Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/527

 8*8. VII. JUNE 29, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

519

very amusing the array often was. The social assemblage was in the evening, when supper was served by the good women of the parish, and jollity had full sway. Sometimes, in the poorer villages, this annual gift-day made part of the stated agreement between pastor and people. The clergyman's stipend would be so much in money " and a dona- tion"; but more often it took the form of a freewill offering, though counted upon by both sides. M. <J. L.

" RYMMYLL " (9 th S. vii. 427). This means a blow or a stroke, and according to the latest edition of Jamieson's 'Scottish Dic- tionary' it has a variant "rummel." Thus Barbour's lines,

And mony a riall rymmyll ryde Be roucht thair [apon] athir syde,

may be explained thus : "And many a royal blow severe is dealt there on either side." THOMAS BAYNE.

Rymmyll=rummel, a blow. I am afraid H. P. L. is in error in saying Jamieson gives no clue, as the word occurs there with the reference to evidently those very lines in Barbour. J. G. WALLACE-JAMES, M.B.

Haddington.

' ATTUR. ACAD.' (9 th S. vii. 68, 198, 392). The date given in my answer to the above query was on the authority of Ames and Herbert's 'Typographical Antiquities,' 1786, which under Thomas Powell gives the follow- ing : " 1547, 'The Attorney's Academy,' Middle Temple Library, octavo, and Watt's ' Biblio- theca Britannica.' " After reading the kindly worded intimation of my mistake, I requested a friend in London to copy the title-page of the supposed 1 547 edition in the library men- tioned, and find it is dated 1647, also that there is a copy of the 1623 in the Gray's Inn Library, which probably is the first edition. I hope Q. V. will accept my thanks for correcting my error made in using informa- tion without duly weighing it.

JOHN RADCLIFFE.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac. By Jessie L.

Weston. (Nutt.)

Miss WESTON, who has already contributed to the "Grimm Library" of Mr. Nutt a study of 'The Legend of Sir Gawain,' has added to the same series an elaborate analysis of the companion legend of Sir Lancelot, its origin, development, and posi- tion in the Arthurian romantic cycle. In the execution of a task upon which she is known to have been for some time engaged, and with regard

to which she possesses unrivalled knowledge, she upsets the conclusions of many of her predecessors and treats the subject with a thoroughness un- equalled since Mr. Edwin Sidney Hartland eave us his exhaustive work on ' The Legend of Perseus ' Starting with the view she has already enunciated, that m order to understand the growth and deve- lopment of the Arthurian cycle we must disentangle the lives of its principal heroes, she sets herself to establish what in this, as in other legends, is the product of literary invention, and what in its prin- cipal features the outcome of mythical tradition Though to the general reader the best known, the most representative, and perhaps the most popular of Arthur s knights, the man to whose sin and its results may mainly be attributed the passing of Arthur and the disruption of the noble fellowship of knights, Lancelot is no hero of prehistoric myth, 1 solar or otherwise, as Gawain or Perceval may well be." He is, moreover, a comparatively late addition to Arthurian legend. For the confusion that exists in the popular mind concerning Lancelot Tennyson's rearrangement of Malory's previous re- arrangement is mainly responsible. Miss Weston does not hesitate to affirm that * The Idylls of the King 'may be regarded as "outside the range of critical Arthurian scholarship," and should never be advanced " as evidence for the smallest tittle of Arthurian romance." As regards the name always associated with his, the assertion that the hero was sent to fetch home the bride of Arthur is due to Tennyson, Lan'celot in the genuine story being unborn at the time of Arthur's marriage with Guenevere. In the early legends, though the names are mentioned of Sir Gawain. Sir Kay, Sir Bedivere, Sir Ider, Sir Carados, and others, that of Lancelot never occurs. It is first found in the ' Erec ' (the ' Roman d'Irec et d'Enide ') of Chrestiens de Troyes, one of the most voluminous of the early romancers, who died about the close of the twelfth century, and whose first work it probably was. Herein Lanceloz del Lac comes third in order of merit In the list of Knights of the Round Table, his superiors being Sir Gawain and Sir Erec. Chrestiena afterwards, in ' CligeX' puts Sir Perceval before him. while Hartmann von Aue, in the German ' Erec, also reckons Lanzelot von Arlac third in order. No mention is ever made of any love existing between Lancelot and Guenevere. In ' Le Chevalier de la Charrette' of Chrestiens Lancelot blossoms into the queen's lover, and is ranked above Gawain. while, curiously enough, from the last poem of Chrestiens, the ' Perceval,' Lancelot entirely dis- appears. Miss Weston further comments on the absence of Lancelot from Welsh literature and his practical exclusion from the English vernacular romances. We cannot follow Miss Weston's general treatment of her subject, though we accept her as an ideal guide into what Spenser calls the delight- ful land of Faery." Her work is a scientific as well as a delightful exposition of views the value and significance of which future discoveries are likely to establish. We have only one suggestion to make. We think she should translate her quotations and extracts from the German. German in connexion with the Arthurian cycle is not so generally known as French.

Inquisitions and Assessment* relating to Feudal Aids,

1284-1431. Vol. II. (Stationery Office.) THIS volume follows the same lines as its predecessor, and, so far as we can test it, equal care has been