Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/313

 Rh as to the character of the writing,—whether it was, as I assume, a second copy from the autograph or original hand, and whether it is in a French or Italian hand,—for it would have been of great importance in settling, not only orthographical difficulties, but the still greater difficulty of ascertaining the origin of this version. In the Introduction the Hebrew translator states merely that he translated it from the "vernacular" without indicating the language from which he made the translation,—whether it was French, or Provencal, or Italian. We shall have therefore to rely on internal evidence in the attempt which will be made, later on, to settle that problem.

Since its publication. Prof. Steinschneider has devoted a chapter to it in his Hebräische Übersetzungen des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1S93), pp. 967-969, §578. He considers this book to be one of the greatest curiosities in Hebrew literature. Judging the book from its fragmentary character, Steinschneider maintains that the author has deliberately abbreviated it far beyond the few passages which he owns to have somewhat reduced, and which, according to his statement, did not amount to more than three small pages, so that the brief reference to the "Keste," i.e. the Quest of the Grail, as well as that to other books of the Cycle, are not due to the original editor of the book from which the translation has been made, but to the translator. Steinschneider notices also the occurrence of a good number of Romance expressions which resemble Italian, and he therefore concludes that the original must have been an Italian version. But hitherto no such Italian text has been discovered.

Dr. M. Schüler has treated this version more fully in an article published in the Archiv f. neuere Sprachen u. Literatur, vol. cxxii. pp. 51-63. After giving briefly the history of this text, Dr. Schüler proceeds to give an analysis of its contents, and, comparing it with the French versions published by P. Paris, he comes to the conclusion