Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/183

Rh here at least Mabinogi and Sir Perceval have preserved a trait almost effaced in the romance. In the above-mentioned Highland tale the incident is as follows: the hero finds "a treasure of a woman sitting on a hill, and a great youth with his head on her knee asleep"; he tries to wake the sleeper, even cuts off his finger, but in vain, until he learns how it was in the prophecies that none should rouse the sleeping youth save the Knight of the Red Shield, and he, coming to the island, should do it by striking a crag of stone upon his breast. This tale, as already remarked, shows affinity to the Perceval saga in two incidents, and is also, as I have pointed out ("Folk-Lore Record," vol. v., Mabinogion Studies), closely allied to a cycle of German hero and folk-tales, of which Siegfried is the hero. Now Siegfried is in German that which Fionn is in Celtic folk-lore, the hero whose story is modelled most closely upon the lines of the Expulsion and Return formula. We thus find not only, as might be expected, affinity between the German and Celtic hero-tales which embody the formula, but the derived or allied groups of folk-tales present likewise frequent and striking similarities.

Another Highland tale (Campbell, lviii., The Rider of Grianaig) furnishes a fresh example of this fact. Here, also, the deeds to be done of the hero were prophesied of him. But these deeds he would never accomplish, save he were incited thereto and aided therein by a raven, who in the end comes out as a be-spelled youth, and a steed, a maiden under spells, and the spells will not go off till her head be off. Even so Peredur is urged on and helped by the bewitched youth. In other respects, there is no likeness of plan and little of detail