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his friend drowned when still drunk from the wedding. As helpful as before. he comforts
the widow and encourages her to bury the past··in accordance with traditional wisdom:
Anyhow f said to her why worry·_' said, he's only a man anyhow. His
time must be come. I said he's gone. I said you're only a young woman
and I'm only a young man. I said what about you and I matin' it up and
genin'married. She said it's rather late fer ya she said to say them kind of
words. I said why? Well she said when dey brought him ashore he said,
she said when de brought me husband ashore she said the man thai took
his measurement to make his coffin--she said I got engaged to him. She
said you're a little late. Well she said the only thing she said I'll do fer ya,
you'll be my beSt man to me wedding. Me and the guy who look me
husband's measurements are goin' be married next week. You'll be the
best man. Thanked her fer it. So I went to the wedding. She wasn't
mourning long fer her husband. So she got married to him--she never had
any children by the first wife [husband]--I believe it was 14 dozen she had
by the last husband. I'm not sure now whether I'm tellin' a lie or the
Innh··but it wasn't 14 dozen it was 9 dozen. Thank you very much.!
As well as fear of ghosts and corpses, the Marchen mocks fear of graveyards:
This feller had apples to share and they went in the graveyard to share the
apples, you see, and, a feller passin' along, two fellers passing along.
They stopped to the gate; they thought 't was the Lord and the devil
sharing the dead in the graveyard. He'd say, "two for you and one for
me, one for you and one for me." And those two fellers was, st(X)(l up at
the gates, and on their way through the gate they dropped two apples, yOll
see, dropped two apples, and when it comes to they got them all shared,
they said, "and twO in the gate." "Oh," he said, "they wants we too and
they took off, they thought they was goin' after them." [laugh1 2
So, M;irchen give reassurance concerning the good dispositions of the dead towards
the living. Whenever they appear in these tales, it is to beg a service--that of burying their
remains··which they gratefully and generously return in some appropriale way and
circumstance. Only the brave, though, packing up fear, win their confidence as go­
between or executioner of their will. Fear, on the contrary, shuts up the possibility of
communication with the dead. This reassuring and "humanistic" ponrayal of the dead is
contrasted in this corpus with a less favourable picture of the living ant! other otherworld
creatures. Giants, witches and the devil epitomize egotism, indifference and stupidity;
these "supernalUral adversaries" resemble rich employers abusing their workers and, on the
comic edge, faithless women more than the dead, who, in these tales, are murdered or
abandoned victims. Feared, besides, they should not be, because, as "little men" or "ugly
I MUNFLA 64-13JC60. p. 3 (AT 1350).
2MUNFLA 71-50/C971 (AT 1791).