, "Are you mad?" said he, "You that have lived so long in Zetland to risk the saving of a drowning man? Wot ye not, if ye bring him to life again, he will be sure to do you some capital injury?" Pirate, vol. i. chap. 7.—Tr.]
17.—The White Snake.
From Hanau. The story of the Queen of the Bees (No. 62) has some similarity to this. So has another in the Ammenmärchen of Vulpius; see also Soldat Lorenz, No. 7, in Pröhle's Kindermärchen. By eating a white snake, one learns to understand the speech of animals, as in the Saga of the Seeburg (Deutsche Sagen, i. 131). The same result is produced by eating the heart of a dragon or of a bird. See Donkey Cabbages, No. 122. According to a Scotch saga, the middle piece of a white snake roasted by the fire gives a knowledge of supernatural things to any one who shall put his finger into the fat which drops from it. See Grant Stewart, pp. 82, 83. Compare with this The Magic Horse, in Straparola, iii. 2.
From Cassel, the best and earliest version is to be found in Burkard Waldis, Book 3, Fab. 97 (1542). The Nugœ venales (1648, s. l. 12mo.) contain also Crepundia poetica, and pp. 32, 33, an abridgement of our story.
"Pruna, faba et stramen rivum transire laborant,
Seque ideo in ripis stramen utrimque locat.
Sic quasi per pontem faba transit, pruna sed urit,
Stramen et in medias praecipitatur aquas.
Hoc cernens nimio risu faba rumpitur ima
Parte sui: hancque quasi tacta pudore tegit."
