Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/406



References to the Nibelung story are not frequent in early English literature, and they are all old (Beowulf, Widsith) except possibly a reference in Sir Degrevant, which has apparently not yet been noticed:

The gold of Rhine can hardly be anything but the hoard of the Nibelungs. How it came down to a fifteenth-century English scribe, whether by continuous tradition from the old times or by later communication with Germany, may be left as a problem.



In the spring of 1896 I received from a native of Farr, Sutherlandshire, a few notes on some traditions of the district, "told by most respectable and trustworthy people—stories which they said came under their own observation." Finding that two or three of these were fairly interesting, I afterwards got him to tell them over in Gaelic, which I took down at the time, retaining as far as possible the peculiarities of his dialect. As so little has been done in the way of printing local Gaelic, I append some of the originals to the English translations.

