Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/362

 34^ The European Sky-God.

The gold, like the green, was appropriate to the bearer of the mistletoe.^ It will further be noticed that whoever wore the branch in question (Gramoflanz, Gawain, or Parzival) was exposed thereby to the attack of another champion eager to wrest from him the coveted prize. Lastly, the branch was worn round the helmet as a garland or crown : it formed in fact the regale of the rex nemorensis. Not only was Gamoflanz a king; but Gawain too is said to have reigned as a king in Wal- weitha^- that is Galloway,^ and — as Miss Weston points out* — it is in Galvoie or Galloway that Chretien locates the CJidteaii Merveil.

Arthur Bernard Cook.

(To be continued.)

^ Verg. Aen. 6. 204 ff. Is there an allusion to the man-god with his golden bough in Anth. Pal. 4. i. 47 f. Meleager vol fj.T]v Kai xP'^o'e'O'' ov ?

^William of Malmesbury Gesta regum A}igloi-ujn 3. 2S7 (ed. W. Stubbs London 1889 ii. 342).

^F. Lot in Romania xxv. 2 n. 3. ■*Miss J. L. Weston Sir Perceval \. 191.