Grateful dead (folklore)

[1][2] The grateful dead spirit may take many different physical forms including that of a guardian angel, animal, or fellow traveler.

[4] Folkloristic scholarship classifies ATU types 505–508 under the umbrella term the Grateful Dead, each subtype referring to a certain aspect of the legend:[5][6] As described by Stith Thompson, all tale types begin when the hero pays the creditors of a dead man, and later he meets a man in his travels who agrees to help him, as long as they divide in half whatever reward they may gain.

[12] In his own revision of the folktale index, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther subsumed previous subtypes 507A, 507B and 507C under one type, ATU 507, "The Monster's Bride".

[21] According to Jurjen van der Kooi and Don Beecher, the theme of "the grateful dead" was developed in medieval times as courtly epics and chivalric romances.

[25] Hispanist Ralph Steele Boggs listed occurrences of the AT 505 in the Spanish literature of Late Middle Ages,[26] and stated that the motif is also present in the 16th-century play The Old Wives' Tale, by George Peele.

After selling the gifts for the burial, he meets the dead in the form of a rich merchant who offers to become his sponsor in the tournament in exchange for a share of the rewards.

[36] Scholar George Stephens, in his edition of Medieval romance Amadace, listed other occurrences of the grateful dead in tales from Europe and Asia, as introduction to the book.

[37] In an Irish fairy tale from County Donegal, The Snow, the Crow, and the Blood, a grateful dead, in the form of a short red man, helps a prince against three giants and exorcizes the devil's thrall on a princess.