Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/267

 Reviews. 231

when only seven years of age. The scribe of the eleventh century MS., the Book of the Dun Cow, comments that Culand's hound cannot have been one of the three sprung from Con- ganchness' cairn ; the latter's death, he justly remarks, happened long after the Tain in which Cuchullin is stated to be seventeen years old, and, therefore, necessarily long after the latter's slaying of Culand's hound which he asserts, moreover, came from Spain.

From these facts the following inferences may, I think, be fairly drawn. There were independent stories connected with Ailbe, one associating him with Celtchar and Culand, one with Culand and Cuchullin; the latter, owing to its inclusion in the Tdin^ became the more famous. But the other continued to be told and copied in spite of its inconsistency with that systematisation of the saga chronology which took place after, some time in the seventh century, the Tain assumed substantially its present form, and attracted to itself a number of other Ulster sagas. That the Celtchar death-story was not thus attracted and modified affords strong presumption that, sub- stantially, it antedates the literary fixation of the Tain in the seventh century. And in this case the folk-tale themes in question must be far older on Irish soil. They may be added to the score of such themes which I have already detected in pre-eleventh century Irish saga literature. And, like the majority of the other instances, they occur in such a way as to preclude the hypothesis of recent alien origin.

Alfred Nutt.

Thom.'Vs' "Roman de Tristan." Edited by Joseph B6dier. 2 vols. 1902, 1905. (Societe des Anciens Textes Fran- ^ais.)

The publications of the Societe des AncieJis Textes Fratifais, excellent as they are, appeal as a rule to but a limited circle. If M. Bedier's edition of the Tristan makes a wider claim, the reason is to be found less in the merit of the work, though