Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/297

Rh In some particulars it is impossible to accept the logic of the essay: for instance, when it is contended that the hypothesis of a Welsh origin for the Arthurian romances is damaged, because there are certain correspondences between French and Irish which have no counterpart extant in Welsh. There are not many scholars who can speak with authority of all that is extant in Welsh literature; none of them, it may be safely said, would argue lightly from "non-extant" to "non-existent." Miss Weston herself points out in another reference the futility of the argument ex silentio, "so dear to some scholars." Yet because the Welsh tradition, of which we know the merest fragment, happens to fail us. Miss Weston seems inclined to prefer the Breton tradition as a source for the Arthurian romances: the Breton tradition, of which we know practically nothing at all.

These objections are stated here because they seem valid. Even so, however, they will scarcely detract from the merit of the essay as a new starting point in these investigations.

—The pont evage, the bridge under water, which appears in the story of Gawain, both in the Charrette and in Walewein, may be found in Macdougall's Folk and Hero Tales, p. 94 (the Bare Stripping Hangman), another of the many resemblances in modern Gaelic folklore to the old "matter of Britain."