[53]Mr. Hartland also draws attention to the parallel between the three disguises of the hero and the three dresses of the heroine in certain variants of the Cinderella story. In the Aschenbrödel the robes are woven of sun, moon, and stars.
[54]Berlin, 1881.
[55]Harvard Studies and Notes, vol. v. pp. 94, 95.
[56]John Rous, Life of Richard, Earl of Warwick.
[57]I should like to draw the attention of readers to the fact that these two ‘triplets’ of colours are also to be met with elsewhere. Thus black, white, and red are found, as we have seen, in a famous incident of the Perceval; and that curious book, Durandus on Symbolism, gives them as the colours of the three veils covering the altar at Passiontide. White, green, and red are found in the legend of the Tree of Life, and Solomon’s Ship, preserved in the Queste and Grand Saint Graal. A friend, learned in such matters, has informed me that these sets of colours represent certain alchemical processes, and in that connection were well known in mediæval times. It seems possible that there may have been some hidden and mystical significance attached to their earliest use; we have not fathomed all the secrets of folk-lore.
[58]P. 25.
[59]For details of Map’s life, cf. Dictionary of National Biography, and the Introduction to Wright’s edition of De Nugis Curialium.
[60]I would draw the attention of students of the Lais of Marie de France to the fact that Map gives several versions of the wedding of a knight with a fairy, or Otherworld, mistress. Also a version of a visit to the Otherworld kingdom with an ending closely corresponding with that of the Voyage of Bran, and Guingamor, and in each case he locates the story in Wales. It is perfectly clear that tales, such as we find in the Lais, were at least as well known in these islands as on the Continent.
[61]Legend of Sir Lancelot, p. 83.
[62]Legend of Sir Lancelot, p. 11. The folk-lore allusions in the Lanzelet are worth following up.