In conclusion, we will barely allude to the singular anecdote related by Herodotus, (ii. 111,) of Phero, the son of Sesostris, in which the experience of King Marc and King Arthur is so curiously anticipated. In the early ages, as Dunlop has remarked, some experiment for ascertaining the fidelity of women, in defect of evidence, seems really to have been resorted to. "By the Levitical law," (Numbers v. 11-31,) continues that accurate writer, "there was prescribed a mode of trial, which consisted in the suspected person drinking water in the tabernacle. The mythological fable of the trial by the Stygian fountain, which disgraced the guilty by the waters rising so as to cover the laurel wreath of the unchaste female who dared the examination, probably had its origin in some of the early institutions of Greece or Egypt. Hence the notion was adopted in the Greek romances, the heroines of which were invariably subjected to a magical test of this nature, which is one of the few particulars in which any similarity of incident can be traced between the Greek
novels and the romances of chivalry." See DUNLOP, History of Fiction, London, 1814, i. 239, sq.; LEGRAND, Fabliaux, 3d ed., i. 149, sq., 161; SCHMIDT, Jahrbücher der Literatur, xxix. 121; WOLF, Ueber die Lais, 174-177; and, above all, GRAESSE'S Sagenkreise des Mittelalters, 185, sq.
The Boy and the Mantle was "printed verbatim" from the Percy MS., in the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, iii. 38.
In the third day of May,
To Carleile did come
A kind curteous child,
That cold much of wisdome.
5
A kirtle and a mantle