Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/209

Rh of the terrestrial Paradise. By order of the king two knights, Mitone and Aristeus, sail up the river till they come to a castle situated on the bank. On the opposite bank is a lofty mountain, and between the mountain and the castle is stretched a chain, in such a fashion as to render further progress impossible. In despair our two knights agitate the chain violently. Soon an old man, whose garments emanate a delicious perfume, appears at one of the windows of the castle. They beg him to raise or lower the chain that they may continue their exploration, but the old man refuses and tells them that he is the servant of a far greater Lord than Alexander, and warns them against prying into the secrets of the Ruler of the World. "For more than three thousand years," he says, "have I guarded this chain, and in all that time but two men have passed, one before the Deluge and one after, and they dwell over beyond in the garden where is the tree of immortality. Nor will I stir from here until the day of Judgment." Finally he urges them to return and presents Mitone with a stone for Alexander. On this stone is engraved a human eye, and its meaning is afterwards explained to the king by Aristotle, who takes the place of the Jew in the Iter ad Paradisum.

In German poetry the episode of the Iter was related by the priest Lamprecht (about 1150), by John Enenkel (1250), and by Ulrich von Eschenbach (1290).

We find it also in an interesting Italian poem discovered by Arturo Graf, which recounts the journey of Ugo d'Alvernia (Huon d'Auvergne) to the regions of the Under