Four Last Songs (Vaughan Williams) song of the cycle "Menelaus." The character Menelaus appears both in Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey". Menelaus is the King of Sparta whose wife, Helen, was taken from him by Paris to Troy. Together with his brother Agamemnon, fellow ruler Odysseus, and other warriors, Menelaus launched the Trojan War to regain his wife and return her to Sparta. In "The Odyssey", Odysseus' son Telemachus visits Menelaus in attempts to obtain news of his father who has not yet returned from the war. The Vaughan Williams' drew inspiration from Menelaus' description to Telemachus of the things Odysseus must do to
The King Who Would Have a Beautiful Wife variants, that she had had herself skinned, and a new one had grown in its place. The sister went to get the same treatment from a barber, and died. The King Who Would Have a Beautiful Wife The King who would have a Beautiful Wife or The King Who Wanted a Beautiful Wife is an Italian fairy tale collected by Laura Gonzenbach in "Sicilianische Märchen". Thomas Crane included in his "Italian Popular Tales", and Andrew Lang, in "The Pink Fairy Book". Italo Calvino included a variant The Three Crones, from Venice, in "Italian Folktales". A king was determined to find