Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/38

 30 lady then begged her lord to give her leave to serve God. An abbey was founded by Eliduc, and the lady took the veil together with thirty nuns. So Eliduc wedded his love; many days they lived together, and ever was perfect tenderness between them. And lastly Eliduc, founding a rich church, devoted himself wholly to the service of God, whilst Guilliadun joined his first wife, to whom she was dear as her own sister. So they three passed in holy wise their remaining days, praying for each other, and mutually exhorting each other to the love of God.

Everyone knows the story of Little Snow-White, of Schneewittchen persecuted by her jealous stepmother, welcomed by the dwarfs in the forest, and preserved, apparently lifeless, although in the full bloom of her beauty, in the glass case guarded by the seven dwarfs, until the destined prince appears. At first blush there is nothing in common between this tale and the Lai of Eliduc, save the one incident of the heroine's suspended animation, and this is preceded and followed by such entirely different incidents as seem effectually to discriminate the stories. But it is a canon of storyology never to judge a tale by one version, but to examine all the variants. These, so far as Germany is concerned, are brought together by Grimm, iii, 87 et seq., whilst the fullest enumeration of the non-German variants is to be found in Gonzenbach, p. 202. The versions range from the Balkan peninsula to Iceland, and from Russia to Catalonia; Germany and Italy being the two countries in which the greatest number have been noted.

In one of Grimm's variants a count and countess meet the heroine by the wayside, and the count loves her, and would fain have her with them in their carriage, but his lady seeks only how she may be rid of her. Here then wifely, and not stepmotherly, jealousy is the motive of the plot. This is still more so in the Neapolitan version written down by Basile in the early part of the 17th century (Pentamerone, v, 5). The heroine having at the