Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/421

Rh upon which the author has lavished most ingenuity and trouble.

It is natural that this candour on Prof. Rhys's part should have greatly disconcerted his critics, and that practically his work should have been put on one side. Yet I am convinced that never have a larger number of pregnant suggestions with regard to the Arthurian romance been brought together than in these pages. But it requires a trained and critical spirit to turn them to account. As it is impossible to criticise any of Prof. Rhys's theories without going into those questions of date and origin of documents which he passes over almost entirely, I propose to show how others have dealt with these questions, and then to note the relation of Prof Rhys's views to their theories.

Prof Zimmer, we have seen, is concerned with the immediate rather than with the ultimate origin of the French Arthurian literature; as regards the Welsh Arthurian texts he is content to show that many of them cannot have been written, as we possess them, before the twelfth century. In respect of the old Welsh poetry nothing has been done by way of criticism, nothing, outside Prof Rhys's studies, by way of exegesis. In respect of the Mabinogion proper nothing fresh has been done in so far as they interest the folk-lorist. It is in respect of the Arthurian Welsh tales that criticism has been active, especially in respect of the three which are undoubtedly connected in some way with the poems of Crestien de Troies. In my last report I noted Herr Othmer's attempt to prove that the tale of Geraint and Enid is a mere abridged translation of the Frenchman's Erec. Since then M. Gaston Paris has gone over the same ground (Romania, Oct. 1891), and has shown most convincingly that Herr Othmer is wrong, and that the Welsh tale frequently represents a more archaic stage of the story than the French poem. Herr Golther has endeavoured to traverse M. Paris's conclusions, but has merely succeeded in showing