" 'Wyht suylc a betel be he smyten,
That al the werld hyt mote wyten,
That gyfht his sone al his thing,
And goht hym self a beggyn.'"
Here, then, is a case whereby to test the problem of the origin of folk-tales. Did the people adopt this tale from literature into tradition and keep it alive for five centuries; or did some early and unconscious folk-lorist adapt it into literature? The literary version has the flavour of its priestly influence, which does not appear in the traditional version; and I make the preliminary observation that if literature could have so stamped itself upon the memory of the folk as to have preserved all the essentials of such a story as this, it must have been due to some academic influence (of which, however, there is no evidence), and this influence would have preserved a nearer likeness to literary forms than the peasant's tale presents to us. But the objection to this theory is best shown by an analysis of the tale, and by some research into the possible sources of its origin.
The story presents us with the following essential incidents:—
Mr. Campbell notes the 1st and 3rd of these incidents in his original abstract of the story,[1] but of the remaining 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th, no note has hitherto been taken.
Of the first incident, the gift of a well-stocked farm by a
- ↑ Journ. Ethnol. Soc., loc. cit.
