Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/139

Rh is as mundane as well can be! The statements as to Chrétien de Troyes' work (pp. 10 1, 106) are completely out of date. Chrétien certainly says he wrote of "le roi Marc et Iseut la blonde," but that one sentence is all we know on the subject; to say that this poem, or it may have been lai, was "the earliest poetical version of the story on a large scale" is a pure flight of imagination, executed in the teeth of the now generally accepted theory that the earliest Tristan poem was composed in England. If there is one point we are all pretty well agreed upon now it is that Tristan is in no sense a French legend. As to the prose version, the older portions derive from Thomas. Nor do any of the modern school of critics now believe that Chrétien's Conte del Graal is the first literary presentation of the Perceval story.

On p. 116 Professor Jones does grave injustice to our vernacular Arthurian literature previous to Malory. Does he not know the fine versions contained respectively in the Thornton and Harleian Mss., and published by the Early English Text Society? Malory used both of these freely, and no small portion of the praise bestowed on the last books of his compilation belongs rightfully to the author of the beautiful stanzaic Harleian poem, whose verses Malory has embodied, with scarcely any alteration, in his text. To this unknown writer, and not to Malory, belong "the waters wap and waves wan" quoted by Professor Jones, and the final interview between Guenevere and Lancelot, of which there is no trace in the French text. I sincerely share the writer's admiration for Malory, but I hope, when a second edition of this little manual is called for, he will render justice to the unknown and most true poet whose rightful laurels have so long been worn by the prose writer. Malory's crown of fame can well afford to lose a few borrowed leaves!