Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/320

 312 suitable to be introduced into the discourses of mediæval preachers. One of these tales, which is only found in the English manuscripts of the Gesta, is practically identical with that of king Lear and his three daughters. It runs to this effect:—Theodosius, Emperor of Rome, had three daughters, of whom he enquired how much they loved him. His eldest daughter declared she loved him more than herself. Therefore he married her to a rich and mighty king. His second daughter averred she loved him as much as herself. So he married her to a duke. But his third daughter told him she loved him as much as he was worthy, and no more. The emperor, offended, only married her to an earl. After that he went to war with the king of Egypt, who drove him out of the empire. He wrote for help to his eldest daughter, who refused him more than five knights for fellowship while he was out of the empire. Then he wrote to his second daughter, who, however, would do no more than "find him meat and drink and clothing honestly as for the state of such a lord during the time of his need." As a last resource he wrote to the third, telling her of her sisters' replies. She at once induced her husband to gather a great host, and go with the emperor to battle against his enemies, with the result that the latter were defeated, and the emperor was restored to his throne, to which his youngest daughter succeeded after his death.

Looking at the coincidences between this story and that given by Geoffrey, and at the fact that the latter's work had been circulating and well-known for upwards of a century in this country, among the very classes in the midst of which the Gesta Romanorum was produced, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the gest of the emperor Theodosius owes its existence to Geoffrey's account of king Lear. But, if so, it seems likely that the parentage is not immediate, but that the story was verbally transmitted for some time before it was again put into writing.

Although, however, this tale is not now found among the Cymric tribes as a living organism, it is given by Bladé, with some variation,