Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/135

both to read his confessions of "adaptation", and to learn the results of his researches. The most interesting of the latter is undoubtedly his investigation of the Gelert legend, and the time and manner in which it became localised at Beddgelert. He seems, indeed, to have solved this latter question, and shown that the local tradition is less than a hundred years old, and is of literary origin—a parallel to the Hertha tradition on the isle of Rugen. The fable, however, must have been widely known in Wales during the Middle Ages, of which the Warwick roll is a very singular and, if genuine, conclusive piece of evidence. I do not lay any stress on the place-names mentioned by Croker in the passage quoted by Mr. Jacobs, though it is possible they may owe their origin to the story. But the fact of its adoption into the arms of the Principality, as evidenced by the Warwick roll, implies much more than wide dissemination. It must somehow have got identified with the national history, or with some event in the family history of the princes. This is a point that Mr. Jacobs has failed to clear up. The legend has been localised at many other places. The instance in the south of France, mentioned in the Liber de Donis of Etienne de Bourbon, which I only know from the account given of it by Prof. Crane as quoted by Mr. Clouston (Popular Tales and Fictions, vol ii, p. 168), shows that the story had there become attached to a local non-Christian shrine where rites familiar to students of folk-lore were performed. The same fable is related in modern India in more than one form, and the river Kukrél, near Lucknow, is said, in one of the variants, to have sprung from the spot where the dog was buried. The literary genealogy through Dolopathos and The Seven Wise Masters has received much attention. Probably the European versions wherein a dog figures as the hero are to be traced through one or other of these collections. Even then, however, the questions arising out of the tale have by no means all been solved. It does not seem to have been noticed by any of the learned men who have written