Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/108

100 The Outcast Child, Pope Innocent type. The Pope is identified with Leo IX, and the repentant father with Hugo IV, Count of Lower Elsass and nephew of the Emperor Conrad. These identifications, not warranted by history, cannot, it is needless to say, be traditional, though the story is given as such. Similar difficulties arise as to the traditional character of several other stories. The author has ingeniously explained a tradition concerning Frederick Barbarossa, to whom the building of the church at Kaysersberg is ascribed. It is said that he was about to pledge his Empress's crown for the money required when two angels were sent from heaven with a purse to redeem it. On the doorway of the church is a sculptured group of the coronation of the Virgin, from which, as described, there can be little doubt that the legend has arisen. Examples like this of the birth of tradition are worth noting. In The Vision of MacConglinne we have two versions of an ancient Irish folk-tale, from MSS. of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively. Professor Wollner contributes, by way of introduction, an exhaustive analysis of both versions, a discussion on the authorship, and an account of a few parallels. The theme is the cure of Cathal, King of Munster, of a demon of gluttony which possessed him, and includes, amid much girding at the Church and the monks, a Rabelaisian vision of a land of plenty. The recital of the vision, and the sight and odour of food which the patient is not allowed to touch, tempt the demon from his stomach up into his mouth and thence out to reach the good things it desired, when the cauldron is upset over it and it is thus caught. There can be little doubt that we have here preserved one of the stories told by the wandering gleemen or storytellers. The attitude towards the Church (and especially towards the monks, who are abused in no measured terms), the glorification of the story-telling profession, and the rewards demanded for the repetition of the tale, all point to the same conclusion. As often