For the version of the Heren-Suge tales which most closely approaches the Gaelic, see below, “Keltic Legends,” “The Fisherman and his Sons,” p. 87.
[1] One of the oddest instances of mistaken metaphors that we know of occurs in “La Vie de St. Savin, par J. Abbadie, Curé de la Paroisse” (Tarbes, 1861). We translate from the Latin, which is given in a note:—“Intoxicated with divine love, he was keeping vigil according to his custom, and when he could not find a light elsewhere, he gave light to his eyes from the light that was in his breast. The small piece of wax-taper thus lit passed the whole night till morning without being extinguished.”—Off. S. Savin.
[2] This Fleur-de-lis was supposed by our narrator to be some mark tattooed or impressed upon the breast of all kings’ sons.
[3] This, of course, is “Little George,” and makes one suspect that the whole tale is borrowed from the French; though it is just possible that only the names, and some of the incidents, may be.
[4] Cf. “Ezkabi Fidel,” 112, below.
[5] In Campbell’s “Tale of the Sea-Maiden,” instead of looking in his ear, the king’s daughter put one of her earrings in his ear, the last two days, in order to wake him; and it is by these earrings and her ring that she recognises him afterwards, instead of by the pieces of dress and the serpent’s tongues.
[6] Campbell, Vol. I., lxxxvii., 8, has some most valuable remarks on the Keltic Legends, showing the Kelts to be a horse-loving, and not a seafaring race—a race of hunters and herdsmen, not of sailors. The contrary is the case with these Basque tales. The reader will observe that the ships do nothing extraordinary, while the horses behave as no horse ever did. It is vice versâ in the Gaelic Tales, even when the legends are identical in many particulars.