notes, also commingle verse and prose. There are even traces in the Old Testament of such screeds of verse amid the prose narrative, as in the story of Lamech or that of Balaam. All this suggests that this is a very early and common form of narrative. (Cf. note on "Connla" in Celtic Fairy Tales.)
Among folk-tales there are still many traces of the cante-fable. Thus, in Grimm's collection, verses occur in Nos. 1, 5, 11, 12, 13, 15, 19, 21, 24, 28, 30, 36, 38a, b, 39a, 40, 45, 46, 47, out of the first fifty tales, 36 per cent. Of Chambers's twenty-one folk-tales in the Popular Rhymes of Scotland, only five are without interspersed verses. Of the forty-three tales contained in this volume, three (ix., xxix., xxxiii.) are derived from ballads, and do not therefore count in the present connection. Of the remaining forty, i., iii., vii., xvi., xix., xxi., xxiii., xxv., xxxi., xxxv., xxxviii., xli. (made up from verses), xliii., contain rhymed Hues; while xiv., xxii., xxvi., and XXX vii. contain "survivals" of rhymes ("let me come in—chinny chin-chin;" "once again . . . come to Spain;" "it is not so—should be so;" "and his lady, him behind;") and X. and xxxii. are rhythmical if not rhyming. As most of the remainder are drolls, which have probably a different origin, there seems to be great probability a that originally all folk-tales of a serious character were interspersed with rhyme, and took therefore the form of the cante-fable. It is indeed unlikely that the ballad itself began as continuous verse, and the cante-fable is probably the protoplasm out of which both ballad and folk-tale have been differentiated, the ballad by omitting the narrative prose, the folk-tale by expanding it. In "Childe Rowland" we have the nearest example to such protoplasm, and it is not difficult to see how it could have been shortened into a ballad or reduced to a prose folk-tale pure and simple.
The subject-matter of "Childe Rowland" has also claims on our attention, especially with regard to recent views on the true nature and origin of elves, trolls, and fairies. I refer to the work of Mr. D. MacRitchie, The Testimony of
