Min moder de mi slach't, Min fader de mi att, Min swester de Marleenken Söcht alle mine Beeniken, Und bindt sie in een syden Dook Legst unner den Machandelboom; Ky witt! ky witt! Ach watt en schön vagel bin ich!
--a rhyme which Goethe puts into the mouth of Gretchen in prison. In the German story the step-mother's brains are knocked out by the fall of a mill-stone, and the bird-boy is restored to human form; but in a Scotch variant the last event does not take place. It may have been thrown in by some narrator who had a weakness for a plot which ends well. All these wonder-tales had probably an original connection with a belief in the transmigration of souls. In truth, the people's _Märchen_ are rooted nearly always on some article of ancient faith: that is why they have so long a life. Faith vitalizes poetry or legend or art; and what once lived takes a great time to die. Now that the beliefs which fostered them have gone into the lumber-room of disused religions, the old wonder-tales still have a freshness and a horror which cannot be found even in the best of brand-new "made-up" stories.
Another reason why the dead come back is to fulfil a promise. The Greek mother of the Kleft song has nine sons and one only daughter. She bathes her in the darkness, her hair she combs in the light, she dresses her beneath the shining of the moon. A stranger from Bagdad has asked her in marriage, and Constantine, one of the sons, counsels his mother to give her to the stranger. "Thou art wont to be prudent, but in this thou art senseless," says the mother. "Who will bring her back to me if there be joy or sorrow?" Constantine gives her God as surety, and all the saints and martyrs, that if there be sorrow or joy he will bring her back. In two years all the nine sons die, and when it is Constantine's turn, the mother leans over his body and tears her hair. Fain would she have back her daughter Arete, and behold Constantine lies dead. At midnight Constantine gets up and goes to where his sister dwells, and bids Arete to follow him. She asks what has happened, but he tells her nothing. While they journey along the birds sing: "See you that lovely girl riding with the dead?" Then Arete asks her brother if he heard what the birds said. "They are only birds," he answers; "never mind them." She says her brother has such an odour of incense that it fills her with fear, "It is only," he says, "because we passed the evening in the chapel of St John." When they reach their home, the mother opens the portal and sees the dead and the living come in together, and her soul leaves her body. The motive of a ride with the dead, made familiar by the "Erl König" and Burgher's "Lenore," can be traced through endless variations in folk-poesy.