Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/434

 414 Reviews.

old ; and this last is the fatal weapon that cut off his head, and afterwards avenged him out in Byzantine lands in the days of Michael Kalaphates the emperor. For many other less noteworthy things in the Saga we may safely leave students to Dr. Boer's notes. I hope I have said enough to show the value to be placed on the text and the edition.

F. Y. P.

Artus' Kampf MIT DEM Katzenungetum : Die Saga und iHRE lokalisierung IN Savoyen. E. Freymond. Halle : Max Niemeyer.

This interesting monograph has for its subject Arthur's fight with the Demon Cat, an incident related in the prose Merlin, or, as Herr Freymond prefers to call it, Le Livre d' Artus. To English scholars the original is accessible in Dr. Sommer's edition of the Vulgate Merlin, where it occupies the concluding portion of chapter xxxii. and the earlier part of chapter xxxiii.

The version on which Herr Freymond bases his study is that contained in a MS. of the Grand-Ducal Library at Darmstadt ; this he gives in full, only noting variants of the other versions. The writer apparently considers that the Darmstadt MS. repre- sents an earlier form of the story; this we doubt. Comparing the story, as printed by Herr Freymond, with the version printed by Dr. Sommer, it seems more probable that the former gives a condensed and abridged account of an incident related with no unnecessary expansion or amplification of detail by the latter.

The results arrived at by Herr Freymond are extremely inte- resting. He identifies the Cat of the French Romance with the Kymric Cath Paluc, a monster mentioned in the Black Book of Caermarthen, and in certain of the Triads. The Cath Paluc had previously been identified, both by M. Gaston Paris and by Mr. Alfred Nutt, with the Chapalu (the mysterious monster of the Bataille de Loquifer) and Capalu (the Elfin King of Ogier le Danois). Following up certain suggestive indications contained in the poem of Manuel et Amande and the Roma^iz des Franceis,