Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/254

228 Maassebuch of the sixteenth century; the German translation of Helvicus (1612) and Tendlau's Fellmaier's Abende. None of the versions quoted by Cosquin, Kohler, Shaineanu, and others, goes back beyond the sixteenth century. Taking it at its lowest estimate, this version of mine belongs at latest to the twelfth century. The existence of this text has been unknown hitherto. It has therefore been assumed by all those who knew it only from the Maassebuch that it was a German tale, which the compiler of that book of legends had introduced into it. Out of twenty-five longer and shorter "exempla" this would have been probably the only example not taken from ancient Hebrew writings. But my discovery of the Hebrew text sets this hypothesis thus far at rest, but not the question of its origin. Considering that in the Bodleian MS., out of one hundred tales, the Hebrew sources of almost all can be shown, it is not likely that this and perhaps one or two similar should be the only exceptions. German origin is quite out of the question, as this MS. has been written in a French-speaking country. Not a single trace points to Europe as the original home of this tale, embedded in the middle of a large collection. It does not stand at the end as an addition made by the scribe, but is in the very midst of a copy of a much older MS. I have already pointed out the connection between this MS., written in the west of Europe, and the older collection written some centuries previously in Palestine. To a similar collection must this tale also have belonged, as will be shown later on.

The third tale, taken from the more ancient collection (Cod., 82) enables us to prove the fact of changes occurring in more recent copies. The same tale is found in both collections, and one of the most important elements which gives to the old recension quite a pathetic form is entirely omitted in the second, viz:—the love of woman daring death, whilst father and mother shrink in dread from the