Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/79

 Rh decided traces of that presentment of the wife found in. We must thus assume that and  and go back to a common original, itself akin to, but neither derived from, nor the source of, that version. This further source postulated for all three tales may be called X, and its first offshoot is, modified by insertion into the Arthur cycle. There was probably no framework-setting in X, as otherwise the absence of this feature in would be inexplicable. But at some date X was set in a framework and in this stage gave rise to the Welsh original of. It continued to live on in the Gaelic-speaking area subject to both elaboration and change, until it assumed that form in which it is still found among the peasantry of Ireland and Scotland. But X itself, as we have seen, cannot have come from Marie's lay; both must go back ultimately to a common source.

In endeavouring to reconstruct X, made up as we have seen of the Werwolf's Tale (found separate in ) plus elements common to the other three versions, is of most value, and after  the current folktales which, though recorded so much later than, may fairly be assumed to have retained archaic "folk" elements in a more perfect form. We saw above that both are distinguished from by the more lenient view taken of the wife's conduct and by the fact that the latter returns to her father's land whither she is followed by the transformed husband. Only, however, has preserved the significant opening incident which, as Professor Kittredge conjectures, proves the wife to be of supernatural kin. He then reconstructs the basis of X as follows: Allured, it may be, by the hero's prowess, the supernatural maiden comes to woo him, as is so frequently the case in Irish mythic romance. But she has left behind her a lover of her kin, who follows her, and after a while persuades her to return to their own land of Faery. Thither the mortal husband follows and—should recover her. Thus, indeed, the story runs in one of the most famous of old Irish mythic romances, the Wooing of Etain. Etain is an immortal, wife of Mider; reborn in mortal form she is met at a spring side by Eochaid, King of Ireland, who is seeking a wife, but will not be content save with one, "whom no man of the men of Erin had known before him." They wed; Mider follows her to mortal land, wins her from Eochaid in a