Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1979, Blaðsíða 241

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In Part II, tales which in the entirety of their structure and contents
constitute parallels (hitherto unnoticed) to DrJ are mustered and discussed.
These parallels are the recorded variant forms of a recognized, if rather rare,
‘international’ folktale, Aarne-Thompson Type 671 E* (See Part II B). This
marchen is known to the international folktale catalogue (The Types of the
Folktale) only from Russian and (Russian-influenced) Finnish tradition.
A comparison between DrJ and a representative variant of this marchen
(Afanasjev’s version, see pp. 184-187) reveals a surprising degree of sameness.
Subsequently, all available variants of the Russian-Finnish group are surveyed
for divergencies (pp. 187-193), but this adds little of significance to the general
picture and does not change it.
The relationship between DrJ and the folktale AT 671 E* is a case of
simple and indubitable identification. In essence, DrJ is a variant of AT 671
E*, and is by far the earliest known version. When the Icelandic author of DrJ
fashioned his exemplum out of the 671 E*-story he knew, he used the whole of
it, and he does not appear to have made radical alterations, although his
moralistic purpose doubtless made some changes necessary. The most impor-
tant are easy to detect. It seems unlikely that he borrowed any of the action or
detail from any other story.
The distribution of this folktale is not limited to the Russian-Finnish area. In
the West this is attested at least by the existence of DrJ and in the East by
two variants which the present writer has chanced upon, but which have not
yet been registered in the folktale catalogue. These are:
(1) The story, recorded in Aramaic in Syria, which is presented above as
the first of the parallels (Part II A), (2) the more seriously divergent variant
recorded among Turkish people in South Siberia, here dealt with in Part III C.
These two may be regarded as chance occurrences in accessible translations,
and one suspects that many more could be found.
The comparison of all available recordings of AT 671 E* (pp. 187-193)
provides an opportunity to reconsider its place in the folktale catalogue, where
it is listed, as if it was a sub-type of Type 671, The Three Languages. The
reason for this was doubtless the easy identification of the motif (present in
Afanasjev’s variant) of the boy’s interpretation of the cock’s crowing, with the
motif of the prediction of the birds in 671 (and similar predictions in other
tales of the Vaticinium group). But this criterion must be judged as invalid.
The motif is found only in 2-3 of the texts, and it is absent in DrJ and in the
Aramaic and Turkish variants. Last but not least, this motif is far from being a
necessary or integral part of the action of the tale.
On the whole, the Vaticinium group (AT 517, 671, 725, 913) and the story
of the dream-interpreting boy (671 E*) appear not to share any elements
which would make it necessary to regard 671 E* as a branch of that family. Its
unusual and specific matter gives reason to think that the marchen of the
dream-interpreting boy was originally an independent story.
Part III of the article deals with more distant parallels to DrJ. The most
important of these is doubtless the story Sapientes in The Seven Sages of