Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/221

Rh reproach as to how he found her she would have to leave him. Through the cunning of Fionn he is led to break the taboo and "it was in a mosshole he awoke on the morrow. There was no castle, or a stone left of it on another." Diarmaid sets forth to seek his wife, he finds her ailing to death, and to be cured she must have three draughts from the cup of the King of the Plain of Wonder. Helped by a little russet man, he gets the talisman, as was prophesied of him; but, advised by the little russet man, he gives the maiden to drink out of a certain well, which changes their love into aversion, and he returns to the light of day.

This last feature should be noted as characteristic. The mortal lover always tires sooner than the fay mistress. Oisin cannot stay in Tír-na n-Og. Perceval gives but one night to the Lady of the Chessboard.

We now come to the "unspelling" stories, and I will cite in the first place one which is the most striking testimony I know of to the influence of this formula upon Celtic mythic lore. There is a widely spread folk-tale of a hero robbed of three magic gifts and getting them back thus; by chance he eats some fruit or herb which changes him into an ass, causes his nose to grow, sets horns upon his head, or produces some equally unpleasant result. Another herb he finds heals him. Armed with specimens of either, he wins back his talismans. In Grimm it is No. 122, Der Krautesel, and in Vol. III., p. 201, variants are given. In one the hero is one of three soldiers, and he receives the gifts from a little grey man. But neither here nor in the variants given by Dr. R. Köhler (Orient und Occident, II., p. 124) is the opening the same as in Campbell's No. X.—The Three Soldiers.

The three come to a house in the wilderness dwelt in by three girls who keep them company at night, but disappear during the day. In the house is a table, overnight they eat off it, and when they rise the board is covered, and it would not be known that a bit had ever come off it. At the first night's close one soldier gets a purse never empty; at the second, the next one a cloth always filled with meat; and the third, the youngest (the hero), a transporting whistle. But as they leave he must needs ask them who they are, and they burst out crying, "They were under charms till they could