Bluegrass Messengers

No. 29: The Boy and the Mantle

[There are no traditional US or Canadian versions. The text that appears in Flanders, Ancient Ballads, I, p. 257 is from The Charms of Melody, printed by J. & J. Carrick, Dublin.

The 47th and 48th footnotes have the same symbol so a footnote is possibly missing, left off by Child. No correction has been made to my knowledge.

R. Matteson 2011]

CONTENTS:

1. Child's Narrative
2. Footnotes (Footnotes moved to the end of the narrative)
3. Brief by Kittredge
4. Child's Ballad Text A
5. Endnotes
6. "Additions and Corrections"

ATTACHED PAGES (see left hand column):

1. Recordings & Info: The Boy and the Mantle
  A. Roud number 3961; The Boy and the Mantle (7 listings)
 
2. Sheet Music: The Boy and the Mantle  (Bronson's texts and some music examples)

3. English and Other Versions (Including Child version A with additional notes)] 

Child's Narrative

A. Percy Manuscript, p. 284. Hales & Furnivall, II, 304.

This ballad and the two which follow it are clearly not of the same rise, and not meant for the same ears, as those which go before. They would come down by professional rather than by domestic tradition, through minstrels rather than knitters and weavers. They suit the hall better than the bower, the tavern or public square better than the cottage, and would not go to the spinning wheel at all. An exceedingly good piece of minstrelsy 'The Boy and the Mantle' is, too; much livelier than most of the numerous variations on the somewhat overhandled theme.^[1]

Of these, as nearest related, the fabliau or "romance" of Le Mantel Mautaillié, 'Cort Mantel,' must be put first: Montaiglon et Raynaud, Recueil Général des Fabliaux, III, 1, from four manuscripts, three of the thirteenth century, one of the fourteenth; and previously by Michel, from the three older manuscripts, in Wolf, Ueber die Lais, p. 324. A rendering of the fabliau in prose, existing in a single manuscript, was several times printed in the sixteenth century: given in Legrand, ed. Renouard, I, 126, and before, somewhat modernized, by Caylus, 'Les Manteaux,' Œuvres Badines, VI, 425.^[2]

The story in 'Cort Mantel' goes thus. Arthur was holding full court at Pentecost, never more splendidly. Not only kings, dukes, and counts were there, but the attendance of all young bachelors had been commanded, and he that had a bele amie was to bring ber. The court assembled on Saturday, and on Sunday all the world went to church. After service the gueen took the ladies to her apartments, till dinner should be ready. But it was Arthur's wont not to dine that day until he had had or heard-of some adventure;^[3] dinner was kept waiting; and it was therefore with great satisfaction that the knights saw a handsome and courteous varlet arrive, who must certainly bring news; news that was not to be good to all, though some would be pleased (cf. stanza 5 of the ballad). A maid had sent him from a very distant country to ask a boon of the king. He was not to name the boon or the lady till he had the king's promise; but what he asked was no harm. The king having said that be would grant what was asked, the varlet took from a bag a beautiful mantle, of fairy workmanship. This mantle would fit no dame or damsel who had in any way misbehaved towards husband or lover; it would be too short or too long; and the boon was that the king should require all the ladies of the court to put it on.

The ladies were still waiting dinner, unconscious of what was coming. Gawain was sent to require their presence, and he simply told them that the magnificent mantle was to be given to the one it best fitted. The king repeated the assurance, and the queen, who wished much to win the mantle, was the first to try it on. It proved too short. Ywain sug-gested that a young lady who stood near the queen should try. This she readily did, and what was short before was shorter still. Kay, who had been making his comments unguardedly, now divulged the secret, and after that nobody cared to have to do with the mantle. The king said, We may as well give it back; but the varlet insisted on having the king's promise. There was general consternation and bad humor.

Kay called his mistress, and very confidently urged her to put on the mantle. She demurred, on the ground that she might give offence by forwardness; but this roused suspicion in Kay, and she had no resource but to go on. The mantle was again lamentably short. Bruns and Ydier let loose some gibes. Kay bade them wait; he bad hopes for them. Gawain's amie next underwent the test, then Ywain's, then Perceval's. Still a sad disappointment. Many were the curses on the mantle that would fit nobody, and on him that brought it. Kay takes the unlucky ladies, one after the other, to sit with bis mistress.

At this juncture Kay proposes that they shall have dinner, and continue the experiment by and by. The varlet is relentless; but Kay has the pleasure of seeing Ydier discomfited. And so they go on through whole court, till the varlet says that he fears he shall be obliged to carry his mantle away with him. But first let the chambers be searched; some one may be in hiding who may save the credit of the court. The king orders a search, and they find one lady, not in hiding, but in her bed, because she is not well. Being told that she must come, she presents herself as soon as she can dress, greatly to the vexation of her lover, whose name is Carados Briebras. The varlet explains to her the quality of the mantle, and Carados, in verses very bonorable to his heart, begs that she will not put it on if she has any misgivings.^[4] The lady says very meekly that she dare not boast being better than other people, but, if it so please her lord, she will willingly don the mantle. This she does, and in sight of all the barons it is neither too short nor too long. "It was well we sent for her," says the varlet. "Lady, your lover ought to be deligbted. I have carried this mantle many courts, and of more than a thousand who have put it on you are the only one that bas escaped disgrace. I give it to you, and well you deserve it." The king confirms the gift, and no one can gainsay.

A Norse prose translation of the French fabliau was executed by order of the Norwegian king, Hákon Hákonarson, whose reign covers the years 1217-63. Of this translatiopn, "Möttuls Saga,' a fragment has come down which is as old as 1300; there are also portions of a manuscript which is assigned to about 1400, and two transcripts of this latter, made when it was complete, besides other less important copies. This translation, which is reasonably close and was made from a good exemplar, has been most excellently edited by Messrs. Cederschiöld and Wulff, Versions nordiques du Fabliau Le Mantel Mautaillié, Lund, 1877, p. 1. ^[5] It presents no divergences from the story as just given which are material here.

Not so with the 'Skikkju Rímur,' or Mantle Rhymes, an Icelandic composition of the fifteenth century, in three parts, embracing in all one hundred and eighty-five four-line stanzas: Cederschiöld and Wulff, p. 51. In these the story is told with additions, which occur partially in our ballad. The mantle is of white velvet. Three elf-women had been not less than fifteen years in weaving it, and it seemed both yellow and gray, green and black, red and blue: II, 22, 23, 26. Our English minstrel describes these variations of color occurring after Guenever had put the mantle on: stanzas 11, 12. Again, there are among the Pentecostal guests a king and queen of Dwarf Land; a beardless king of Small-Maids Land, with a queen eight years old; and a King Felix, three hundred years old, with a beard to the crotch, and a wife, tall and fat, to whom he has been two centuries married, — all these severally attended by generous retinues of pigmies, juveniles, and seniors: I, 28-35; III, 41. Felix is of course the prototype of the old knight pattering over a creed in stanzas 21-24 of the ballad, and he will have his representative in several other pieces presently to be spoken of. In the end Arthur sends all the ladies from his court in disgrace, and his knights to the wars; we will get better wives, he says: III, 74, 75.

The land of Small-Maids and the long-lived race are mentioned in a brief geographical chapter (the thirteenth) of that singular gallimaufry the saga of Samson the Fair, but not in connection with a probation by the mantle, though this saga has appropriated portions of the story. Here the mantle is one which four fairies have worked at for eighteen years, as a penalty for stealing from the fleece of a very remarkable ram; and it is of this same fleece, described as being of all hues, gold silk, ok kolors, that the mantle is woven. It would hold off from an unchaste woman and fall off from a thief. Quintalin, to ransom his life, undertakes to get the mantle for Samson. Its virtue is tried at two weddings, the second being Samson's; and on this last occasion Valentina, Samson's bride, is the only woman who can put it on. The mantle is given to Valentina, as in the fabliau to Carados's wife, but nevertheless we hear later of its being presented by Samson to another lady, who, a good while after, was robbed of the same by a pirate, and the mantle carried to Africa. From Africa it was sent to our Arthur by a lady named Elida, "and hence the saga of the mantle."^[6] Björner, Nordiska Kämpa Dater, cc 12, 14, 15, 21, 22, 24.

There is also an incomplete German version of the fabliau, now credibly shown to be the work of Heimich von dem Türlin, dating from the earliest years of the thirteenth century.^[7] Though the author has dealt freely with his original, there are indications that this, like the Möttulssaga, was founded upon some version of the fabliau which is not now extant. One of these is an agreement between vv 574-6 and the sixth stanza of our ballad. The mantle, in English, is enclosed between two nut-shells;^[8] in German, the bag from which it is taken is hardly a span wide. In the Möttulssaga, p. 9, l. 6, the mantle comes from a púss, a small bag hanging on the belt; in Ulrich von Zatzikboven's Lanzelet, from ein mæzigez teschelîn, and in the latter case the mantle instantaneously expands to full size (Warnatsch); it is also of all colors known to man, vv 5807-19. Again, when Guenever had put on the mantle, st. 10 of our balllad, "it was from the top to the toe as sheeres had itt shread." So in 'Der Man-tel,' vv 732, 733:

Unde [= untenJ het man in zerizzen,
Oder mit mezzern zesnitten.^[9]

The Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, dating from the first years of the thirteenth century, with peculiarities of detail and a partially new set of names, presents the outline of the same story. A sea-fairy sends a maid to Arthur with a magnificent gift, which is, however, conditioned upon his granting a boon. Arthur assents, and the maid takes, from a small bag which she wears at her girdle, a mantle, which is of all colors that man ever saw or heard of, and is worked with every manner of beast, fowl, and strange fish. The king's promise obliges him to make all the court ladies don the mantle, she to have it whom it perfectly fits. More than two hundred try, and there is no absolute fit.^[10] But Iblis, Lanzelet's wife, is not present: she is languishing on account of his absence on a dangerous adventure. She is sent for, and by general agreement the mantle is, on her, the best-fitting garment woman ever wore. Ed. Hahn, vv 5746-6135.

The adventure of the Mantle is very briefly reported to Gawain, when on his way with Ydain to Arthur, by a youth who had just come from the court, in terms entirely according with the French fabliau, in Messire Gauvain, ou La Vengeance de Raguidel, by the trouvère Raoul, ed. Hippeau, p. 135 ff, 3906-55, and in the Dutch Lancelot, ed. Jonckbloet, Part II, p. 85, vv 12,500-527, poems of the thirteenth century. the one lady whom the mantle fits is in the latter Carados vrindinne, in the other l'amie Caraduel Briefbras.

The Scalachronica, by Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, a chronicle of England and Scotland, 1066-1362, begun in 1355, gives the analysis of many romances, and that of the adventure of the Mantle in this form. There was sent to Arthur's court the mantle of Karodes, which was of such virtue that it would fit no woman who was not willing that her husband should know both her act and her thought.^[11] This was the occasion of much mirth, for the mantle was either too short, or too long, or too tight, for all the ladies except Karodes' wife. And it was said that this mantle was sent by the father of Karodes, a magician, to prove the goodness of his son's wife. ^[12]

Two fifteenth-century German versions of the mantle story give it a shape of their own. In Fastnachtspiele aus dem fünfzehnten Jahrhundert II, 665, No 81, 'Der Luneten Mantel,' the amiable Lunet, so well and favorably known in romances, takes the place of the English boy and French varlet. The story has the usual course. The mantle is unsuccessfully tried by Arthur's queen, by the wife of the Greek emperor, and by the queen of Lorraine. The king of Spain, who announces himself as the oldest man present, is willing to excuse his wife, who is the youngest of the royal ladies. She says, If we lack lands and gold, "so sei wir doch an eren reich," offers herself to the test with the fearlessness of innocence, and comes off clear, to the delight of her aged spouse. A meistergesang, Bruns, Beiträge zur kritischen Bearbeitung alter Handschriften, p. 143,^[13] 'Lanethen Mantel,' again awards the prize to the young wife of a very old knight. Laneth, a clean maid, who is Arthur's niece, having made herself poor by her bounty, is cast off by her uncle's wife and accused of loose behavior. She makes her trouble known to a dwarf, a good friend of her father's, and receives from him a mantle to take to Arthur's court: if anybody huffs her, she is to put it to use. the queen opens upon Laneth, as soon as she appears, with language not unlike that which she employs of Cradock's wife in stanzas 33, 34 of the ballad. The mantle is offered to any lady that it will fit. In front it comes to the queen's knee, and it drags on the ground behind. Three hundred and fifty knights' ladies fare as ill as the sovereign.^[14]

The Dean of Lismore's collection of Gaelic poetry, made in the early part of the sixteenth century, contains a ballad, obscure in places, but clearly presenting the outlines of the Engish ballad or French fabliay.^[15] Finn, Diarmaid, and four other heroes are drinking, with their six wives. The women take too much, and fall to boasting of their chastity. While they are so engaged, a maid approaches who is clad in a seamless robe of pure white. She sits down by Finn, and he asks her what is the virtue of the garment. She replies that her seamless robe will completely cover none but the spotless wife. Conan, a sort of Kay, says, Give it to my wife at once, that we may learn the truth of what they have been saying. The robe shrinks into folds, and Conan is so angry that he seizes his spear and kills his wife.^[16] Diarmaid's wife tries, and the robe clings about her hair; Oscar's, and it does not reach to her middle; Maighinis, Finn's wife, and it folds around her ears. MacRea's wife only is completely covered. The 'daughter of Deirg,' certainly a wife of Finn, and here seemingly to be identified with Maighinis, claims the robe: she has done nothing to be ashamed of; she has erred only with Finn. Finn curses her and womankind, "because of her who came that day."

The probation by the Horn runs parallel with that by the Mantle, with which it is combined in the English ballad. Whether this or that is the anterior creation it is not possible to say, though the 'Lai du Corn' is, beyond question, as Ferdinand Wolf held, of a more original stamp, fresher and more in the popular vein than the fabliau of the Mantle, as we have it.^[17] The 'Lai du Corn,' preserved in a single not very early manuscript (Digby 86, Bodleian Library "of the second half of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century"), may well belong, where Wolf puts it, in the middle of the twelfth. Robert Bikez, the jongleur who composed it, attributes the first authorship to "Garadue," the hero, and says that he himself derived the story from the oral communication of an abbé. Arthur has assembled thirty thousand knights at a feast at Pentecost, and each of them is paired with a lady. Before dinner there arrives a donzel, with an ivory horn adorned with four gold bands and rich jewels. This horn has been sent Arthur by Mangounz, king of Moraine. The youth is told to take his place before the king, who promises to knight him after dinner and give him a handsome present the next day; but he laughingly excuses himself, on the ground that it is not proper for a squire to eat at a knight's table, and retires. Arthur sees that there is an inscription on the horn, and desires that his "chapelein" may read it. Everybody is eager to hear, but some repent afterwards. The horn was made by a fairy. who endued it with this quality, that no man should drink of it without spilling, if his wife had not been true in act and thought. Even the queen hung her head, and so did all the barons that had wives. the maids jested, and looked at their lovers with "Now we shall see." Arthur was offended, but ordered Kay to fill. The king drank and spilled; seized a knife, and was about to strike the queen, but was withheld by his knights. Gawain gallantly came to the queen's vindication. "Be not such a churl," he said, "for there is no married woman but has her foolish thought." The queen demanded an ordeal by fire: if a hair of her were burned, she would be torn by horses. She confessed that the horn was in so far right that she had once given a ring to a youth who had killed a giant that had accused Gawain of treason, etc. She thought this youth would be a desirable addition to the court. Arthur was not convinced: be would make everybody try the horn now, king, duke. and count, for he would not be the only one to be shamed. Eleven kings, thirty counts, all who essay, spill: they are very angry, and bid the devil take him who brought and him who sent the horn. When Arthur saw this, he began to laugh: he regarded the horn as a great present, he said, and he would part with it to nobody except the man that could drink out of it. The queen blushed so prettily that he kissed her three times, and asked her pardon for his bad humor. The queen said, Let everybody take the horn, small and great. There was a knight who was the happiest man in all the court, the least a braggart, the most mannerly, and the most redoubtable after Gawain. His name was Garadue, and he had a wife, mout leal, who was a fairy for beauty, and surpassed by none but the queen. Garadue looked at her. She did not change color. "Drink," she said; "indeed, you are at fault to hesitate." She would never have husband but him: for a woman should be a dove, and accept no second mate. Garadue was naturally very much pleased: he sprang to his feet, took the horn, and, crying Wassail! to the king, drank out every drop. Arthur presented him with Cirencester, and, for his wife's sake, with the horn, which was exhibited there on great days.

The romance of Perceval le Gallois, by Chrestien de Troyes and others (second half of the twelfth century), describes Arthur, like the fabliau, as putting off dinner till he should hear of some strange news or adventure. A knight rides into the hall, with an ivory horn, gold-banded and richly jewelled, hanging from his neck, and presents it to the king. Have it filled with pure water, says the bearer, and the water will turn to the best wine in the world, enough for all who are present. "A rich present!" exclaims Kay. But no knight whose wife or love has be-trayed him shall drink without spilling. "Or empire vostre présens," says Kay. The king has the born filled, and does not heed Guenever, who begs him not to drink, for it is some enchantment, to shame honest folk. "Then I pray God," says the queen, "that if you try to drink you may be wet." The king essays to drink, and Guenever has her prayer. Kay has the same luck, and all the knights,^[18] till the horn comes to Carados (Brisié-Bras). Carados, as in the lai, hesitates; his wife (Guinon, Guimer) looks at him, and says, Drink! He spills not a drop. Guenever and many a dame hate nothing so much as her. Perceval le Gallois, ed. Potvin, II, 216 ff, vv 15,640-767.^[19]

The story of 'Le Livre de Carados,' in Perceval, is given in abridgment by the author of Le Roman du Renard contrefait, writing in the second half of the fourteenth century: Tarbé, Poètes de Champagne antérieurs au siecle de François Ier, Histoire de Quarados Brun-Bras, p. 79 ff. The horn here becomes a cup.

A meistergesang, entitkd 'Dis ist Frauw Tristerat Horn von Saphoien,' and found in the same fifteenth-century manuscript as Der Lanethen Mantel, Bruns, as before, p. 139, preserves many features of the lai. While Arthur is at table with seven other kings and their wives, a damsel comes, bringing an ivory horn, with gold letters about the rim, a present from Frau Tristerat of Savoy. The king sends for a clerk to read the inscription, and declares he will begin the experiment. The damsel prudently retires. Arthur is thorougbly wet, and on the point of striking the queen, but is prevented by a knight. The seven kings then take the born, one after the other. Six of them fare like Arthur. The king of Spain looks a his wife, fearing shame. She encourages him to drink, saying, as in the other meistergesang, If we are poor in goods, we are rich in honor. Arthur presents him with the horn, and adds cities and lands. Another copy of this piece was printed by Zingerle, in Germania, V, 101, 'Das goldene Horn.' The queen is aus der Syrenen lant.^[20]

A fastnachtspiel gives substantially the same form to the story: Keller, Nachlese, No 127, p. 183. Arthur invites seven kings and queens to his court. His wife wisbes him to ask his sister, the Queen of Cyprus, also; but she has offended him, and he cannot be prevailed upon to do it. The Queen of Cyprus sends the horn to Arthur by her maid as a gift from a queen who is to be nameless, and in fulfilling her charge the messenger describes her lady simply as a sea princess. The inscription is read aloud by one of Arthur's knights. The King of Spain carries off the honors, and receives in gift, besides the horn, a ducal crown, and gold to boot. Arthur resolves that the horn shall be forgotten, and no grudge borne against the women, and proposes a dance, which he leads off with his wife.^[21]

We have Arthur joining in a dance under nearly the same circumstances in an English "bowrd" found in a manuscript of about the middle of the fifteenth century (Ashmolean Museum, No 61). The king has a bugle horn, which always stands before him, and often amuses himself by experimenting with it. Those who cannot drink without spilling are set at a table by themselves, with willow garlands on their heads, and served with the best. Upon the occasion of a visit from the Duke of Gloucester, the king, wishing to entertain his guest with an exhibition of the property of the horn, says he will try all who are present. He begins himself, as he was wont to do, but this time spills. He takes the mishap merrily, and says he may now join in a dance which the "freyry" were to have after meat. 'The Cokwolds Daunce,' Hartshorne's Ancient Metrical Tales, p. 209; Karajan, Frühlingsgabe [Schatzgräber], p. 17; Hazlitt, Remains of Early Popular Poetry, 1, 38.^[22]

Heinrich von dem Türlin narrates the episode of the probation by the Horn with many variations of his own, among them the important one of subjecting the women to the test as well as the men.^[23] In his Crône, put at 1200-10, a misshapen, dwarfish knight, whose skin is overgrown with scales, riding on a monster who is fish before and dolphin behind, with wings on its legs, presents himself to Arthur on Christmas Day as an envoy from a sea king, who offers the British monarch a gift on condition of his first granting a boon. The gift is a cup, made by a necromancer of Toledo, of which no man or woman can drink who has been false to love, and it is to be the king's if there shall be anybody at the court who can stand the test. The ladies are sent for, and the messenger gives the cup first to them. They all spill. The knights follow, Arthur first; and he, to the general astonishment, bears the proof, which no one else does except the sea king's messenger. Caraduz^[24] von Caz fails with the rest. Diu Crône, ed. Scholl, vv 466-3189.

The prose Tristan confines the proof to the women, and transfers the scene to King Mark's court. Morgan the Fay having sent the enchanted horn to Arthur's court by the hands of a damsel, to avenge herself on Guenever, two knights who had a spite against Mark and Tristan intercept it, and cause the horn to be taken to King Mark, who is informed that no lady that has been false to her lord can drink of it without spilling. Yseult spills, and the king says she deserves to die. But, fortunately or unfortunately, all the rest of the ladies save four are found to be in the same plight as the queen. The courtiers, resolved to make the best of a bad matter, declare that they have no confidence in the probation, and the king consents to treat the horn as a deception, and acquits his wife.^[25]

Ariosto has introduced the magical vessel made by Morgan the Fay for Arthur's behoof^[26] into Orlando Furioso. A gentleman tries it on his guests for ten years, and they all spill but Rinaldo, who declines il periglioso saggio: canto XLII, 70-73, 97-104; XLIII, 6-44. Upon Ariosto's narrative La Fontaine founded the tale and the comedy of 'La Coupe Enchantée,' Works ed. Moland, IV, 37, V, 361.

In a piece in the Wunderhorn, I, 389, ed. 1819, called 'Die Ausgleichung,' and purporting to be from oral tradition, but reading like an imitation, or at most a reconstruction, of a meistergesang, the cup and mantle are made to operate conjointly: the former to convict a king and his knights, the other a queen and her ladies, of unfaithfulness in love. Only the youngest of the ladies can wear the mantle, and only the oldest of the knights, to whom she is espoused, can drink from the cup. This knight, on being presented with the cup, turns into a dwarf; the lady, on receiving the gift of the mantle, into a fay. They pour a drop of wine from the cup upon the mantle, and give the mantle to the queen, and the cup, empty to the king. After this, the king and all the world can drink without inconvenience, and the mantle fits every woman. But the stain on the mantle grows bigger every year, and the cup gives out a hollow sound like tin! An allegory, we may suppose, and, so far as it is intelligible, of the weakest sort.

Tegau Eurvron is spoken of in Welsh triads as one of the three chaste ladies, and again as one of the three fair ladies, of Arthur's court.^[27] She is called the wife of Caradawe Vreichvras by various Welsh writers, and by her surname of "Gold-breasted" she should be so.^[28] If we may trust the author of The Welsh Bards, Tegau was the possessor of three treasures or rarities "which befitted none but herself," a mantle, a goblet, and a knife. The mantle is mentioned in a triad,^[29] and is referred to as having the variable hue attributed to it in our ballad and elsewhere. There are three things, says the triad, of which no man knows the color; the peacock's expanded tail, the mantle of Tegau Eurvron, and the miser's pence. Of this mantle, Jones, in whose list of "Thirteen Rarities of Kingly Regalia" of the Island of Britain it stands eleventh, says, No one could put it on who had dishonored marriage, nor a young damsel who had committed incontinence; but it would cover a chaste woman from top to toe: Welsh Bards, II, 49. The mantle certainly seems to be identified by what is said of its color in the (not very ancient) triad, and so must have the property attributed to it by Jones, but one would be glad to have had Jones cite cbapter and verse for his description.

There is a drinking-horn among the Thirteen Precious Things of the Island of Britain, which, like the conjurer's bottle of our day, will furnish any liquor that is called for, and a knife which will serve four-and-twenty men at meat "all at once." How this horn and this knife should befit none but the chaste and lovely Tegau, it is not easy to comprehend. Meanwhile the horn and the knife are not the property of Cradock's wife, in the English ballad: the horn falls to Cradock of right, and the knife was his from the beginning. Instead of Tegau's mantle we have in another account a mantle of Arthur, which is the familiar cloak that allows the wearer to see everything without himself being seen. Not much light, therefore, but rather considerable mist, comes from these Welsh traditions, of very uncertain date and significance. It may be that somebody who had heard of the three Welsh rarities, and of the mantle and horn as being two of them, supposed that the knife must have similar virtues with the horn and mantle, whence its appearance in our ballad; but no proof has yet been given that the Welsh horn and knife had ever a power of testing chastity.^[30]

Heinrich von dem Türlin, not satisfied with testing Arthur's court first with the mantle, and again with the horn, renews the experiment with a Glove, in a couple of thousand lines more of tedious imitation of 'Cort Mantel,'^[31] Crône, 22,990-24,719. This glove renders the right side of the body invisible, when put on by man or woman free of blame, but leaves in the other case some portion of that side visible and bare. A great many ladies and knights don the glove, and all have reason to regret the trial except Arthur and Gawain.^[32]

There is another German imitation of the fabliau of the mantle, in the form (1) of a farce of the fifteenth century and (2) of a meistergesang printed in the sixteenth. In these there is substituted for the mantle a Crown that exposes the infidelity of husbands.

1. "Das Vasnachtspil mit der Kron."^[33] A "master" has been sent to Arthur's court with a rich crown, which the King of Abian wishes to present to whichever king or lord it shall fit, and it will fit only those who have not "lost their honor." The King of Orient begins the trial, very much against his will: the crown turns to ram's horns. The King of Cyprus is obliged to follow, though he says the devil is in the crown: the crown hangs about his neck. Appeals are made to Arthur that the trial may now stop, so that the knights may devote themselves to the object for which they had come together, the service and honor of the ladies, But here Lanet, Arthur's sister (so she is styled), interposes, and expresses a hope that no honors are intended the queen, for she is not worthy of them, having broken her faith. Arthur is very angry, and says that Lanet has by her injurious language forfeited all her lands, and shall be expelled from court. (Cf. Der Lanethen Mantel, p. 261.) A knight begs the king to desist, for he who heeds every tale that is told of his wife shall never be easy.

2. The meistergesang 'Die Krone der Königin von Afion.'^[34] While his majesty of Afion is holding a great feast, a youth enters the hall bearing a splendid crown, which has such chaste things in it that no king can wear it who haunts false love. The crown had been secretly made by order of the queen. The king wishes to buy the crown at any price, but the youth informs him that it is to be given free to the man who can wear it. The king asks the favor of being the first to try the crown: when put on his head it falls down to his back. The King of Portugal is eager to be next: the crown falls upon his shoulder. The King of Holland at first refuses to put on the crown, for there was magic in it, and it was only meant to shame them: but he is obliged to yield, and the crown goes to his girdle. The King of Cyprus offers himself to the adventure: the crown falls to his loins. And so with eleven. But there was a "Young Philips," King of England, who thought he might carry off the prize. His wife was gray and old and ugly, and quite willing, on this account, to overlook e bisserle Falschheit, and told him that he might spare himself. But he would not be prevented; so they put the crown on him, and it fitted to a hair. This makes an edifying pendant to 'Der Luneten Mantel,' p. 261.

Still another imitation is the Magical Bridge in the younger Titurel which Klingsor throws over the Sibra. Knights and ladies assembled at Arthur's court, if less than perfect^[35] on attempting to ride over it are thrown off into the water, or stumble and fallon the bridge: ed. Hahn, p. 232 ff, st. 2337 ff. Hans Sachs has told this story twice, with Virgil for the magician: ed. Keller, Historia, König Artus mit der ehbrecher-brugk, II, 262; Goedeke, Dichtungen von Hans Sachs, I, 175. Kirchhof follows Hans Sachs in a story in Wendunmuth, ed. Österley, II, 38.

Florimel's Girdle, in the fourth book of the 'Fairy Queen,' canto V, once more, is formed on the same pattern.^[36]

There might be further included in imitations of the horn or mantle test several other inventions which are clearly, as to form, modelled on this original, but which have a different object: the valley from which no false lover could escape till it had been entered by one "qui de nulle chose auroit vers s'amie fausé ne mespris, nè d'euvre nè de pensée nè de talent," the prose Lancelot in Jonckbloet, II, lxix. (Warnatsch), Ferrario, Storia ed Analisi, Lancilotto del Lago, III, 372, Legrand, Fabliaux, I, 156; the arch in Amadis, which no man or woman can pass who has been unfaithful to a first love, and again, the sword which only the knight who loves his lady best can draw, and the partly withered garland which becomes completely fresh on the head of the lady who best loves her husband or lover, Amadís de Gaula, 1. ii, introduccion, c. 1, c. 14, and ballad 1890 in Duran, II, 665; the cup of congealed tears in Palmerin of England, which liquefies in the hand of the best knight and faithfulest lover, chapters 87-89, II, 322 ff, ed. of London, 1807.

Besides those which have been spoken of, not a few other criterions of chastity occur in romantic tales.

Bed clothes and bed. 'Gil Brenton,' A, B; the corresponding Swedish ballad, A, B, E; Danish, Grundtvig, No 275:^[37] see pp 64, 65, of this volume.

A stepping-stone by the bed-side. 'Vesle Aase Gaasepige,' Asbjørnsen og Moe, No 29: see p. 66.

A chair in which no leal maiden can sit, or will sit till bidden (?). 'Gil Brenton,' D, C.

Flowers [foliageJ.
1. In the Sanskrit story of Guhasena, the merchant's son, and Devasmitá, this married pair, who are to be separated for a time, receive from Shíva each a red lotus: if either should be unfaithful, the lotus in the hand of the other would fade, but not otherwise: Kathá Sarit Ságara, ch. 13, Tawney, I, 86, Brockhaus, I, 137.
2. In the Tales of a Parrot, a soldier, going into service, receives from his wife a rose [flower, nosegay], which will keep fresh as long as she remains true: Rosen, Tuti-nameh, from the Turkish version, I, 109; Wickerhauser, also from the Turkish, p. 57; Iken, p. 30,^[38] from the Persian of Kadiri.
3. So the knight Margon in the French romance of Perceforest, vol. IV, ch. 16 and 17.
4. In a Turkish tale found in a manuscript collection called' Joy after Sorrow,' an architect or housewright, having to leave home for want of employment, is presented by his wife with a bunch of evergreen of the same property.
5. An English story of a wright reverts to the rose. A widow, having nothing else to give with her daughter, presents the bridegroom with a rose-garland, which will hold its hue while his wife is "stable:" 'The Wright's Chaste Wife,' by Adam of Cobsam, from a manuscript of about 1462, ed. Furnivall.^[39]

A shirt [mantle].
1. In connection with the same incidents there is substituted for the unfading flower, in Gesta Romanorum, 69, a shirt. This a knight's wife gives to a carpenter or housewright who has married her daughter, and it will not need washing, will not tear, wear, or change color, as long as both husband and wife are faithful, but will lose all its virtues if either is untrue. The shirt is given by a wife to a husband in several versions of an otherwise different story.
2. In the German meistergesang and the Flemish tale Alexander of Metz: Körner, Historische Volkslieder, p. 49, No 8; Goedeke, Deutsche Dichtung im Mittelalter, 2d ed., p. 569 ff; 'De Historia van Florentina,' etc., Van den Bergh, De nederlandsche Volksromans, p. 52 f.
3. In the story 'Von dem König von Spanien^[40] und seiner Frau,' Müllenhoff, Sagen, u.s.w., p. 586, No 607, a wife gives the shirt to her husband the morning after the wedding: it will always be white until she dies, when it will turn black, or unless she misbehaves, in which case it will be spotted.
4. 'Die getreue Frau,' Plönnies, in Wolf's Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie,' II, 377. An English princess gives her consort, a Spanish prince, at parting, a white shirt which will not spot as long as she is faithful.
5. 'Die treue Frau,' Curtze, Volksüberlieferungen aus Waldeck, p. 146. A merchant's son, married to a princess, goes away for a voyage; they change rings and shirts, and neither shirt will soil until one of the two shall be untrue.
6. 'Die getreue Frau,' J.W. Wolf, Deutsche Hausmärchen, at p. 102. A prince, going on a voyage, gives his sword to his wife; as long as the blade is not spotted, he is faithful. He receives from the princess a mantle; as long as it is white, her faith is inviolate.

A picture. For the rose, as in Perceforest, there is substituted, in a story otherwise essentially the same, a picture. A knight, compelled to leave his wife, receives from a magician a picture of her, small enough to carry in a box about his person, which will turn yellow if she is tempted, pale if she wavers, black if she yields, but will otherwise preserve its fresh hues: Bandello, Part I, nov. 21. This tale, translated in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, 1567 (ed. Haslewood, II, 471, nov. 28), furnished the plot for Massinger's 'Picture,' 1630. The miniature will keep its color as long as the woman is innocent and unattempted, will grow yellow if she is solicited but unconquered, and black if she surrenders: Act I, Scene 1. Bandello's story is also the foundation of Sénecé's tale, 'Filer le parfait amour,' with a wax image taking the place of the picture: Œuvres Choisies, ed. Charles et Cap, p. 95.^[41]

A ring. the picture is exchanged for a ring in a French tale derived, and in parts almost translated, from Bandello's: the sixth in 'Les Faveurs et les Disgraces de l'Amour,' etc., said to have appeared in 1696.^[42] A white stone set in the ring may become yellow or black under circumstances. Such a ring Rimnild gave Horn Child: when the stone should grow wan, her thoughts would have changed; should it grow red, she is no more a maid: see p. 192. A father, being required to leave three daughters, gives them each such a ring in Basile, Pentamerone, III, 4. The rings are changed into glass distaffs in 'L'Adroite Princesse,' an imitation of this story by Mlle. Lhéritier de Villaudon, which has sometimes been printed with Perrault's tales: Perrault, Contes des Fées, ed. Giraud, p. 239; Dunlop, cb. 13.

A mirror, in the History of Prince Zeyn Alasnam, reflecting the image of a chaste maid, will remain unblurred: Arabian Nights, Scott, IV, 120, 124; 1001 Nacht, Habicht, VI, 146, 150; etc. Virgil made a mirror of like property; it exposed the woman that was "new-fangle," wandelmüetic, by the ignition of a "worm" in the glass: Meisterlieder der Kolmarer Handschrift, Bartsch, p. 605 (Warnatsch). There is also one of these mirrors in Primaleon, I. ii, cap. 27; Rajna, Le Fonti dell' Orlando Furioso, p. 504, note 3. Alfred de Musset, in 'Barberine,' substitutes a pocket-mirror for the picture in Bandello, Part I, nov. 21: Œuvres Complètes, III, 378 ff.

A harp, in the hands of an image, upon the approach of a despucellée, plays out of tune and breaks a string: Perceval le Gallois, II, 149, vy 13,365-72 (Rajna, as above).

A crystal brook, in the amiral's garden in Flor and Blancheflor, when crossed by a virgin remains pellucid, but in the other case becomes red, or turbid: ed. Du Méril, p. 75, vv 1811-14; Bekker, Berlin Academy, XLIV, 26, vv 2069-72; Fleck, ed. Sommer, p. 148, vv 4472-82; Swedish, ed. Klemming, p. 38, 1122-25; Lower Rhine Haupt's Zeitschrift, XXI, 321, vv 57-62; Middle Greek, Bekker, Berlin Academy, 1845, p. 165, Wagner, Mediæval Greek Texts, p. 40 f, vv 1339-48; etc. In the English poem, Hartshorne's Ancient Metrical Tales, p. 93, if a clean maid wash her hands in the water, it remains quiet and clear; but if one who has lost her purity do this, the water will yell like mad and become red as blood.

The stone Aptor, in Wigamur, vv 1100-21, is red to the sight of clean man or woman, but misty to others: Von der Hagen und Büsching, Deutsche Gedichte des Mittelalters, p. 12 (Warnatsch).^[43]

A statue, in an Italian ballad, moved its eyes when young women who had sacrificed their honor were presented to it: Ferraro, Canti popolari di Ferrara, Cento e Pontelagoscuro, p. 84, 'Il Conte Cagnolino.' There was said to be a statue of Venus in Constantinople which could not be approached by an incontinent woman without a very shameful exposure; and again, a pillar surmounted by four horns, which turned round three times if any κερατἃς came up to it.^[44] Virgil, 'Filius,' made a brass statue which no misbehaving woman might touch, and a vicious one received violent blows from it: Meisterlieder der Kolmarer Handschrift, Bartsch, p. 604, 14th century. This statue would bite off the fingers of an adulteress if they were put in its mouth, according to a poem of the same century published by Bartsch in Germania, IV, 237; and a third version makes the statue do this to all perjurers, agreeing in other respects with the second: Kolmarer Meisterlieder, as before, p. 338. In the two last the offence of the wife causes a horn to grow out of the husband's forehead. Much of the story in these poems is derived from the fifteenth tale of the Shukasaptati, where a woman offers to pass between the legs of a statue of a Yaksha, which only an innocent one can do: Benfey, Pantschatantra, I, 457.^[45]

According to a popular belief in Austria, says J. Grimm, you may know a clean maid by her being able to blowout a candle with one puff and to light it again with another. The phrase was known in Spain: "Matar un candil con un soplo y encenderlo con otro." Grimm adds that it is an article of popular faith in India that a virgin can make a ball of water, or carry water in a sieve: Rechtsalterthümer, p. 932.^[46]

An ordeal for chastity is a feature in several of the Greek romances. In Heliodorus's Æthiopica, X, 8, 9, victims to be offered to the sun and moon, who must be pure, are obliged to mount a brazier covered with a golden grating. The soles of those who are less than perfect are burned. Theagenes and Chariclea experience no inconvenience. The Clitophon and Leucippe of Achilles Tatius, VIII, 6, 13, 14, has a cave in the grove of Diana of Ephesus, in which they shut up a woman. If it is a virgin, a delicious melody is presently heard from a syrinx, the doors open of themselves, and the woman comes out crowned with pine leaves; if not a virgin, a wail is heard, and the woman is never seen again. There is also a not perfectly convincing trial, by the Stygian water, in ^[47] 12, which seems to be imitated in the Hysmine and Hysminias of Eustathius [EumathiusJ, VIII, 7, XI, 17. In the temple of Diana, at Artycomis, stands a statue of the goddess, with bow in hand, and from about her feet flows water like a roaring river. A woman, crowned with laurel, being put in, she will float quietly, if all is right; but should she not have kept her allegiance to Dian, the goddess bends her bow as if to shoot at her head, which causes the culprit to duck, and the water carries off her wreath.^[48]

It is prescribed in Numbers v, 11-31, that any man jealous of his wife may bring her to the priest, who shall, with and after various ceremonies, give her a bitter drink of holy water in which dust from the floor of the tabernacle has been infused. If she have trespassed, her body shall swell and rot. In the Pseudo-Matthew's Gospel, ch. xii, Joseph and Mary successively take this aquam potationis domini. No pretender to innocence could taste this and then make seven turns round the altar, without some sign of sin appearing in the face. The experiment sbows both to be faultless. So, with some variation, the sixteenth chapter of the Protevangelium of James. This trial is the subject of one of the Coventry Mysteries, No 14, p, 137 ff, ed. Halliwell, and no doubt of other scripture plays. It is naturally introduced into Wernher's Maria, Hoffmann, Fundgruben, II, 188, line 26 ff, and probably into other lives of the Virgin.

Herodotus relates, II, 111, that Pheron, son of Sesostris, after a blindness of ten years' duration, received an intimation from all oracle that he would recover his sight upon following a certain prescription, such as we are assured is still thought well of in Egypt in cases of ophthalmia. For this the coöperation of a chaste woman was indispensable. Repeatedly balked, the king finally regained his vision, and collecting in a town many women of whom he had vainly hoped aid, in which number his queen was included, he set fire to the place and burned both it and them, and then married the woman to whom he was so much indebted. (First cited in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1795, vol. 65, I, 114.) The coincidence with foregoing tales is certainly curious, but to all appearance accidental.^[49]

The 'Boy and the Mantle' was printed "verbatim" from his manuscript by Percy in the Reliques, III, 3, ed. 1765. The copy at p. 314 is of course the same "revised and altered" by Percy, but has been sometimes mistaken for an independent one.

Translated by Herder, I, 219; Bodmer, I, 18; Bothe, p. 59.
 
Footnotes:

1. After I had finished what I had to say in the way of introduction to this ballad, there appeared the study of the Trinkhorn- and Mantelsage, by Otto Warnatsch: Der Mantel, Bruchstück eines Lanzeletromans, etc., Breslau, 1883. To this very thorough piece of work, in which the relations of the multiform versions of the double-branched story are investigated with a care that had never before been attempted, I naturally have frequrnr occasion to refer, and by its help I have supplied some of my deficiencies, indicating always the place by the author's name.

2. The Bibliothèque des Romans, 1777, Février, pp. 112-115, gives an abstract of a small printed piece in prose, there assigned to the beginning of the sixteenth century, which, as Warnatsch observes, p. 72, must have been a different thing from the tale given by Legrand, inasmuch as it brings in Lancelot and Gawain as suppressing the jests of Kay and Dinadam.

3. The custom of Arthur not to eat till he had heard of some adventure or strange news was confined to those days when he held full court, according to Perceval le Gallois, II, 217, 15,664-71, and the Roman de Perceval, fol. lxxviii. It is mentioned, with the same limitations, I suppose, in the Roman de Lancelot, III, fol. lxxxii, and we learn from this last romance, I, fol. xxxvi, that Arthur was accustomed to hold a court and wear his crown five times in the year, at Easter, Ascension-day, Pentecost, All Saints, and Christmas. The Roman de Merlin, II, lvib, or, as cited by Southey, II, 48, 49, says that "King Arthur, after his first dinner at Logres, when he brougbt home his bride, made a vow that while he wore a crown he never would seat himself at table till some adventure had occurred." In Malory's King Arthur, Kay reminds the king that this had been the old custom of his court at Pentecost. Arthur is said to observe this custom on Christmas, "vpon such a dere day," in Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight, Madden, p. 6, vv 90-99. Messire Gauvain says "à feste ne mangast, devant," etc .. p. 2, vv 18-21. Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival does not limit the custom to high holidays, ed. Bartsch, I,331, vv 875-79; and see Riddarasögur, Parcevals Saga, etc., ed. Kölbing, p.26. Neither does Wigalois, vv 247-51, or a fragment of Daniel von Blühenthal, Symbolæ ad literaturam Teutonicam, p.465, cited by Benecke, Wigalois, p. 436 f, or the Färöe Galians kvæði, Kölbing, in Germania, XX, 397. See Madden's Syr Gawayne, which has furnished much of this note, pp 310-12; Southey's King Arthur, II, 203, 462. Robin Hood imitates Arthur: see the beginning of the Little Gest.

4. 'Quar je vous aim tant bonement,
Que je ne voudroie savoir
Vostre mesfet por nul avoir.
Miex en veuil je estre en doutance.

Por tot le royaume de France,
N'en voudroie je estre cert;
Quar qui sa bone amie pert
Molt a perdu, ce m'est avis.' 818-25.

5. See also Brynjúlfsson, Saga af Tristram ok Ísönd, samt Möttuls Saga, Udtog, pp 318-26, Copenhagen, 1878. there is a general presumption that the larger part of the works translated for King Hákon were derived from England. C. & W., p. 47.

6. That is, the current one. The Samson saga professes to supply the earlier history. Samson's father is another Arthur, king of England. An abstract of so much of the saga as pertains to the Mantle is given by Cederschiöld and Wullf, p. 90 f. Warnatsch, p. 73 f, shows that the Ríimur and Samson had probably a common source, independent of the Möttulsaga.

7. By Warnatsch, who gives the text with the corresponding passages of the fabliau in a parallel column, pp 8-54: the argument for Heinrich's authorship, pp 85-105. 'Der Mantel' had been previously printed in Haupt and Hoffmann's Altdeutsche Blätter, II, 217, and by Müllenhoff in his Altdeutsche Sprachproben, p. 125. Of this poem, which Warnatsch, pp 105-110, holds to be a fragment of a lost romance of Lanzelet, written before the 'Crône,' only 994 verses are left. Deducting about a hundred of introduction, there are some 782 German against some 314 French verses, an excess which is owing, no doubt, largely to insertions and expansions on the part of Heinrich, but in some measure to the existing texts of the fabliau having suffered abridgment. The whole matter of the church service, with the going and coming;, is dispatched in less than a dozen verses in the French, but occcupies more than seventy in German, and just here we read in the French:

Ci ne vueil je plus demorer,
Ni de noient fere lonc conte,
Si con l'estoire le raconte.

But possibly the last verse should be taken with what follows.

8. In Hahn, Griechische Märchen, No 70, II, 60 f, a walaut contains a dress with the earth and ils flowers displayed on it, an almond one with the heaven and its stars, a hazel-nut one with the sea and its fishes. No 7, I, 99. a walnut contains a complete costume exhibiting heaven with its stars, a hazel-nut another with the sea and its waves. No 67, II, 33, an almond encloses a woman's dress with heaven and its stars on it, a hazel-nut a suit for her husband. In the Grimms' No 113, three walnuts contain successively each a finer dress than the other, II, 142 f, ed. 1857. There are three similar nuts in Haltrich, No 43, and in Volksrmärchen aus Venetien, Jahrbuch für r. u. e. Lit., VII, 249, No 12. Ulrich's mantle is worked with all manner of beasts, birds, and sea monsters, on earth or under, and betwixt earth and heaven: Lanzelet, 5820-27.

9. I cite the text according to Warnatsch. Warnatsch thinks it worth noticing Ihat it is the queen only, in Mantel 771 f, as in our ballad, st. 14, that curses the maker of the mantle; not, as in the fabliau, the gentlemen whose feelings were so much tried. These, like the queen in the ballad, ont maudit le mantel, et celui qui li aporta.

10. Not even for Ginovere h&uump;bsch unde guot, or Enîte diu reine. The queen has always been heedful of her acts, and has never done anything wrong: doch ist siu an den gedenken missevarn, Heaven knows how. Ulrich is very feeble here.

A remark is here in place which will be still more applicable to some of the tests that are to be spoken of further on. Both the French fabliau and the English ballad give the mantle the power of detecting the woman that has once done amiss, a de rien messerré. We naturally suppose that we understand what is meant. The trial in the fabliau is so conducted as to confirm our original conception of the nature of the inquest, and so it is, in the case of Arthur's queen, Kay's lady, and the old knight's wife, in the ballad. But when we come to the charmingly pretty passage about Cradock's wife, what are we to think? Is the mantle in a teasing mood, or is it exhibiting its real quality? If once to have kissed Cradock's mouth before marringe is to have done amiss, Heaven keep our Mirandas and our Perditas, and Heaven forgive our Juliets and our Rosalinds! ("Les dames et demoiselles, pour être baisées devant leur noces, il n'est pas la coutume de France," we know, but this nice custom could hardly have had sway in England. Is then this passage rendered from something in French that is lost?) But the mantle, in the ballad, after indulging its humor or its captiousness for a moment, does Cradock's wife full justice. The mantle, if uncompromising as to acts, at least does not assume to bring thoughts under its jurisdiction. Many of the probations allow themselves this range, and as no definite idea is given of what is charged, no one need be shocked, or perhaps disturbed, by the number convictions. The satire loses zest, and the moral effect is not improved.

11. Nul femme que [ne] vouloit lesser sauoir à soun marry soun fet et pensé. T. Wright, in Archæologia Cambrensis, January, 1863, p. 10. Mr. Wright gives one of the texts of Cort Mantel, with an English translation. We are further told, in In Scalachronica, that this mantle was afterwards made into a chasuble, and that it is "to this day" preserved at Glastonbury. Three versions of the fabliau testify that Carados and his amie deposited the mantle in a Welsh abbey. The Skikkju Rímur say that the lady presented it to the cloister of Cologne; the Möttulsaga has simply a monastery (and, indeed, the mantle, as described by some, must have had a vocation that way from the beginning). "Item, in the castel of Doner ye may see Gauwayn's skull and Cradok's mantel:" Caxton, in his preface to Kyng Arthur, 1485, I, ii, in Southey's ed.; cited by Michel, Tristan, II, 181, and from him by Warnatsch.

12. For this enchanter see Le Livre de Karados in Perceval le Gallois, ed. Potvin, II, 118 ff. It is not said in the printed copy that he sent the mantle [horn].

13. Another copy, assigned to the end of Ihe 14th century, from the Kolmar Manuscript., Bartsch, p 373, No LXIX (Warnatsch).

14. Warnatsch shows, p. 75 f, that the fastnachtspiel must have been made up in part from some version of the Mantle story which was also the source of the meisterlied, and in part from a meisterlied of the Horn, which will be mentioned further on.

15. The Dean of Lismore's Book, edited by Rev. Thomas M'Lauchlan, p. 72 of the translation, 50/51 of the original. Repeated in Campbell's Heroic Gaelic Ballads, p. 138 f, 'The Maid of the White Mantle.' Mr. Campbell remarks: "This ballad, or the story of it, is known in Irish writings. It is not remembered in Scotland now." Mr. Wright cites this poem, Archæologia Cambrensis, p. 14 f, 39 f.

16. Cf. Arthur in the Lai du Corn and Fraw Tristerat Horn, a little fUrther on.

17. Wolf at first speaks of the lai as being made over into the fabliau, in regular court style, ganz nach höfischer Weise, about the middle of the 13th century; then goes on to say that even if the author of the fabliau followed another version of the story, he must have known the jongleur's poem, because he has repeated some of the introductory lines of the lai. This excellent scholar happened, for once, not to observe that the first fourteen lines of the lai, excepting the fourth, which is questionable, are in a longer metre than the rest of the poem, in eights and sevens, not sixes, and that the first three of the lai, which agree with the first three of the fabliau, in the eight-syllable verse of the latter; so that it was not the author of the fabliau that borrowed. Warnatsch (who has also made this last remark) has noted other agreements between lai and fabliau, p. 61. Both of these acknowledge their derivation from an earlier dit, estoire, not having which we shall find it hard to determine by which and from what the borrowing was done.

18. Montpellier manuscript.

19. Perceval exhibits agreements, both as to phrase and matter, now with the lai, now with the fabliau, and this phenomenon will occur again and again. This suggests the likelihood of a source which combined traits of both lai and fabliau: Warnatsch, pp 62-64.

20. So amended by Zingerle from Syrneyer lant. A third copy is cited as in the Kolmar Manuscript, No 806, Bartsch, Meisterlieder der Kolmarer Handschrift, p. 74 (Warnatsch). A remnrkable agreement between the French lai, 94, 97, 99-102, and Wigamur 2623-30 convinces Warnatsch that the source of this Meisterlied must have been a Middle High German rendering of some form of the Drinking-horn Test closely resembling the lai. See Warnatscb, p. 66.

21. The king of Spain, who is again the poorest of all the kings, p. 206, line 32, p. 214, line 22, is addressed by Arthur as his nephew, p. 207, line 11, and p. 193, line 30. Carados is called Arthur's nephew in Perceval (he is the son of Arthur's niece), e.g. 15,782, and Carados, his father, is Carados de Vaigne, II, 117. It is said of Kalegras's amie in the 'Mantle Rhymes,' III, 59, that many a lady looked down upon her. This may be a chance expression or possibly point to the poverty which is attributed to the royal pair of Spain in Fastnachtspiele, Nos. 81, 127 and in Frau Tristerat Horn. In Der Lanethen Mantel, Laneth is Arthur's niece, and poor: see p. 261.

The fastnachtspiel has points in common with the fabliau, and the assumption of a source which combined features of both lai and fabliau is warrantable: Warnatsch, pp 66-68.

22. The king of Spain, who is again the poorest of all the kings, p. 206, line 32, p. 214, line 22, is addressed by Arthur as his nephew, p. 207, line 11, and p. 193, line 30. Carados is called Arthur's nephew in Perceval (he is the son of Arthur's niece), e.g. 15,782, and Carados, his father, is Carados de Vaigne, II, 117. It is said of Kalegras's amie in the 'Mantle Rhymes,' III, 59, that many a lady looked down upon her. This may be a chance expression or possibly point to the poverty which is attributed to the royal pair of Spain in Fastnachtspiele, Nos. 81, 127 and in Frau Tristerat Horn. In Der Lanethen Mantel, Laneth is Arthur's niece, and poor: see p. 261.

The fastnachtspiel has points in common with the fabliau, and the assumption of a source which combined features of both lai and fabliau is warrantable: Warnatsch, pp 66-68.

23. Warnatsch shows that Heinrich cannot have derived any part of his Trinkhornprobe from the Perceval of Chrestien, characteristic agreements with Perceval being entirely wanting. There are agreements with the lai, many more. with the fabliau; and Heinrich's poem, so far as it is not of his own invention, he believes to be compounded from his own version of the fabliau and some lost version of the Horn-test: pp 111-114.

24. The principal variations of this name, of which the Welsh Caradoc is assumed to be the original, are: Craddocke (English ballad); Carados Caradox (Cort Mantel); Karodes (Scalachronica); Caraduz (Crône, 2309, elsewhere) Karadas; Carigras, Kaligras (Rímur); Karodeus, Caraduel (Perceval, 12,466, 12,457, 12,491, but generally), Carados, -ot, or; Caraduel (Messire Gauvain, 3943); Garadue (Lai du Corn); Karadin (Möttuls Saga). Garadue probably = Caraduel, which, in Percival twice, and once in Messire Gauvain, is used for Carados, through confusion with Arthur's residence, Carduel, Cardoil. So Karadas is twice put in the Crône, 16,726, 16,743, for Karidol = Cardoil. Might not Karadin have been written for Karadiu?

25.Tristan of Hélie de Borron, I, 73 verso, in Rajna, Fonti dell' Orlando Furioso, p. 498 ff. So in Malory's King Arthur, Southey, I, 297, Wright, II, 64. The Italian Tristan, La Tavola Ritonda, ed. Polidori, XLIII, pp 157-160, makes 686 try, of whom only 13 prove to be innocent, and those in spite of themselves. Another account exempts 2 out of 365: Nannucci, Manuale, II, 168-171.

26. Un vasello fatto da ber, qual già, per fare accorto il suo fratello del fallo di Ginevra, fe Morgana: XLIII, 28; un bel nappo d'or, di fuor di gemme, XLII , 98. The Orlando concurs with the prose Tristan as to the malice of Morgan, but does not, with the Tristan, depart from prescription in making the women drink. Warnatsch observes that the Orlando agrees with the Horn Fastnachtspiel, and may with it follow some lost version of the story; p. 69.

Before leaving these drinking-tests, mention may be made of Oberon's gold cup, which, upon his passing his right hand three times round it and making the sign of the cross, fills with wine enough for all the living and the dead; but no one can drink s'il n'est preudom, et nes et purs et sans pecié mortel: Huon de Bordeaux, ed. Guessard at Grandmaison, p. 109 f, vv 3652-69.

27. The Myvyrian Archæology of Wales, II, 13, triad 54 = triad 103, p. 73; p. 17, triad 78 = triad 108, p. 73.

28. See the story in Le Livre de Carados, Perceval le Gallois, Potvin, especially II, 214-16, vv 15,577-638. "The Rev. Evan Evans," says Percy, Reliques, III, 349, ed. 1794, "affirmed that the story of the Boy and the Mantle is taken from what is related in some of the old Welsh manuscripts of Tegan Earfron, one of King Arthur's mistresses." This aspersion, which is even absurd, must have arisen from a misunderstanding on the part of the Bishop: no Welshman could so err.

29. Myvyrian Archæology, III, 247a, No 10, pointed out to me by Professor Evans. The story of the 'Boy and the Mantle,' says Warton, "is recorded in many manuscript Welsh chronicles, as I learn from original letters of Llwyd, in the Ashmolean Museum: "History of English Poetry, ed. 1871, I, 97, note 1.

30. The horn is No 4 in Jones's list, and No 3 in a manuscript of Justice Bosanquet; the knife is 13th in Jones and 6th in the other; the mantle of invisibility is 13th in the Bosanquet series, and, under the title of Arthur's veil or mask, 1st in Jones. The mantle of Tegau Eurvron does not occur in the Bosanquet manuscript. Jones says, "The original Welsh account of the above regalia was transcribed from a transcript of Mr. Edward Llwyd, the antiquary, who informs me that he copied it from an old parchment manuscript. I have collated thi' with two other manuscripts." Not a word of dates. Jones's Welsh Bards, II, 47-49; Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, II, 353-55.

Lady Charlotte Guest remarks that a boar's head in some form appears as the armorial bearing of all of Caradawc's name. Though most anxious to believe all that is said of Caradawc, I am compelled to doibt whether this goes far to prove that he owned the knife celebrated in the ballad.

31.Heinrich seeks to put his wearisome invention off on Chrestien de Troyes. Warnatsch argues with force against any authorship but Heinrich's, pp 116 ff.

32.Gawain had failed in the earlier trial, though he had no fault in mind or body, except that be rated his favor with women too high; 1996-2000.

In the first two probations a false heart is the corpus delicti; something is said of carnal offences, but not very distinctly.

The scope of the glove is of the widest. It takes cognizance of rede und gedanc in maids, werc und gedanc in wives, tugent und manheit, unzuht und zageheit, in men. One must have known as little what one was convicted of as if one had been in the hands of the Holy Office.

33. Fastnachtspiele aus, dem fünfzehnten Jahrhundert, Zweiter Theil, p. 654, No 80.

34. From Vulpius's Curiositäten, II, 463, in Erlach, I, 132, after a printed copy of Ihe beginning of the 16th century: Wolff, Halle der Völker, II, 243, from a Fliegendes Blatt of the 16th century, Two copies are cited by title in Mone's Anzeiger, VIII, 354 b, No I; 378, No 165, Wolff prints Asion.

35. A man must be "clear as beryl." One of the knights is tumbled into the water for having kissed a lady; but this is according to the code, for he had done it without leave. We learn from Perceval that kissing is permissible; marry, not without the lady be willing, 'Die bruck zu Karidol' is alluded to in 'Der Spiegel.' Meister Alswert, ed, Holland u, Keller, p. 179, vv 10-13, (Goedeke,) A man who has transferred his devotion from an earlier love to the image of a lady shown him in a mirror says the bridge would have thrown him over.

36. Florimel's girdle is a poor contrivance every way, and most of all for practical purposes; for we are told in stanza 3 that it gives the virtue of chaste love to all who wear it, and then that whosoever contrary doth prove cannot keep it on. But what could one expect from a cast-off girdle of Venus?

37. Nightingales in Grundtvig, No 274, A, B: see p. 64. See, also, Uhland, Zur Geschichte der Dichtung. III, 121 f.

38. Neither the Sanskrit Shukasaptati nor Nakshabi's Persian version, made early in the fourteenth century, has been published. The Turkish version is said to have been made in the second half of the next century, for Bajazet II. Kadiri's is probably of the seventeenth century. An English and Persian version (Kadiri's), 1801, has the tale at p. 43; Small's English, from a Hindustani version of Kadiri, 1875, at p. 40.

39. In the Contes à rire, p. 89, a sylph who loves a prince gives him a flower and a vase which will blacken upon his wife's proving unfaithful: Legrand, 1779, I, 78. I have not seen this edition of the book, but presume that this tale is entirely akin with the above.

40. Cf. the King of Spain, at pp. 261, 263. The agreement may, or may not, be accidental.

41. All these examples of the probation by flowers, shirt, or picture are noticed in Loiseleur Deslongcharnps, Essai sur les Fables Indiennes, p. 107 ff; or in Von der Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, III, lxxxiv ff; or in an article by Reinhold Köhler, of his usual excellence, in Jabrbuch fur romanische und englische Literatur, VIII, 44 ff.

42. Köhler, as above, p. 60 f.

43. There is a stone in the Danish Vigoleis with the Gold Wheel which no one could approach "who was not as clean as when he came from his mother's body." Gawain could touch it with his hand, Arthur often sat upon it, and Vigoleis was found sitting on it. Nyerup, Almindelig Morskabslæsning i Danmark og Norge, p. 129, a chap-book of 1732. The stone is not quite so strict in the German Volksbuch, Marbach, No 18, p. 13 f, Simrock, III, 432 f. In the German romance no man less than immaculate in all respects can touch it: Wigalois, ed. Benecke, p. 57, vv 1485-88.

44. Georgii Codini Excerpta de antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis, in Corpus Scriptorum Historiæ Byzantinæ, XLV, 50 f, cited by Liebrecht, Germania, I, 264; De Originibus Constantinopolitanis cited by Lütcke, Von der Hagen's Germania, I, 252, referred to by Liebrecht: both anecdotcs in Banduri, Imperium Orientale, Anonymus de Ant. Const. p. 35, 96, p. 57, 162. The statne again in a note of Nic. Alemannus to Procopius, Arcana, 1623, p, 83: cited by Mr. Wright, Archæologia Cambrensis, n. above, p. 17. Mr. Wright also makes mention, p. 16, of the blind dog that quidam Andreas (evidently a merry one) was exhibiting in the seventeenth year of Justinian, which, among other clever performances, ostendebat in utero habentes et fornicarios et adulteros et avaros et magnanimos — omnes cum veritate: Historia Miscella, Eyssenhardt, p. 377 f, I. 18, c. 23; Cedrenus, in the Byzantine Corpus, XXXIII, 657, Theophanes, in XXXVIII, 347 f.

45. The Meisterlieder and the Indian tale are cited hy Warnatsch. Virgil's statue was circumvented by an artifice which is employed in this tale of the Shukasaptati, and in other oriental stories presumably derived from it; and so was the well-known Bocca della Verità, Kaiserchronik, Massmann, pp 448 f. The Bocca della Verità bit off the fingers of perjurers, but took no particular cognizance of the unchaste. A barley-corn [grain of wheat], again, which stood on end when any false oath was sworn over it, Jülg, Mongoliscbe Märchensammlung, Die Geschichte des Ardschi-Bordschi Chan, pp 250-52, cided by Benfey, Pantschatantra, I, 458, and referred to by Warnatsch, does not belong with special tests of chastity.

46. The phrase looks more malicious than naïf, whether Austrian or Spanish, and implies, I fear, an exsufflicate and blown surmise about female virtue; and so of the Indian 'Volksglaube.' The candle-test is said to he in use for men in Silesia: Warnatseh, citing Weinhold, p. 58.

47. [Child has the same footnote smybol here as 48: §. Mistake?] These are all noted in Liebrecht's Dunlop, pp 11, 16, 33. The spring, says the author of Hysmine, served as good a purpose for Artycomis as the Rhine did for the Celts; referring to a test of the legitimacy of children by swinging or dipping them in the Rhine, which the "Celts" practiced, according to a poem in the Anthology: Jacobs, II, 42 f, No 125; Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 935 (Warnatsch).

48. [Child has the same footnote smybol here as 47: §. Mistake?] These are all noted in Liebrecht's Dunlop, pp 11, 16, 33. The spring, says the author of Hysmine, served as good a purpose for Artycomis as the Rhine did for the Celts; referring to a test of the legitimacy of children by swinging or dipping them in the Rhine, which the "Celts" practiced, according to a poem in the Anthology: Jacobs, II, 42 f, No 125; Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 935 (Warnatsch).

49. Besides sources specially referred to, there may be mentioned, as particularly useful for the history of these tests. Legrand, Fabliaux, 1779, I, 60, 76-78; Dunlop's History of Fiction, 1814, in many places, with Liebrecht's notes, 1851; Grässe, Sagenkreise, 1842, pp 185-87; Von der Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, 1850, III, lxxxiv-xc, cxxxv f. 

Brief Description by George Lyman Kittredge

This ballad and the two which follow it are clearly not of the same rise, and not meant for the same ears, as those which go before. They would come down by professional rather than by domestic tradition, through minstrels rather than knitters and weavers. They suit the hall better than the bower, the tavern or public square better than the cottage, and would not go to the spinning-wheel at all. 'The Boy and the Mantle' is an exceedingly good piece of minstrelsy; much livelier than most of the numerous variations on the somewhat overhandled theme. Its nearest relative is the fabliau or "romance" of 'Le Mantel Mautaillie', 'Cort Mantel' (Montaiglon et Raynaud, Reeueil General des Fabliaux, ni, 1), of which there are manuscripts of the thirteenth century. The outline of a similar tale is preserved in the Lanzelet of Ulrieh von Zatzikhoven.

The probation by the Horn runs parallel with that of the Mantle, with which it is combined in the English ballad. Whether this or that is the anterior creation it is not possible to say, though the 'Lai du Corn' is of a more original stamp, fresher and more in the popular vein than the fabliau of the Mantle, as we have it. The 'Lai du Corn.' by Robert Bikez, is ascribed to the middle of the twelfth century. Like the ballad, it makes Caradoc (Garadue) the hero. This is also the case in the 'Livre de Caradoc,' inserted in the verse romance of Percival li Gallois (ed. Potvin, vv. 15,640 ff.). There are several other versions.

Besides the stories of probation by the Mantle and by the Horn or cup there are a number of others in which other objects have the same testing power; — viz.: a crown; a bridge; a girdle; an arch; a glove; a garland; a cup of congealed tears; bedclothes and bed (as in No. 5); a stepping-stone by the bed-side; a chair; flowers; a shirt, a sword, a picture; a wax image; a ring (as in the romance of Horn Child); a mirror; a harp; a crystal brook; a stone; a magnet; a statue; a shield; a chess-board, etc.

Child's Ballad Text A

The Boy and the Mantle; Child 29 Version A
Percy Manuscript, p, 284: Hales and Furnivall, II, 304.

1    In the third day of May
to Carleile did come
A kind curteous child,
that cold much of wisdome.

2    A kirtle and a mantle
this child had vppon,
With brauches and ringes
full richelye bedone.

3    He had a sute of silke,
about his middle drawne;
Without he cold of curtesye,
he thought itt much shame.

4    'God speed thee, King Arthur,
sitting att thy meate!
And the goodly Queene Gueneuer!
I cannott her forgett.

5    'I tell you lords in this hall,
I hett you all heede,
Except you be the more surer,
is you for to dread.'

6    He plucked out of his potewer,
and longer wold not dwell,
He pulled forth a pretty mantle,
betweene two nut-shells.

7    'Haue thou here, King Arthure,
haue thou heere of mee;
Giue itt to thy comely queene,
shapen as itt is alreadye.

8    'Itt shall neuer become that wiffe
that hath once done amisse:'
Then euery knight in the kings court
began to care for his.

9    Forth came dame Gueneuer,
to the mantle shee her bed;
The ladye shee was new-fangle,
but yett shee was affrayd.

10    When shee had taken the mantle,
shee stoode as she had beene madd;
It was from the top to the toe
as sheeres had itt shread.

11    One while was itt gaule,
another while was itt greene;
another while was itt wadded;
ill itt did her beseeme.

12    Another while was it blacke,
and bore the worst hue;
'By my troth,' quoth King Arthur,
'I thinke thou be not true.'

13    Shee threw downe the mantle,
that bright was of blee,
Fast with a rudd redd
to her chamber can shee flee.

14    Shee curst the weauer and the walker
that clothe that had wrought,
And bade a vengeance on his crowne
that hither hath itt brought.

15    'I had rather be in a wood,
vnder a greene tree,
Then in King Arthurs court
shamed for to bee.'

16    Kay called forth his ladye,
and bade her come neere;
Saies, 'Madam, and thou be guiltye,
I pray thee hold thee there.'

17    Forth came his ladye
shortlye and anon,
Boldlye to the mantle
then is shee gone.

18    When she had tane the mantle,
and cast it her about,
Then was shee bare
all aboue the buttocckes.

19    Then euery knight
that was in the kings court
Talked, laughed, and showted,
full oft att that sport.

20    Shee threw downe the mantle,
that bright was of blee,
Ffast with a red rudd
to her chamber can shee flee.

21    Forth came an old knight,
pattering ore a creede,
And he proferred to this little boy
twenty markes to his meede,

22    And all the time of the Christmasse
willinglye to feede;
For why, this mantle might
doe his wiffe some need.

23    When shee had tane the mantle,
of cloth that was made,
Shee had no more left on her
but a tassell and a threed:
Then euery knight in the kings court
bade euill might shee speed.

24    Shee threw downe the mantle,
that bright was of blee,
And fast with a redd rudd
to her chamber can shee flee.

25    Craddocke called forth his ladye,
and bade her come in;
Saith, 'Winne this mantle, ladye,
with a litle dinne.

26    'Winne this mantle, ladye,
and it shalbe thine
If thou neuer did amisse
since thou wast mine.'

27    Forth came Craddockes ladye
shortlye and anon,
But boldlye to the mantle
then is shee gone.

28    When shee had tane the mantle,
and cast itt her about,
Vpp att her great toe
itt began to crinkle and crowt;
Shee said, 'Bowe downe, mantle,
and shame me not for nought.

29    'Once I did amisse,
I tell you certainlye,
When I kist Craddockes mouth
vnder a greene tree,
When I kist Craddockes mouth
before he marryed mee.'

30    When shee had her shreeuen,
and her sines shee had tolde,
The mantle stoode about her
right as shee wold;

31    Seemelye of coulour,
glittering like gold;
Then euery knight in Arthurs court
did her behold.

32    Then spake dame Gueneuer
to Arthur our king:
'She hath tane yonder mantle,
not with wright but with wronge!

33    'See you not yonder woman
that maketh her selfe soe clene?
I haue seene tane out of her bedd
of men fiueteene;

34    'Preists, clarkes, and wedded men,
from her by-deene;
Yett she taketh the mantle,
and maketh her-selfe cleane!'

35    Then spake the litle boy
that kept the mantle in hold;
Sayes 'King, chasten thy wiffe;
of her words shee is to bold.

36    'Shee is a bitch and a witch,
and a whore bold;
King, in thine owne hall
thou art a cuchold.'

37    The litle boy stoode
looking ouer a dore;
He was ware of a wyld bore,
wold haue werryed a man.

38    He pulld forth a wood kniffe,
fast thither that he ran;
He brought in the bores head,
and quitted him like a man.

39    He brought in the bores head,
and was wonderous bold;
He said there was neuer a cucholds kniffe
carue itt that cold.

40    Some rubbed their kniues
vppon a whetstone;
Some threw them vnder the table,
and said they had none.

41    King Arthur and the child
stood looking them vpon;
All their kniues edges
turned backe againe.

42    Craddoccke had a litle kniue
of iron and of steele;
He birtled the bores head
wonderous weele,
That euery knight in the kings court
had a morssell.

43    The litle boy had a horne,
of red gold that ronge;
He said, 'There was noe cuckolde
shall drinke of my horne,
But he shold itt sheede,
either behind or beforne.'

44    Some shedd on their shoulder,
and some on their knee;
He that cold not hitt his mouth
put it in his eye;
And he that was a cuckhold,
euery man might him see.

45    Craddoccke wan the horne
and the bores head;
His ladye wan the mantle
vnto her meede;
Euerye such a louely ladye,
God send her well to speede! 
 

End-Notes

& is printed and, wherever it occurs.
2³. Manuscript might be read branches.
5². all heate.
6⁴. 2 nut-shells.
8⁴. his wiffe.
9². biled. "Query the le in the manuscript" Furnivall.
18⁴. Perhaps the last word was originally tout, as Mr. T. Wright has suggested.
19³. lauged.
21⁴. 20 markes.
22². willignglye.
33². Manuscript perhaps has cleare altered to clene.
33⁴. fiueteeene.
37¹. A litle.
37². Perhaps, as Percy suggested, two lines have dropped out after this, and the two which follow belong with the next stanza.
40¹, 41³. kiues.
41¹. Arthus.
44². sone on. 
 

Additions and Corrections

P. 270 b. If a girl takes a pot of boiling water off the fire, and the pot ceases to boil, this is a sign of lost modesty. Lammert, Volksmedizin und medizinischcr Aberglaube in Bayern, u.s.w., p. 146.

P. 269 b. Stones. Add the Magnet, Orpheus de Lapidibus, Leipsic, 1764, Hamberger, p. 318, translated by Erox, De Gemmis, cap. 25; and the Agate, "Albertus Magnus, De Mineralibus, 1. II, sect, ii, c. 7:" cited by Du Méril, Floire et Blanceflor, p. clxvi. G.L.K.

269 b, third paragraph. See the English Flor and Blancheflor, ed. Hausknecht, 1885, p. 189, vv. 715-20.

270 b, the first paragraph. Add: Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 931, ed. 1876. "Ebenso tragt die in dische Mariatale, so lang ihre Gedanken rein sind, ohne Gefäss das zu Kugeln geballte Wasser:" Kinderund Hausmärchen, III, 2C4, 9, ed. 1856. See Benfey, Orient und Occident, I, 719ff, II, 97. F. Liebrecht. For the Mariatale story (from P. Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes Orientales, etc.), see 'Paria,' in Goethes lyrische Gedichte, erlautert von H. Düntzer, II, 449 ff, ed. 1875.

The dragon kept by the priests of Lanuvian Juno ate honey-cakes from the hands of pure maids who went down into its cave, but twined round the unchaste and bit them: Aelian, Hist. An., xi, 6, Propertius, iv (v), 8. See Die Jungfernprobe in der Drachenhöhle zu Lanuvium, C. A. Böttiger's Kleine Schriften, I, 178 ff. G.L.K.

Note f. In the English 'Virgilius' it is a brass serpent with the same property: Thorns, A Collection of Early Prose Romances, II, p. 34 of Virgilius, ed. 1827: cited by Sir Walter Scott, 'Sir Tristrem,' p. 432, ed. 1833, apropos of the trick of the shameless Ysonde. G.L.K.

271 a. Aqua potationis domini: see, also, Konrad von Fussesbrunnen, Die Kindheit Jesu, ed. Kochendorffer, Quellen u. Forschungen, XLIII, p. 81 f, vv. 573-88, 617-21, 673 ff. G.L.K.

A stunned white elephant will be resuscitated if touched by the hand of a chaste woman. A king's eighty thousand wives, and subsequently all the women in his capital, touch the elephant without effect. A serving-woman, devoted to her husband, touches the elephant, and it rises in sound health and begins to eat. Katha-sarit-sagara, Book VII, ch. 36, Tawney's translation, p. 329 f: H.H. Wilson's Essays, II, 129f. ('In the 115th Tale of the Gesta Romanorum, we read that two chaste virgins were able to lull to sleep and kill an elephant that no one else could approach." Tawney's note.) C.R. Lanman.

Pp. 268 ff., 507, II, 502.

On going to war a king gives each of his two daughters a rose. "Si vous tombez en faute, quoi que ce soit," says he, "vos roses flétriront." Both princesses yield to the solicitations of their lovers, so that the king, on returning, finds both roses withered, and is grieved thereat. Vinson, Folk-Lore du Pays Basque, p. 102.

Wer ein ausgelöschtes Licht wieder anblasen kann ist noch Jungfrau oder Junggeselle. Wer ein ganz volles Glas zum Munde führen kann, ohne einen Tropfen su verschütten, ist Junggeselle. Zingerle, Sitten der Tiroler, p. 35.

There is a shield in Perceval le Gallois which no knight can wear with safety in a tournament if he is not all that a knight should be, and if he has not, also, "bele amie qui soit loiaus sans trecerie." Several of Arthur's knights try the shield with disastrous results; Perceval is more fortunate. (See 31805-31, 31865, 32023-48, 32410 ff., Potvin, IV, 45 ff..)

"Vpon the various earth's embrodered gowne
There is a weed vpon whose head growes downe;
Sow-thistle 'tis ycleepd; whose downy wreath
If any one can blow off at a breath,
We deeme her for a maid."
(William Browne, Britannia's Pastorals, Book I, Song 4, Works, ed. Hazlitt, p. 108.)

Eodem auxilii genere, Tucciae virginis Vestalis, incesti criminis reae, castitas infamiae nube obscurata emersit. Quae conscientia certae sinceritatis suae spem salutis ancipiti argumento ausa petere est. Arrepto enim cribro, 'Vesta,' inquit, 'si sacris tuis castas semper admovi manus, effice ut hoc hauriam e Tiberi aquam et in aedem tuam perferam.' Audaciter et temere iactis votis sacerdotis rerum ipsa natura cessit. Valerius Maximus, viii, 1, 5. Cf. also Pliny, Hist. Nat., xxviii, 2 (3), and the commentators.

There was a (qualified) test of priestesses of Ge at Ægæ by drinking bull's blood, according to Pausanias, VIII, xxv, 8; cited by H.C. Lea, Superstition and Force, 3d ed., 1878, p. 236 f. (All the above by G.L.K.)

A spring in Apollonius Heinrichs von Neustadt blackens the hand of the more serious offender, but in a milder case only the ring-finger, "der die geringste Befleckung nicht erträgt." W. Grimm's Kleinere Schriften, III, 446. (C.R. Lanman.)

P. 268 a. Flowers. 2. A garland, Kathá Sarit Ságara, Tawney's translation, II, 601.

269 b. The chaste Sítá clears herself of unjust suspicion by passing safely over a certain lake: Kathá Sarit Ságara, Tawney's translation, I, 486 f.

A chessboard that can be "mated" only by one that has never been false in love: English Prose Merlin, ed. Wheatley, ch. 21, vol. i, part II, p. 363. (G.L.K.)

P. 268 ft., II, 502 a, III, 503, IV, 454 a. Tests of chastity. On the Herodotean story, I, 271, see E. Lefébure, Mélusine, IV, 37-39. — St. Wilfred's Needle, in Ripon Minster. 'In ipso templo, avorum memoria Wilfridi acus celeberrima fuit. Id erat augustum in cryptoporticu foramen quo mulierum pudicitia explorabatur; quae enim castæ erant facile transibant, quæ dubia fama nescio quo miraculo constrictæ detinebantur.' Camden, Britannia, ed. 1607, p. 570; see Folk-Lore Journal, II, 286. (G.L.K.)

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[P. 261 f. On the Gaelic ballad in the Dean of Lismore's Book see the elaborate article by Professor Ludw. Chr. Stern, Die gälische Ballade vom Mantel in Macgregors Liederbuche, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, I, 294 ff. The text is given according to the edition of Alexander Cameron, Reliquiae Celticae, I, 76, with another copy from a 1628 Manuscript in the Franciscan Convent at Dublin. Stern's translation clears up some points, and brings out one striking similarity between the Gaelic and the English ballad. When MacReith's wife tried on the mantle, "er passte ihr, beides an Fuss und Hand, bis auf die Gabel ihrer kleinen Finger und Zehen." She explains this failure of the mantel to cover her completely: "'Einen Kuss bekam ich verstohlen von O'Duibhnes Sohne Diarmaid; der Mantel würde bis auf den Boden reichen, wenn es nicht der allein ware.'" Compare sts 28-30 of 'The Boy and the Mantle.' This similarity, in a feature unknown to other versions of the story, coupled with the form 'Craddocke' in the English ballad (a form which "nur aus dem welschen Caradawc entstanden sein kann") convinces Stern that 'The Boy and the Mantle,' and probably also the Gaelic ballad, are derived directly from Welsh tradition, independently of the Old French versions, which, however, he thinks also go back ultimately to Wales (p. 310). I am indebted to Dr. F. N. Robinson for calling my attention to Stern's article. G. L. K.]

268 ff., 507 a, II, 502 a, III, 503, IV, 454 a, V, 212 f. Tests of chastity. "The jacinth stone will not be worne on the finger of an adulterer, nor the olive grow if planted by one that leadeth his life in unlawful lusts." Greene, Never too late, Pt. II, 1590, Works, ed. Grosart, VIII, 141. A note on the general subject in G. Rua, Novelle del "Mambriano," pp. 66 f., 73-83. G.L.K. [See also Zupitza, Herrig's Archiv f. das Studium der neueren Sprachen, LXXXII, 201; Nyrop, Dania, I, 13, n. 2; Feilberg, Dania, I, 154; 'La Mensuration du Cou,' Perdrizet and Gaidoz, Mélusine, VI, 225 ff.]

270 a, 1st paragraph. The Shukasaptati story at p. 29 f. of R. Schmidt's translation.