Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/97

 Rh by Urien as he is riding through the wood and brought up by Urien and Arthur, who avenges Caradoc's death. The MS. is early fourteenth century (cf. Y Cymmrodor, xi, p. 75), but the text must be old, as it has preserved the original northern locale of the legend, Arglud = Arecluta—i.e., the district about the Clyde—although the last transcriber most probably thought of Caradoc as a Welsh prince. It would be unsafe, however, to argue from this fact that the theme of the Babes in the Wood was known to the Welsh of the ninth or tenth century, the period during which the transference to South-west Britain of North Cumbrian legend probably took place; but it may be safely asserted that it was current in Wales in the twelfth century.

It should be noticed that both incidents occur quite casually in the tale, little insistence is laid upon them, and I do not think it possible for one moment that such chance and passing references can have originated the folk-tales current to this day. On the contrary, it seems evident to me that we have here folk-tale incidents which must have been perfectly familiar to the author and hearers of our stories—which were, in fact, commonplaces. If this is so, it shows that at least two well-known types of folk-tale were popular in Ireland in the tenth century, and one in Wales in the twelfth century

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