Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/505

 Rh cam’ loup-loup-loupin’ in, and sat down by the ingle-side. Then out says he:

and so on, as before. The lassie, persuaded by her mother, gives the padda his supper, after which he sings out:

and so on, and she puts the padda in bed. Then he asks her to come to her bed, which she does. Next, at his request, she takes him to her bosom; and lastly, to strike off his head with an axe, which, we may well suppose, she was nothing loth to do, whereupon up starts “the bonniest prince that ever was seen; and, of course, they lived happy a’ the rest o’ their days.”

In this version, it will be seen, the transformed prince is more exacting than in the German story, where, after having supped off a golden dish, and lain on the girl’s couch for three nights, the spell is broken. In the Breton version, the enchanted princess is restored to her proper form when she has been kissed three times. We shall consider the incidents that follow in the Breton story after referring to some analogues which were current in Europe during mediæval times.

Under the title of “The Knight and the Loathly Lady”, in Originals and Analogues of some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (published for the Chaucer Society, pp. 483 ff ), I have cited, in full generally, the following variants, etc., of the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”: Gower’s Tale of Florent, from the First Book of the Confessio Amantis, Harl. MS. 3869 leaf 34 ff.; Ballad of the Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell; Ballad of the Marriage of Sir Gawain; Border Ballad of King Henrie; Icelandic Version, from the Latin of Torfœus; Another Icelandic Version, from Grim’s Saga; Gaelic Version, from Campbell’s collection; Mandeville’s story, outlined above; Turkish, Sanskrit, and