Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/184

158 to the Mabinogi, certainly no trace of direct influence of the Welsh story upon the Highland one.

It may, however, be asserted that all of these tales are derived more or less directly from the French romance. This has been confidently stated of the Breton ballad cycle of Morvan le Breiz (Barzaz Breiz) and of the Breton Märchen, Peronik l'idiot (Souvestre, Foyer Breton), and I have preferred making no use of either. In the matter of the Scotch and Irish tales a stand must be made. The romance, it is said, may have filtered down into the Celtic population, through the medium of adaptations such as the Mabinogi or Sir Perceval. Granted, for argument sake, that these two works are mere adaptations, it must yet follow that the stories derived from them will be more or less on the same lines as themselves. Is this so? Can it be reasonably argued that the folk-tale of the Great Fool is a weakened copy of certain features of the Mabinogi, which itself is a weakened copy of certain features of the French poem? Is it not the fact that the folk-tale omits much that is in the Mabinogi, and on the other hand preserves details which are wanting not alone in the Welsh tale but in Chrestien. If other proof of the independent nature of these tales were needed it would be supplied by the close similarity existing between the Great Fool opening and the Fionn legend. This is extant in several forms, one of which, still told in the Highlands (Campbell's lxxxii.), tells how Cumhall's son is reared in the wilderness, how he drowns the youth of a neighbouring hamlet, how he slays his father's slayer, and wins the magic trout the taste of which gives knowledge of past and to come, how he gets back his father's sword and regains his father's lands, all as had been prophesied of him. Another descendant of the French romance it will be said. But a very similar tale is found in a fifteenth century Irish MS. (The Boyish Exploits of Finn Mac Cumhall, translated by Dr. J. O'Donovan in the Transactions of the Ossianic Society, vol. iv.); Cumhall, slain by Goll, leaves his wife big with a son, who when born is reared by two druidesses. He grows up fierce and stalwart, overcomes all his age-mates, overtakes wild deer he running, slays a boar, and catches the magic salmon of