Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/394

 386 mythological, or borrowed and literary, of this legendary portion; {d) the relation of Cymric and Gaelic legend generally. Professor Rhys has made many acute suggestions under head {a) M. Gaston Paris, under head (c), has, in his study of the Lancelot story, made the most valuable existing contribution towards the explanation of the Arthurian romance; under head (d) there are scattered suggestions due to Prof. Zimmer, M. Loth, and myself, and I may claim to have clearly seen from the outset the importance of the factor. But much remains to be done, and no more fascinating field of study could be chosen.

I may here note a pamphlet on the Grail story, which I have unfortunately mislaid, sent to me from America by, I think, a Mr. Maclean. In addition to some spirited renderings from Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival it contained one ingenious suggestion—a comparison of Peredur's adventure with the Addanc of the lake, as told in the Welsh story of Peredur, son of Evrawc, and Sigurd's adventures with Fafnir and Sigrdrifa, as told in the Volsunga saga.

The foregoing Report has been largely concerned with critical questions, but I have, I trust, succeeded in bringing out the importance of what may appear at first blush to be mere dry-as-dust exhibitions of pedantry. It is only by the most exact and searching examination, conducted with all the appliances of the philologist, the palæographer, the historian, and the archaeologist, of all the remains written, figured, and oral of Celtic romance, that we can hope to trace its development and to set forth its true nature. The truth at which we thus arrive, by means which maybe deemed pedantic and wearisome, is far more beautiful than those lazy imaginings we spin out of our own consciousness. And meanwhile we have the spring of as fair and clear a stream of romance as ever welled forth from the imagination of man to cheer and refresh us in our march through the Sahara of criticism. Merely as a story-book Mr. O'Grady's Silva Gadelica is excellent reading, and if one takes it up side by side with the