XI. GOLD TREE AND SILVER TREE.
Source.—Celtic Magazine, xiii. 213-8, Gaelic and English from Mr. Kenneth Macleod.
Parallels.—Mr. Macleod heard another version in which "Gold Tree" (anonymous in this variant) is bewitched to kill her father's horse, dog, and cock. Abroad it is the Grimm's Schneewittchen (No. 53), for the Continental variants of which see Köhler on Gonzenbach, Sicil. Mährchen, Nos. 2-4, Grimm's notes on 53, and Crane, Ital. Pop. Tales, 331. No other version is known in the British Isles.
Remarks.—It is unlikely, I should say impossible, that this tale, with the incident of the dormant heroine, should have arisen independently in the Highlands; it is most likely an importation from abroad. Yet in it occurs a most "primitive" incident, the bigamous household of the hero; this is glossed over in Mr. Macleod's other variant. On the "survival" method of investigation this would possibly be used as evidence for polygamy in the Highlands. Yet if, as is probable, the story came from abroad, this trait may have come with it, and only implies polygamy in the original home of the tale.
XII. KING O'TOOLE AND HIS GOOSE.
Source.—S. Lover's Stories and Legends of the Irish Peasantry.
Remarks.—This is really a moral apologue on the benefits of keeping your word. Yet it is told with such humour and vigour, that the moral glides insensibly into the heart.
XIII. THE WOOING OF OLWEN.
Source.—The Mabinogi of Kulhwych and Olwen from the translation of Lady Guest, abridged.
Parallels.—Prof. Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, p. 486, considers that our tale is paralleled by Cuchulain's "Wooing of Emer," a translation of which by Prof. K. Meyer appeared in the Archaeological Review, vol. i. I fail to see much analogy. On the other hand in his Arthurian Legend, p. 41, he rightly compares the tasks set by Yspythadon to those set to Jason. They are indeed of the familiar type of the Bride Wager (on which see Grimm-Hunt, i. 399). The incident of the three animals, old, older, and oldest, has a remarkable resemblance to the Tettira Jataka (ed. Fausböll, No. 37, transl. Rhys Davids, i. p. 310 seq.) in which the partridge, monkey, and elephant dispute as to their relative age, and the partridge turns out to have voided the seed of the Banyan-tree under which they were sheltered, whereas the elephant only knew it when a mere bush, and the monkey had nibbled the topmost shoots. This apologue got to England at the end of the twelfth century as the sixty-ninth fable, "Wolf, Fox, and Dove," of a rhymed prose collection of "Fox Fables" (Mishle Shu'alim), of an Oxford Jew, Berachyah Nakdan, known in the Records as "Benedict le Puncteur" (see my Fables Of Aesop, i. p. 170). Similar incidents occur in "Jack and his Snuff-box" in my English Fairy Tales, and in Dr. Hyde's "Well of D'Yerree-in-Dowan." The skilled companions of Kulhwych are common in European folk-tales (Cf. Cosquin, i. 123-5), and especially among the Celts (see Mr. Nutt's note in MacInnes' Tales, 445-8), among whom they occur very early, but not so early as Lynceus and the other skilled comrades of the Argonauts.