Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/50

42 has convincingly shown, an attempt to harmonise different and somewhat conflicting versions. As our present text was compiled in the early 11th century, the versions upon which it is based must be much older. Indeed, there is little reason to doubt that the elements of the story belong to the oldest stratum of Irish fancy, and that these elements were combined, much as we find them in the 11th century text, not later than the 7th century. In this saga Cuchulainn is loved by a queen of Faery, Fand. She comes to earth in bird-guise, and is wounded by the hero. She throws him into a magic sleep, visits him, and thrashes him to such purpose that for a year he lies on his couch, away from the court and all his friends, and can speak to nobody. Healed by faery intervention, he visits the Otherworld, and brings back Fand with him. The jealousy of his mortal wife Emer is thereby aroused, and she bitterly reproaches him. Fand thereupon returns to the Otherworld, and Cuchulainn and Emer, to whom a magic drink of forgetfulness is given, are left at peace with one another.

Here, then, we have the husband and the two wives, and the death-in-life trance of one of the chief actors in the story. I suggest no connection, I do not for a moment imply that we have before us two variants of the same theme, differentiated by the fact that in the one the hero, in the other the heroine, undergoes the magic trance. I merely point out that a story involving the same essential elements as those of the prototype of Eliduc and Gold-tree was one of the most famous of Gaelic legends. If the race could fashion the one story it could fashion the other.

Hitherto in my argument I have tacitly and implicitly accepted the "transmissionist" postulate. This I take to be that the similarity of folk-tale in modern Europe is to be accounted for by the transmission from definite centres within historic times of complete and well-rounded narratives. Still, for argument's sake, taking my stand on this platform, let me meet a possible objection arising from the