ABSTRACT
In the case of this tale, AT Type 1137, we do not have to piece together spare parts of the tale from obscure mythographers: we have our fullest version at the very beginning of Greek literature in Homer’s Odyssey (c. 700 BC). Hence there has been a long battle between those who see the Homeric tale as the fount of all other versions, or as at least a complicating influence on them because of its popularity, and those who see it as a specific and unusual telling of an already established tale.1 And established it undoubtedly is in the repertoire of modern oral folktale at least: Oskar Hackman assembled 170 versions of the main tale and the story of the rarely related no-man type at the beginning of the twentieth century.2 A handful of medieval literary and not-so-literary versions also provide rich comparative materials in addition to the oral examples.
