Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/516

 474 Reviews.

ultimately reasserted itself in the collections designed to oust it. But this is not so. In the elaborate classification of sources fur- nished by Marr in sections 268-298, only eight tales are set down to popular folklore and legend of Armenian origin, and even these have a Christian stamp upon them. The old Armenian mytho- logy has practically not influenced these collections at all. They were formed too late, and always under monkish influence and in monkish centres. The national life of Armenia, so far as it was literary and self-conscious, was ever confined by political adversity to the religious cloister. It is probable that the manuscipt litera- ture of Georgia contains a far richer store of folklore and pre- Christian legend than the Armenian, just because that country has enjoyed an unbroken political existence from the fourth century up to the eighteenth. In Tiflis and the neighbourhood there was always held a petty court, with circles of knights and ladies in which national romance and epic found listeners. In Armenia monkish surroundings were quick to stifle such profane lays.

Some twelve of these Armenian fables are traced by Marr to the Kalilah and Dimnah collection, which may perhaps have once existed in Armenian, since their Georgian neighbours possess an ancient text of it, probably made originally from the Pehlevi Many apologues from Barlaam and Josaphat have also been trans- ferred to the Wardan collection, as well as fifteen tales from the Alexander romance. Some fifty-three tales are classed by Marr as doctrinal, edificatory or interesting ; and they represent the tales which monks and pilgrims may have interchanged as they loitered on warm afternoons in the courts of an Armenian wanq or cloister. A selection of the most amusing ones would form a very pretty volume. Those of course should be chosen for translation which possess some local colour.

In his third volume. Professor Marr, in pp. 1-64, gives an elaborate account of the contents of ten codices of the Edjmiatzin library. There follows the Armenian text of ten more fables ascribed to Wardan. Their titles are as follows : —

1. The ten merchants who were men.

2. The turtles and the lobsters.

3. Christ and the twelve nails.

4. Who is roundest ?

5. The rich man and the labourers, the princes, dogs and birds.