Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/261

Rh Again to explain the method of abridging Crestien, found in the Welsh tale, on the ground that “”, is to go dead against the facts. If there is one thing the “Kelte” does like it is “”; indeed, no better instance of the detailed and vividly picturesque descriptive passages which characterise Celtic traditional literature in all its stages could be found than in one of the Mabinogion, the Dream of Rhonabwy.

My strictures upon Herr Othmer’s essay must not be misinterpreted; I most cordially recognise the value of the patient and laborious researches by which he and so many other German scholars are determining the correct nature of mediæval texts. But to decide problems in which the most intricate ethnological and sociological factors are concerned something more is needed than the method of acute and patient comparison by which a magazine writer justifies a charge of plagiarism against a popular novelist.