Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/261

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Celtic Myth and Saga.
255

Again to explain the method of abridging Crestien, found in the Welsh tale, on the ground that “der Kelte liebt nicht ausführliche Darstellungen”, is to go dead against the facts. If there is one thing the “Kelte” does like it is “ausfuhrliche Darstellungen”; indeed, no better instance of the detailed and vividly picturesque descriptive passages which characterise Celtic traditional literature in all its stages could be found than in one of the Mabinogion, the Dream of Rhonabwy.

My strictures upon Herr Othmer’s essay must not be misinterpreted; I most cordially recognise the value of the patient and laborious researches by which he and so many other German scholars are determining the correct nature of mediæval texts. But to decide problems in which the most intricate ethnological and sociological factors are concerned something more is needed than the method of acute and patient comparison by which a magazine writer justifies a charge of plagiarism against a popular novelist.[1]

  1. I may cite here the titles of a few pamphlets and articles relating to the Tristan story, which has been one of the best studied sections of the Arthur-cycle during the past few years:—E. Muret, Eilhart d’Oberg et sa source française (Romania, xvi, 288-363); W. Golther, Die Sage von Tristan und Isolde (Munich, 1887); F. Novati, Un nuovo ed un vecchio frammento del Tristran di Tommaso (Studi di filogia rom., vi, 369-515); H. Warnecke, Metrische und sprachliche Abhandlung ueber das dem Berol zugeschriebene Tristran fragment (Erlangen, 1881); E. Löseth, Tristran romanensgammelfranske prosahandskrifter in Pariser Nationalbibliotheket (Christiania, 1888). These various treatises are briefly reviewed by Prof. M. Wilmotte (Moyen-Age, Jan. 1890), who leans unduly, in my opinion, to the side of Dr. Golther, but whose article enables a clear and succinct view of the very perplexing questions connected with the earliest French versions. To conclude the enumeration of “Arthurian” monographs, I must note Geheimrath Alb. Schulz’ (San-Marte) Ueber den Bildungsgang der Gral und Parzival Dichtung in Frankreich und Deutschland (Zeits. für deutsche Philologie, xxii, 3, 4). Written in the veteran’s eighty-eighth year, this essay testifies to the undying love of its author for the studies of which he was the pioneer sixty years ago. It is