Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/67

Rh Consoled Widow best known from The Matron of Ephesus in the writings of Petronius, Phaedrus, etc. But the views of this eminent scholar have been severely handled, not to say pulverised, by Mr. A. Nutt and Prof. A. C. L. Brown. Mr. Nutt, laying just stress on the clearer arrangement and far finer style of the Welsh tale, inclines to agree with M. Gaston Paris that behind Yvain and The Lady of the Fountain lies a lost Anglo-Norman romance, of which both extant works are but versions, the former in French poetry, the latter in Welsh prose,—a theory to a large extent identical with that put forward in 1869 by Dr. C. Rauch. And Prof. A. C. L. Brown, following in the steps of a whole series of scholars, has triumphantly demonstrated the essentially Celtic character of all the main incidents in the story. The resultant theory of the relations between Yvain and The Lady of the Fountain may be indicated thus:

Celtic source or sources

Anglo-Norman romance

Chrétien de Troyes Yvain

The Lady of the Fountain

Hartmann von Aue Iwein

Ywain and Gawain