[254] Georgii Codini Excerpta de antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis, in Corpus Scriptorum Historiæ Byzantinæ, XLV, 50 f, cited by Liebrecht, Germania, I, 264; De Originibus Constantinopolitanis, cited by Lütcke, Von der Hagen's Germania, I, 252, referred to by Liebrecht: both anecdotes in Banduri, Imperium Orientale, Anonymus de Ant. Const. p. 35, 96, p. 57, 162. The statue again in a note of Nic. Alemannus to Procopius, Arcana, 1623, p. 83: cited by Mr Wright, Archæologia Cambrensis, as above, p. 17. Mr Wright also makes mention, p. 16, of the blind dog that quidam Andreas (evidently a merry one) was exhibiting in the seventeenth year of Justinian, which, among other clever performances, ostendebat in utero habentes et fornicarios et adulteros et avaros et magnanimos—omnes cum veritate: Historia Miscella, Eyssenhardt, p. 377 f, l. 18, c. 23; Cedrenus, in the Byzantine Corpus, XXXIII, 657, Theophanes, in XXXVIII, 347 f.
[255] The Meisterlieder and the Indian tale are cited by Warnatsch. Virgil's statue was circumvented by an artifice which is employed in this tale of the Shukasaptati, and in other oriental stories presumably derived from it; and so was the well-known Bocca della Verità, Kaiserchronik, Massmann, pp 448 f. The Bocca della Verità bit off the fingers of perjurers, but took no particular cognizance of the unchaste. A barley-corn [grain of wheat], again, which stood on end when any false oath was sworn over it, Jülg, Mongolische Märchensammlung, Die Geschichte des Ardschi-Bordschi Chan, pp 250-52, cited by Benfey, Pantschatantra, I, 458, and referred to by Warnatsch, does not belong with special tests of chastity.
[256] The phrase looks more malicious than naïf, whether Austrian or Spanish, and implies, I fear, an exsufflicate and blown surmise about female virtue; and so of the Indian 'Volksglaube.' The candle-test is said to be in use for men in Silesia: Warnatsch, citing Weinhold, p. 58.
[257] These are all noted in Liebrecht's Dunlop, pp 11, 16, 33. The spring, says the author of Hysmine, served as good a purpose for Artycomis as the Rhine did for the Celts; referring to a test of the legitimacy of children by swinging or dipping them in the Rhine, which the "Celts" practiced, according to a poem in the Anthology: Jacobs, II, 42 f, No 125; Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 935 (Warnatsch).
[258] Besides sources specially referred to, there may be mentioned, as particularly useful for the history of these tests. Legrand, Fabliaux, 1779, I, 60, 76-78; Dunlop's History of Fiction, 1814, in many places, with Liebrecht's notes, 1851; Grässe, Sagenkreise, 1842, pp 185-87; Von der Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, 1850, III, lxxxiv-xc, cxxxv f.
[30]
KING ARTHUR AND KING CORNWALL
Percy MS., p. 24. Hales & Furnivall, I, 61; Madden's Syr Gawayne, p. 275.
The mutilation of the earlier pages of the Percy manuscript leaves us in possession of only one half of this ballad, and that half in eight fragments, so that even the outline of the story cannot be fully made out.[259] We have, to be sure, the whole of a French poem which must be regarded as the probable source of the ballad, and, in view of the recklessness of the destroyer Time, may take comfort; for there are few things in this kind that the Middle Ages have bequeathed which we could not better spare. But the losses from the English ballad are still very regrettable, since from what is in our hands we can see that the story was treated in an original way, and so much so that comparison does not stead us materially.
'King Arthur and King Cornwall' is apparently an imitation, or a traditional variation, of Charlemagne's Journey to Jerusalem and Constantinople, a chanson de geste of complete individuality and of remarkable interest. This all but incomparable relic exists in only a single manuscript,[260] and that ill written and not older than the end of the thirteenth century, while the poem itself may be assigned to the beginning of the twelfth, if not to the latter part of the eleventh.[261] Subsequently, the story, with modifications, was introduced into the romance of Galien, and in this setting it occurs in three forms, two manuscript of the fifteenth century, and the third a printed edition of the date 1500. These are all in prose, but betray by metrical remains imbedded in them their descent from a romance in verse, which there are reasons for putting at least as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century.[262]