[124] I have to thank Professor Wollner for giving me in translation the two tales from Afanasief and a Bulgarian tale presently to be mentioned.
[125] In the Greek tale, I, the prince confides his trouble to an old lame horse. The coincidence here with the ballad does not go very far, and may be an accident, but may be more than that.
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS[126]
VOL. I.
1. Riddles Wisely Expounded.
P. 1. Rawlinson MS. D. 328, fol. 174 b., Bodleian Library.
I was unaware of the existence of this very important copy until it was pointed out to me by my friend Professor Theodor Vetter, of Zürich, to whom I have been in other ways greatly indebted. It is from a book acquired by Walter Pollard, of Plymouth, in the 23d year of Henry VI, 1444-5, and the handwriting is thought to authorize the conclusion that the verses were copied into the book not long after. The parties are the fiend and a maid, as in C, D, which are hereby evinced to be earlier than A, B. The “good ending” of A, B, is manifestly a modern perversion, and the reply to the last question in A, D, ‘The Devil is worse than eer woman was,’ gains greatly in point when we understand who the so-called knight really is. We observe that in the fifteenth century version, 12, the fiend threatens rather than promises that the maid shall be his: and so in E, V, 205.
Inter diabolus et virgo.
1
Wol ȝe here a wonder thynge