of a very fine version of the Dragon Slayer and False Claimant story, and it is moreover probable that the Morien version has borrowed certain details from the Tristan, but he too can claim no share in the other incidents. The close correspondence, point by point, with a folk-tale of so widespread and representative a character, is, I submit, a peculiarity of the earlier Lancelot story, which is of extraordinary interest as throwing light upon the genesis and growth of Arthurian legend.

In this connection I have by no means forgotten the energetic protests which, in certain quarters, were evoked by Mr. Nutt’s attempt to show that the story of Perceval might in this way be connected with popular tales; and I am quite prepared to be told that tales collected in the nineteenth century are not to be trusted as indications of the sources of twelfth century romance. But in the instance before us the evidence, while of precisely the same nature as in the case of Perceval, exceeds it, both in bulk and extent. The story is not one story, but a large and well-marked group of tales; the folk-lore parallels affect not one, but many incidents of the romance. How large and how widely diffused is that story-group can only be appreciated by those who will examine the lists of variants appended by M. Cosquin to the four stories I have named above and those cited by Mr. Campbell under the heading of the Sea Maiden, and then compare these stories with the numerous examples given by Mr. Hartland in his exhaustive study of the Perseus legend. The incidents are, as I have shown, six out of a possible list of seven. If, further, we remember that the group, with all its varying forms, is connected with such pre-historic heroes as Perseus and Cuchullin, we have, I think, a sufficient answer to those critics who would reject the evidence en masse on the ground of modernity.