Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/256

 230 mostly in the sixteenth century, and what is more interesting, somewhere in the North of Persia. It forms as it were the connecting link. For we find in it a variation of tale No. i taken from the very old collection, and also a parallel to No. 4, taken here from the Bodleian MS. This fact proves now that also those tales for which oriental Hebrew sources were not known, had none the less come from such eastern collections; and are not borrowed from some western source. The differences between these two versions are no less characteristic. They prove my theory, that oriental tales have kept in their home more of the mythical and religious original element, and that the tale in its migration becomes less complete, and is impoverished to a certain extent. The European copy is a modification and materialisation, and there are besides profound changes in the accessorial elements. Though the canvas is the same, the design on the whole the same, the colouring, however, is different. From No. 2 it is also evident that the Bodleian text is not original: instead of three things, Jochanan does only two for the queen. Similarly half of the prophecy of the birds has dropped out of the European text, and the reason for the washing of hands: these are an illustration of the changes in No. 4. I append, therefore, the Hebrew-Persian version of this:ale.

We have here, moreover, almost all the elements out of which mediaeval romances were spun. Crescentia and Veronica are only the counterpart of such similar simple tales, not to go as far back as the Clementine Recognitions with their legend of Faustus and Faustinius, or the legend of Eustathius Placidas.

But I must not go on rambling over countries and centuries, as I might be lured away from the object of my paper, viz., to bring before you the find I was fortunate enough to make, and to point out that the literary unbroken tradition for at least 3-4 tales can be traced, in one literature, as far as 1,000 years back, if not more, and the great