Page:English Fairy Tales.djvu/284

258 brothers succeeds after the others have failed, is one of the most familiar in folk-tales, amusingly parodied by Mr. Lang in his Prince Prigio. The taboo against taking food in the underworld occurs in the myth of Proserpine, and is also frequent in folk-tales (Child, i., 322). But the folk-tale parallels to our tale fade into insignificance before its brilliant literary relationships. Browning has a poem under the title working upon a line of King Lear. There can be little doubt that Edgar, in his mad scene in King Lear, is alluding to our tale when he breaks into the lines:

The latter reference is to the cry of the King of Elfland. That some such story was current in England in Shakespeare's time is proved by that curious melange of nursery tales, Peele's The Old Wives' Tale. The main plot of this is the search of two brothers, Calypha and Thelea, for a lost sister, Delia, who had been bespelled by a sorcerer, Sacrapant (the names are taken from the Orlando Furioso). They are instructed by an old man (like Merlin in "Childe Rowland") how to rescue their sister, and ultimately succeed. The play has besides this the themes of the Thankful Dead, the Three Heads of the Well (which see), the Life Index, and a transformation, so that it is not to be wondered at if some of the traits of "Childe Rowland" are observed in it, especially as the title explains that it was made up of folk-tales.

But a still closer parallel is afforded by Milton's Comus. Here again we have two brothers in search of a sister, who