by the "dowie dene of Yarrow," or by the "wan water" that Buccleugh swam at the head of his horsemen. The French peasant sings little of the deeds of knights and princes, whom he does not love, but is busy with the scanty experience of his own life, his brief years of youth, his long acquaintance with labour, his fear of the final doom,
"Tant plus prieras ton Dieu pour moi
Et tant plus souffrirai martyre."
Popular Tales.
The popular tales of France, the märchen which France shares with most other known peoples, have not yet, so far as I am aware, been collected and published with method and system. For some years the story of Tord-chène, in Les Filles de Feu of Gérard de Nerval, was the only rustic version of a French märchen which I had the fortune to meet with. In the old collections of Perrault and of Madame D'Aulnoy the characters have been attired in court dress, and it is not always possible to tell what the writers have borrowed directly from Italian or Eastern sources, nor to distinguish the literary inventions from the genuine traditions. Even now I am only acquainted with the contes published in Mélusine, and with that very charming book of M. Deulin's, Les Contes du Roi Gambrinus. Now M. Deulin does not conceal the fact that he has told his stories (which at bottom are real traditional tales) in his own way. A most amusing and agreeable way it is; still it is plainly impossible to draw any scientific conclusion from Les Contes du Roi Gambrinus. The märchen in Mélusine, on the other hand, profess to be derived from the lips of the people. The narrators, however, were not, in all cases, quite unsophisticated. You must go, with Mr. Campbell, to Barra, or "where the great peaks look abroad over Skye to the westernmost islands," if you want to get the real article uncorrupted by any memory of literature. From Turkish old women too, from Von Hahn's Albanians, from Castren's Samoyedes, unsophisticated tales may be obtained. From all such natural people, the märchen comes undiluted, but it is easily seen that even Herr Schmidt's Ithacan and Cephalonian story-tellers have heard, however vaguely, and remember, however indistinctly, fragments of
