Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/95

 In prehistoric times there were probably some Brythonic races in Ireland, and in later Christian times there was a great influx of Welsh students into Ireland, and so we must never forget that British folklore and traditions might also have influenced the Irish.

There is, however, a possibility of quite foreign influences, and this is far more important. We can never totally exclude the possibility of some Mediterranean culture elements influencing the insular culture. Archaeology proves only that Celtic art had absorbed some Mediterranean ornaments, etc., but we know that there was a commercial contact between the Mediterranean and the isles, and by this way some motives might have come to Britain already in prehistoric times. I think that the above discussed Llew story might have had such an origin. I will not argue that the Irish story is of foreign origin, but in Welsh the curious combination of motives, which is so similar to the Egyptian, puzzles me. But this part of the Bata story is, according to Professor Flinders Petrie (l.c.) of Asiatic and not of Egyptian origin.

It might be also of some interest to compare the Irish story of Etain's kidnapping and the Pāli Jātaka, No. 327. The Irish story has preserved much better the original features: King Eochaid Airem lost a game (in chess) against the fairy King Mider, and Mider was entitled to name the stake, and he demanded Eochaid's wife Étáin, whom later he carried off It is important that he eloped as a bird. In the Jātaka the King of Garudas (bird-demons) used to come to the King of Benares and play dice with him; he fell in love with the queen, whom he carried off. The king's poet, hidden in the Garuda-King's feathers, was carried to the palace of the queen. In the Irish story it is one of Eochaid's druids who finds Étáin.

Now in the Pāli tale the dice-playing is not explained; the Irish gives a good explanation for it; but, as regards the origin of this motive, I should rather think that it is