Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/49

 Rh observer as being more archaic in the Gaelic than in the German version. I mean the mode of divination practised by the jealous queen. In Schneewittchen and in most of the continental variants she consults her mirror, in Gold-tree a trout in a well. No competent judge but will say that in the 10th century, the period to which we have inferentially carried back the original of Eliduc, the latter is the more likely mode. Now in one of Grimm's variants the jealous queen consults a dog, Spiegel by name. Which is the more likely, that the mirror of several versions arose from a misunderstanding of the name of the divining animal, or that one narrator altered mirror to dog? In any case the magic fish of knowledge (generally a salmon) is prominent in Gaelic myth. The fullest English account is that of O'Curry (Manners and Customs, ii, 142 et seq.), paraphrasing the Shannon legend found in the Dindsenchas, a topographico-mythical poem of the 10th-11th century, other early 11th century references to the myth being also given. Later use of this mythic idea abounds in Gaelic legend. It is surely more sensible, as well as more scientific, to refer the trout in the well of the Gaelic folk-tale to this old Gaelic mythic conception, rather than to suppose that a Gaelic story-teller, having heard a version of Schneewittchen, substituted a trout for a mirror. Is it not, on the contrary, evident that the clear surface of the well led by a natural transition to the mirror of the German versions?

What are the principal elements in the hypothetical original of Eliduc and of the Gaelic tales?—the situation of the hero between the two heroines, the death-in-life condition of one heroine brought about by the "villain". Now somewhat similar elements, though differently combined, are to be found in one of the oldest Irish hero-tales—the Sick Bed of Cuchulainn. The text is found in the Leabhar na h' Uidhre (LU.), and professes to be transcribed from an older MS., the Yellow Book of Slane. Like most of the sagas in LU., it is, as Professor Zimmer