Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/436

 41 6 Reviews.

of " Le Chevalier du Papegau," is really, as Herr Freymond seems to think, a distorted version of the same story. The cat mcy have been originally a water-monster, but that aspect of the story seems to have been lost in that of the demoniac character of the beast. Strictly speaking, it is as a fight with a fiend, " U7is ane}?ns" that the Romancer regards it. Nor is its origin as given in the Triads precisely that of a water-demon, though it is fished out of the water. The Chevalier- Poisson story seems rather to belong to a line of tradition in which the water origin is insisted upon : we should class it with the Grendel story, and the analogous account given in Diu Crone of the slaying of a water-monster and his mother by Gawain, which Herr Freymond seems to have overlooked. We have not the poem at hand, and our notes are scanty, but unless we mistake, the creatures were of monstrous shape, and overgrown with seaweed.

To his dragon stories Herr Freymond might well have added that of Konig Ortnit, a capital illustration of his points. The monster is treacherously introduced into his land by the heathen king whose daughter he has carried off. It is sent as a present, a harmless beast. Grown to full size, it devastates the land, and finally, when Ortnit goes to slay it. he himself falls a victim Should Herr Freymond ever project a second edition of his excellent monograph, he may, perhaps, think these hints worth following up.

Jessie L. Weston.

Shakspeare's Pericles and Apollonius of Tyre, a Study IN Comparative Literature. By Albert H. Smyth. Philadelphia : MacCalla and Co. 1898.

Mr. Smyth in this essay has collected all the available facts about the distribution of the Apollonius romance in different languages in the Middle Ages. In an appendix, the Gesta Romatiorum version is given, and it was apparently at first Mr. Smyth's intention to give the Anglo-Saxon Apollonius also. As Zupitza's edition in the Archiv 1896 is not easily found, it is to be regretted that this original design was not carried out. A great