Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/205

Rh

beautifully printed volumes comprise four retellings after Crestien: Erec and Enide (the Enid of the Idylls, the Geraint of the Mabinogion), the episode of Alexander and Soredamor from Cliges, the Knight of the Lion (the Lady of the Fountain of the Mabinogion), and Perceval (the Peredur of the Mabinogion); further, various episodes from the Merlin (in the Huth MS. version), the Lancelot, and the English metrical Morte Arthur.

It is very difficult to understand upon what principle the selection is made. Various stages and phases of the Arthurian romance are represented; but there is no attempt at a logical, a chronological, or a topographical exposition of the romance. Such merits as are possessed by Malory, and works founded on Malory, of giving an orderly summary of the entire body of Arthurian legend are lacking. It would have been better, in my opinion, for the translator to have confined himself to Crestien, but to have amplified this section so as to enable the English reader to dispense in some measure with reference to the twelfth century French poet. As it is, the summaries are neither full nor precise enough to allow of Professor Newell's work being used as a substitute for Crestien, though it must be gratefully admitted that it affords considerable assistance to students of Arthurian romance who are not professed old French scholars. Mention should also be made of the general purity and felicity of the translator's style. Without sham archaicism, he has, as a rule, succeeded admirably in rendering the delicate romantic tone of his originals.

Leaving the Cliges episode out of account, the stories taken from Crestien are already accessible to English readers in Lady Guest's Mabinogion. Reading the two versions together one thing is apparent, the immense superiority of the Welsh. If the latter is, as maintained by many, a simple prose abridgment of the French writer's diffuse verse, one can only say that the Welshman was a born story-teller, who not only knew what to select, but who is continually brightening up his original with picturesque and vivid touches. Let the unprejudiced reader compare Pro-