[109] D’Arbois de Jubainville, op. cit., p. 275. Rhys, op. cit., p. 149.
[110] M. Duvau, Revue Celtique, Vol. IX., No. 1, has translated the varying versions of the story.
[111] Like many of the older Irish tales the present form is confused and obscure, but it is easy to arrive at the original.
[112] The part in brackets is found in one version only of the story. Of the two versions each has retained certain archaic features not to be found in the other.
[113] Summarised by D’Arbois de Jubainville, op. cit., p. 323.
[114] D’Arbois de Jubainville, p. 326.
[115] Otto Küpp, Z.f.D. Phil. xvii, i, 68, examining Wolfram’s version sees in the branch guarded by Gramoflanz and broken by Parzival a trace of the original myth underlying the story. Gramoflanz is connected with the Magic Castle (one of the inmates of which is his sister), or with the otherworld. Küpp’s conjecture derives much force from the importance given to the branch in the Irish tales as part of the gear of the otherworld.
[116] This recalls the fact that Oengus of the Brug fell in love with a swanmaid. See text and translation Revue Celtique, Vol. III., pp. 341, et. seq. The story is alluded to in the catalogue of epic tales (dating from the tenth century) found in the Book of Leinster.
[117] In a variant from Kashmir (Knowles’ Folk-tales of Kashmir, London, 1888, p. 75, et. seq.), Saiyid and Said, this tale is found embedded in a twin-brethren one.
[118] Frederick (I.) Barbarossa is a mistake, as old as the seventeenth century (cf. Koch, Sage vom Kaiser Friedrich in Kyffhäuser, Leipzig, 1886), for Frederick II., the first German Emperor of whom the legend was told. The mistake was caused by the fact that Frederick took the place of a German red-bearded god, probably Thor, hence the later identification with the red-bearded Frederick, instead of with that great opponent of the Papacy whose death away in Italy the German party refused for many years to credit.