Matheson Collection > Popular tales of the west Highlands > Volume 4

BRITISH TRADITIONS. 257
Europe, including Icelandic. The question for argu-
ment is, Did the old fishermen of the Hebrides, the
old wives of Norway, the old nurses of Germany, the
people of Brittany, and the writers of " Hiberno-Celtic"
manuscripts, all learn their incidents, which they have
in common with " Peredur," from their ancestors, the
ancestors from wandering minstrels, the minstrels from
manuscripts, and the authors of the manuscripts from
"Welsh bards ? or, Have the peasantry of Europe pre-
served the traditions from which writers and reciters
made books and romances ? and, in particular, have the
Highlanders of Scotland preserved the Celtic traditions,
which were also written in " the Welsh Eed Book," in
another guise, in the end of the fifteenth century ? I
hold the latter as the more probable, if only, because I
have found no trace of some romances which as are
widely spread. The story of Geraint, the son of Erbin,
is in as many languages, including Icelandic, as the Lady
of the Fountain, and I have not yet found a single
incident in Gaelic common to it, unless it be the old
knight and the dwarf encouraging their friends in the
combat with the knight of the Sparrow-hawk, as Dua-
nach encouraged Conall in his battles ; and the magic
mist which was dispersed by the hero, which occurs in
the lay of the Great Fool, which is in a Manx tradition,
and which occurs in several Irish stories — for example,
" The Chase," in Miss Brooke's collection of Irish poems.
Take the story of Kilwich and Olwen, in the second
volume, as another example. It opens like many
Gaelic stories. A king has a son, and marries a second
time. He conceals his son with a swineherd, and the
stepmother finds him out and brings him to court, and
he is sent off to encounter great perils, and seek objects
difficult of attainment — adventures suggested by the
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