Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/96

88 house destroyed), is found in the oldest Irish MS., Leabhar n-a h'Uidhre (copied at the end of the eleventh century from MSS. of the early eleventh century) in a fragmentary form. It is also found in a more complete form in the well-known fourteenth century MS., the Book of Lecan (H. 2.16), from which it has been edited and translated by the late W. H. Hennessy, who died before he had completed his edition. The above cited passages are from a copy of the proof-sheets I purchased at the sale of his library. They are only to be found now in the Book of Lecan and in younger MSS., as L.n.H. is imperfect just at the beginning of the tale. It is, therefore, impossible to be absolutely certain that they were in the eleventh century MS. But this is almost certain, as the L.n.H. and B. L. versions are very similar in the passages they have in common. Moreover, Prof Zimmer (Z.V.S., 1887, p. 583) has shown strong reasons for believing that the B. L. version was copied from the Book of Druim Snechta, a now lost MS. of the tenth or early eleventh century, and that it was one of those used by the compiler of L.n.H. for making up his version, which is obviously badly pieced together from at least two older, and at times contradictory, versions. We may, therefore, be almost certain that the episode of the jealous stepmother and of the exposed child was current in Ireland in the early eleventh century at the latest. I need not point out that the form of the other folk-tale incident, the bird-lover, is also considerably older than that which has hitherto been looked upon as its earliest appearance in European literature, the Yonec of Marie de France (late twelfth century).

The incident of the exposed child occurs in the Vita Meriadoci, an as yet unpublished text, the MS. of which {Faust, B. 6) is in the British Museum. Meriadoc is son of Caradoc, king of the district around "Snaudone". Caradoc is slain by his brother, who sends his nephew and niece into the wood of Arglud to be slain. The king's huntsman takes pity on them and hides them; they are seen