Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/277

 Reviews. 255

the beasts of the forest is, in my opinion, not an Other-world, but a purely Folklore figure. In Mannhardt's invaluable work on Feld und Baum-Kultus we find that, in many parts of Europe, the Wood-Spirit is, even to-day, conceived of under a precisely similar form ; i.e. as a gigantic one-eyed man, who acts as Herd to the beasts of the forest, a conception which agrees strictly with Owain's description of the monster as 'Wood-ward,' and the diverse character of the beasts obeying him. Chretien's ' herd of bulls ' appears to be a rationalized version of the original form. The English Yivain and Gaivain here agrees with the Welsh.

But, if the Mabinogi has here preserved the primitive form, in another place it has omitted what appears to be a corresponding original feature, retained alike by the French and English poets. In these two latter versions the Lady of the Fountain has been warned of the coming of Arthur and his knights by a message from the ' Demoiselle Sauvage,' a mysterious personage alluded to no- where else in the work. Now in the Italian Tyrol the Wood-Spirit, referred to above, is still known as LOm Salvadegh {V Homme Sauvage), and has a female partner. I am inclined to think that the Demoiselle Sauvage may, like the Herdsman, be a folklore survival. The fact that the allusion is found in the French and English versions, while it is absent from the Welsh, seems to point to a common original, which, in the case of the Male Wood-Spirit, was followed more closely by the Welsh and English, and in the case of the Female, by the French and English writers. That the authors of The Lady of the Fountain and Ywain and Gawain could, each on his own initiative, have changed Chretien's " herd of bulls" into the diverse creatures which come at their master's .call, seems most improbable, while the change by the more sophisti- cated French poet of monstrous and fabulous creatures into ordinary animals is quite comprehensible. The fact that the English writer, while on the whole following Chretien's version, here falls into line with the Welsh, is an argument in support of the theory, previously advanced by the present writer on other grounds, that the English poet knew other forms of the story, which he drew upon from time to time, to correct, or modify, the defects apparent in the French text.

That the Welsh Mabinogi is a folk-tale, which in its origin is