Odysseus and Polyphemus: The Name and the Curse

EVER SINCE the publication of Wilhelm Grimm's Die Sage von Polyphemnt in 1857, it has been common knowledge that Odysseus' adventure with the Cyclops Polyphemus in the ninth book of the Odyssey is not the source of a widely distributed folk tale, but merely its earliest extant version. Further studies, especially those by Hackman, Radermacher, Frazer, Carpenter, and Page,2 have made it clear that the Homeric version is a unique combination of two normally independent tales, both known throughout the whole of Europe and well into Asia, and that, with one or two possible exceptions, the many versions of these tales (Hackman gives 221 of them) owe nothing to the Odyssey. The first of these tales normally falls into three parts. In the first part, the hero, with some companions, is trapped by an ogre, who eats some of them; the remainder then blind the ogre, usually with the spit on which he roasts his victims. In the second part, the hero, alone or with some surviving companions, makes his escape with and by means of the ogre's livestock, the commonest method being to wear the skin of a sheep or other animal. In the third part, the hero calls to the ogre that he has escaped, and the ogre throws him a magic object which betrays the hero's whereabouts and almost causes his death. In the commonest version this object is a ring which, when the hero puts