Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/222

 214 different connection. The two episodes have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The oldest form of the French romance (that of Aubry of Besançon or Briançon) has been lost, save a small fragment, but the substance of it has been preserved by the German translation of Lamprecht. There is nothing corresponding to the temple of the sun nor to the palace of Cyrus in Pseudo-Callisthenes, only the middle portion of the passage quoted by Dr. Gaster (i.e., the description of the mountain of Nysa) is reproduced by Aubry-Lamprecht. The differences between the two are as follows: In Lamprecht, access to the castle on the hill is given by golden chains, which hang down, and up which the visitors climb; there are 2,000 steps instead of 150; there is no mention of the images of gods nor of an old man, but there is of a golden vine, which encompasses the bed, and the grapes of which are jewels; the old man on the bed is described as asleep; there is no attempt on Alexander's part to carry off any precious objects; no threatening bird; no stirring of the old man; no remonstrance on the part of Alexander's friends (Lamprecht, verses 5260-5319).

I think it is now perfectly plain why Dr. Gaster did not quote the French version (which alone could have been known to Chrestien), and why he did quote the much older Greek and Latin versions. Had he quoted from the French it would at once have been evident that the only point of contact between the two cycles is this: In some of the Grail romances the hero comes to a castle, in the hall of which he finds an old man lying on a bed (in one, Chrestien, he had already met this old man fishing, in others the old man is at once described as dangerously ill, in none is he described as sleeping); in the Alexander story the hero comes to a castle in which is an old man lying asleep on a bed. With the best will in the world there is no possibility of building a theory on such a foundation as this.

Now for the Iter ad Paradisum, of which, according to