Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/131

 The Roman van Walewein. 123

are twelve circles about the castle, and moats between the walls, but Gawain is not kept back, though it takes him some time to fight through the successive guards.

The princess recognises him as the knight that has appeared to her in a dream ; and Gawain, for the love of the princess, forgets his duty to the master of the sword, for whom he has undertaken the adventure. The knight and the princess are helped to escape by the ghost of the Red Knight, whose shrift was heard by Gawain, and the Fox comes with them. When the}- reach Ravensten the}' find that King Amoris (as M. Paris expresses it) "has had the good taste to die in the meantime". After some difficulties, including an unnecessary encounter with Sir Estor, the brother of Sir Lancelot, in the ordinary inconsiderate fashion of romances, they come to King Wonder, and there the conditions are fulfilled that restore the Fox to his proper shape. It is noted that there was a concomitant restoration of the stepmother, who had been changed into a toad by the sister of Roges.

So Gawain brings awa)- the chessboard ; and he, and the Princess, and Roges, and Assentin the father of the Princess, and the King of " Hisike", father of Roges, are all together at a high festival in the court of Arthur. Pieter Vostaert would willingly tell of the wedding of Gawain, but it appears that the authority oi " the French book" was wanting.

The common features of the story are the search for rare things, one after another, and one for the sake of the other, in a series ; with the help of the Fox.

In Walewein, the search is for the chessboard of King Wonder, the magic sword of King Amoris, and the Princess, the King's daughter of India. The Fox has no part in the first two adventures. In the third, the grati- tude of the dead is brought in as a miraculous agency : the incident does not appear in the simpler forms.

In Grimm's story the search is for the Golden Bird, the