Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/164

142 The third and last stage of the Greek is that which remains to us in Boissonade's Anecdoton. In it new matter, like the attack on the iconoclasts, was added; and the Apology of Aristides lost in it some of the authentic touches which the Armenian representative of the earlier stage still echoed. The Christian Arabic is a version of this fully developed Greek form. So according to Zotenberg and Kuhn is the Ethiopic; though I do not myself feel sure that the Ethiopic will not be found to represent an earlier stage of the Greek. It is possible also that some of the Latin texts may preserve the older Greek forms. With a view to recovering the Aristides Apology in an authentic form, the Ethiopic and Latin texts of the story should be examined; and search made for the lost Syriac form so imperfectly represented by the Armenian. It is even certain that the Armenian text, as it survives to us in Arakhel's poem and in the Menologia, has been mutilated. For in the so-called Geography of Vartan, a work of about 1300, the Indian city of Sinavathan is mentioned as the seat of the kings of India, where Abener and Jovasaph dwelt. But the existing Armenian text has lost this detail.

FOLKLORE FIRSTFRUITS FROM LESBOS.

(Read at Meeting of 17th December, 1895.)

The following notes were collected, partly from my own observation and questioning of muleteers and all sorts of odd people, partly from Mr. Stavros, schoolmaster of Kalloni, in Lesbos. I have to express my warm thanks to Mr. V. R. Paton for constant help while in the island. What I