¹ Schmoll, Edward A., ‘Odysseus and the Stag: The Parander’, Helios 14, no. 1 (1987), 22–8Google Scholar. His note 1 gives a summary of the few instances in which this episode has been treated in scholarly literature.

² Ibid., p. 22.

³ Ibid., p. 25.

⁴ Other folk motifs in the Odyssey are discussed by Heubeck, A. and Hainsworth, J. B. in A Commentary on the Odyssey (Oxford, 1989Google Scholar): see Hainsworth's introductions to Book v, i.249–51, on the characterization of Calypso, to Book vi, i.29 on Nausicaa; and Heubeck's discussion of Circe, as a type of witch familiar to folklore, ii.50–1, with reference to 10.133–574.

⁵ Stith, Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature (rev. ed., Bloomington, 1955Google Scholar) classifies the appearance of this motif in its various related forms: F 159.1, Otherworld reached by hunting animal; G402, pursuit of animal to ogre's house; N773, adventures from following animal to Lower World; N774, adventures from pursuing enchanted animal. Carl, Pschmadt's dissertation, Die Sage von der Verfolgten Hinde (Greifswald, 1911Google Scholar), is an attempt to discover the ‘alter sagentypus’ underlying the hunted-hind motif so common in the romantic literature of the middle ages, and gives a descriptive catalogue of the motifs occurrence in a range of literatures. See especially his section ‘Die Hinde lockt den Helden ins Wunderland’, pp. 45ff.Google Scholar

⁶ Stanford, W. B., The Odyssey of Homer (London, 1947), i.365 n. 1Google Scholar.

⁷ See George, Dimock, The Unity of the Odyssey (Amherst, 1989), pp. 123fGoogle Scholar. Dimock suggests that Odysseus' determination to give his men a meal ‘turns out to imply re-creating from the beginning the capability of joint action which succeeded against Polyphemos’. According to Dimock, Odysseus' return to his ships with the carcass of the stag, and invitation to his men to ‘feast and return to life with all the feelings of a supremely successful hunt’, dissipate the despair caused by the company's encounters with Aiolos and the Laistrygonians. He accounts for the detailed and lengthy treatment of the killing of the stag by the fact that it ‘is an instance of the predatory act, the opposite of lotus-eating, which signifies the Man of Pain‘, i.e. Odysseus.

⁸ ‘It is a commonplace in Irish tales to find a hero guided, or enticed, to the Otherworld by a supernatural being (whether in the shape of a man or a beast) whom he pursues’, O'Rahilly, T. F., Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin, 1946), p. 127Google Scholar.

⁹ Just as dangerous sorceresses like Calypso and Circe ‘combine the beautiful and the terrible’, so the feé in Celtic folklore can be either beautiful or hideous. Arthur Brown, C. L., Origins of the Grail Legend (Cambridge, MA, 1943), p. 23Google Scholar

¹⁰ Stokes, W. and Windisch, E., Irische Texte, third series, Part II (Leipzig, 1891), pp. 318–21Google Scholar. For a discussion of the relation of the amour of Odysseus and Circe to the folkmotif of trial by sleeping with a sorceress, see Andrew, Dyck, ‘The Witch's Bed but Not her Breakfast’, Rheinisches Museum 124 (1981), 196–8.Google Scholar

¹¹ ‘The Adventures of Lomnochtan of Sliabh Riffe’, Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge 9 (1899), 294–316.Google Scholar

¹² Lucy, Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance (New York, 1903), p. 15.Google Scholar

¹³ Partonopeu de Blois, ed. Joseph, Gildea (Pennsylvania, 1970), vol. II, part 2, verses 499–1062Google Scholar. See also La Romance en prose de Tristan, ed. Løseth, E. (Paris, 1891), paras. 323–35Google Scholar; the lay of Guigemar, Marie de France, verses 69ff. While not parallel in every respect, all contain the dominant motif of a hero lured to the Otherworld in the course of hunting a boar or stag in the woods. For a discussion of the variations of the motif in these particular cases see Paton, op. cit. (n. 12), pp. 15–18; 64–9.

¹⁴ W. B. Stanford's remark that Odysseus' unusual pride in his kill is shown by his emphasis on the size of the stag (Stanford, op. cit. (n. 6), p. 370) was taken by Schmoll to be ‘a poetic affirmation of his heroism’ (Schmoll, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 25); the animal's wondrous size, however, would be consistent with its role as a portent.

¹⁵ See examples below.

¹⁶ The relationship between the Odyssey and a prototypical Argonautika is examined by Karl, Meuli, Odyssee und Argonautika (Berlin, 1921Google Scholar). For his discussion of the ‘Helfermärchen’, the motifs of which the Circe episode shares, see pp. 97ff. At 112ff., Meuli speculates on Circe's possible role in an older saga. See also his discussion of the ‘Abenteuer im Waldhaus’ folk-motif at pp. 102ff., in which, among other trials, the hero engages the resident demon in battle, wounds him and tracks him to the underground lair to which he has escaped by following his trail of blood. For a discussion of the common folk motifs in the Circe episode, see Heubeck, op. cit. (n. 4), ii.50–2.

¹⁷ Paraphrased from Jean-Pierre, Hallet, Pygmy Kitabu (New York, 1973), pp. 187–9Google Scholar. Less striking, but still noteworthy, are the Indonesian folktales in which a hero is led Underground in the course of following his prey. In one version of this tale, a man spear-wounds a wild boar which has entered his garden. Seeking to reclaim his spear, which has remained fixed in the animal's side, the man follows the wounded animal's trail of blood to a crevice in a cliff. Entering it, he follows the trail to the Underground world of Earthsprites (Jan, de Vries, Volksverhalen uit Oost-Indie [Zutphen, 1925–1928], ii (47), 217–19Google Scholar). In another version, the youngest of seven sons wounds a Woodspirit, who similarly bears away the spear. The spirit vanishes down a hole in the earth, and the son follows, by way of a liana rope. Once at the bottom of the hole, he discovers that he has wounded the chief of the Underworld dwellers (Adriani, N. and Kruijt, A. C., De Bare'e-sprekende Toradja's van Midden-Celebes, part III, ‘Taal en letterkundige schets der Bare'e taal en overzicht van het taalgebied’, no. 74, pp. 409ff).Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Douglas, Frame, The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic (New Haven, 1978), pp. 40ffGoogle Scholar. Frame discusses in detail the close relationship of Circe's realm to Hades, although he does not locate it within Hades itself. Most recently, Gregory Crane has suggested that Odysseus' journey to Circe's realm ‘borrows elements from Catabasis literature’, and that the encounter between Circe and Odysseus' men reflects a meeting between Persephone and the newly arrived dead: Crane, G., Calypso: Backgrounds and Conventions of the Odyssey, Beiträge zur Klassischen Philologie, Band 191 (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 31ff.Google Scholar

¹⁹ For other examples of a confusion between Fairyland and the Land of the Dead see, for example, James, Hastings (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (New York and Edinburgh, 1913), ii.689ffGoogle Scholar.; Arthur C. L. Brown, op. cit. (n. 9), pp. 15ff., 89. Further references are given in Tom Peete, Cross, Motif Index of Early Irish Literature, Indiana University Publications Folklore Series no. 7 (Bloomington, 1952), p. 236.Google Scholar

²⁰ Frame suggests that this geographical ambiguity is explained by Circe's dual role in the Odyssey: as she both ushers Odysseus into the underworld and receives him again on his return, she represents both death and darkness and light and life. Frame, ibid., pp. 47ff. While ‘Aeaea’ is normally associated with Aῖa and Aiétés (Bruno, Snell, Lexikon des Frühgriechischen Epos (Göttingen, 1979Google Scholar)) Dimock relates it to ai, thus ‘Isle of Wails’ (cf. Cocytus). He also draws attention to the fact that Circe is the ‘daughter of Helios the Sun and the nymph Perse, whose name like Persephone's suggests death’ (op. cit. (n. 7), p. 122).

²¹ Cf. Hermes' role at Od. 24.Iff.

²² ‘Elpenor's death in Circe's house accompanies Odysseus' journey to the Underworld’, Finley, J. H., Jr., Homer's Odyssey (Cambridge, MA, 1978), p. 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ See, for example, Douglas, Stewart, The Disguised Guest (London, 1976), p. 57Google Scholar. Page interprets both the displacement of the Underworld scene, and Teiresias' failure to tell Odysseus ‘the path and measured stages of his journey home’, as evidence of the Odyssey's multiple authorship: Page, D., The Homeric Odyssey (Oxford, 1955), pp. 21ff.Google Scholar