Notes on the “message of death” motif

Note: this text is extracted from Book III, chapter 20.

“When the prince said this, Phalabhūti, in order to please him, went that moment, as he was commissioned, to get the earrings made, and the prince readily went with the king’s message, which Phalabhūti told him, alone to the kitchen. When he got there and told the king’s message, the cook Sāhasika, true to his agreement, immediately killed him with a knife, and made a dish of his flesh, which the king and queen, after performing their ceremonies, ate, not knowing the truth; and after spending that night in remorse, the next morning the king saw Phalabhūti arrive with the earrings in his hand”.

This incident reminds one of Schiller’s ballad: “Der Gang nach dem Eisenhammer” (Benfey, Pañcatantra, vol. i, p. 320). The story of Fridolin in Schiller’s ballad is identical with the story of Fulgentius which is found in the English Gesta Romanorum (see Bohn’s Gesta Romanorum, Introduction, p. 1). Douce says that the story is found in Scott’s Tales from the Arabic and Persian, p. 53, and in the Contes Dévots or Miracles of the Virgin (Le Grand, Fabliaux, v, 74). Mr Collier states upon the authority of M. Boettiger that Schiller founded his ballad upon an Alsatian tradition which he heard at Mannheim. Cf also the eightieth of the Sicilianische Märchen, which ends with these words: “Wer gutes ihut, wird gutes erhalten.” There is a certain resemblance in this story to that of Equitan in Marie’s Lais. See Ellis’s Early English Metrical Romances, pp. 46 and 47. It also resembles the story of Lalitāṅga in the Kathākosa (see my translation, p. 166), and the conclusion of the story of Damannaka (pp. 173, 174). The story of Fridolin is also found in Schöppner’s Sagenbuch der Bayerischen Lande, vol. i, p. 204.-

As Tawney mentions above, the incident in our story appears in the Contes Dévots. The title of this tale is: “D’un Roi qui voulut faire brûler le fils de son Seneschal.” It was adapted in the Italian Cento Novelle Antiche, No. 68, where the plot is cleverly worked out. An envious knight advises one of the king’s favourites, of whom he is jealous, to hold his head farther back when serving the king, who, he says, objects to his unpleasant breath. The knight then tells the king that his favourite page acts in this way to avoid his breath. The enraged monarch orders his kilnman to throw the first man who brings him a message into the furnace. The page is immediately dispatched, but passing a monastery, goes in to listen to Mass. The knight now sets out to see if his plan has worked, and arrives at the kiln before the page, where he pays the penalty of his wickedness.

The story is also found in a work of Walter Mapes of the twelfth century. It was printed and annotated by Thomas Wright, De Nugis Cnrialium (1850), Camden Society. It reappears in the Liber de Donis of Etienne de Bourbon (thirteenth century); John of Bromyard’s Summa Prædicantium (fourteenth century); the Dialogus Creaturarum of Nicolaus Pergamenus, etc. Reference should be made to Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. ii, pp. 44 445, whence these latter have been taken.

The Arabic form of the story is found in the Book of Sindibād, Clouston’s edition, pp. 137-141 (see also pp. 292, 293). Here a sultan adopts an abandoned infant who is given the name of Ahmed. When grown up he discovers by chance one day that the favourite concubine has a slave as lover. He does not report the matter, but the guilty woman is afraid, and feigning to have been raped by Ahmed, calls upon the sultan for a suitable punishment to be inflicted. The executioner is told to behead the first man who says to him: “Hast thou performed the business?” Ahmed is told to ask this question in a certain house. On the way he meets a group of slaves, and among them is the concubine’s lover. He tries to delay Ahmed in order to get him into trouble with the king, and finally agrees to take the message himself—with the usual result.

Two similar tales occur in C. Vernieux, Indian Tales and Anecdotes, Calcutta, 1873. In the second of these it is a letter, and not a message, which is used as the instrument of death.

As already mentioned in Vol. I, p. 52n¹ “the letter of death” motif is a lieu commun in folk-lore. It has been referred to by various names, such as the “Uriah letter,” “Bellerophon letter,” and “Mutalammis letter” motif, according as to which the particular author took as the standard example— the Biblical, Greek or Arabic.

I think, however, that a general term, such as that suggested above, is preferable. As compared with the “letter of death,” examples of the “message of death” are rare, but they are, of course, only different varieties of the same motif. I shall discuss this motif at greater length at the end of Chapter XLII, where a good example of the “ letter of death” occurs.

The incident of innocently eating the flesh or heart of a loved one is well known from the story in Boccaccio, day 4, nov. 10. For full details see Lee, The Decameron, its Sources and Analogues, pp. 152-156.—n.m.p.