14              INFLUENCE OF MEDIEVAL



mony the boar's head into hall at the festival of Christmas;

and the writer of the later of the two ballads seems  to

have  thought that this circumstance would have been

more  fitted  to the understanding of his contemporaries,

than that of boars running wild about the country. He

has, therefore, changed the time at which King Arthur

held his court from May to Christmas.   In  1839  I con¬

tributed  an edition of  these two ballads,  with  a few

notes, to a little collection of early poetry  and legend

printed at Vienna,1 from which they are reprinted here.

  in. For editing the texts  of  the Welsh  Fragments

relating  to  the  mantle, which  are not  older than the

fifteenth century, I am  indebted  to  Thomas Stephens,

Esq.,  of Merthyr Tydfil, whom  I  look upon as one  of

our best  and  most judicious  scholars  in  the Welsh

literature of the middle  ages. It is to be regretted that

these  fragments are so few and so scanty in their nature;

but I have hopes that the story, in some form or  other,

may still be found among the Welsh manuscripts  yet  in

existence.   " The story of Le Court Mantel, or  the Boy

and the Mantle," Warton tells us, " is recorded in  many

manuscript Welsh chronicles, as I learn from  original

letters of Lhuyd in the Ashmolean Museum."2

  iv.  The Gaelic Poem  and  translation  are printed

verbatim from the very curious  and interesting volume

of selections from the  manuscript of Gaelic poetry col¬

lected by the Dean of Lismore (in the Perthshire High¬

lands) soon after the beginning of the sixteenth century.3

Some of the poems in  this  manuscript  are, no doubt,

considerably older than the  manuscript  in  which they

are preserved;  but in all probability the greater part  of

them  are not older than the  fifteenth century.



                                              T. W.



  1 FrUhlingsgabe fur Freunde dlterer Literatur (a spring gift for the

friends of old literature). Von Th. G. v. Karajan. 12mo, Wien, 1839.

  2 Warton, History of English Poetry, vol. i, p. vi, edition of 1840.

  3 The Dean of Lismore1 s Booh, a Selection of Ancient Gaelic Poetry.

Edited, with a translation and notes, by the Rev. Thomas McLauch-

lan.  8vo.  Edinburgh, 1862. P.  72  of translations, and p. 50  of

texts.