Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/262

 226 Reviews.

surely have noted, that the scanty remains of Greek information concerning the Celts do testify to the existence of Celtic Triads long before any Celtic people could have come in contact with Hebrew wisdom. The weakness of Professor Meyer's theory of origin is most apparent when one turns to the alleged Hebrew originals. The Book of Proverbs is the chief source ; but, as most readers of Folk-Lore are certainly aware, the vast bulk of the sentences contained therein (at least 98 per cent.) are not triadic in form. There are not more than half a dozen genuine triads in the whole book (and these, strange to say, are not quoted by Professor Meyer), besides a certain number which are really tetrads : " there are three things . . . and four things." Now this latter form not only produces a very striking literary efifect, but the sayings which are cast in it are among the most memorable, and are certainly the best-remembered, of the collection. Why should the Irish have neglected the duad form of the vast majority of the Hebrew sentences, have neglected the impressive tetrad form, have fastened upon just the half a dozen inconspicuous examples of the Triad ? Why, indeed, unless that form were already familiar to them ?

Professor Meyer further refers to a collection entitled Proverbia Grecorum, Greek sayings translated into Latin before the seventh century by, as their editor conjectures, an Irish scholar in Ireland. If this conjecture is correct, and Professor Meyer approves it, I hold that it strongly supports the native Irish origin of the triadic form. For this is almost unknown to the bulk of Greek proverbs, and if we find it largely represented in a version due to an Irish scholar, it can only be because the latter recast the Greek sayings in a form familiar to himself.

I note, lest it might escape the attention of students of the Ossianic cycle, that in No. 236, a "marvel" triad, the first wonder contains a quatrain from an Ossianic poem. If this number belongs to the original collection ascribed by Professor Meyer to the ninth century, this is one of the earliest testimonies to the saga of Finn and his warriors. The second and third marvels are examples of the " kelpie " belief ; the lake monster in early Ireland has the same characteristics as in living Gaelic peasant belief.