[59] A similar episode survives in a Breton folk-tale, cited by Professor Kittredge in Child’s Ballads, iii. 504.  In Huon of Bordeaux (E.E.T.S. edition, p. 265), Charlemagne mistakes Oberon for God.

[60] See Gummere, The Popular Ballad (1907), pp. 66-7.

[61] Cottonian, Caligula A. II.  A later version is at the Bodleian, MS. Rawlinson C. 86, and a Scottish version in Cambridge University Library, MS. Kk. 5. 30.

[62] It was licensed to John Kynge the printer between 19 July 1557 and 9 July 1558.  See Arber, Stationers’ Registers, i. 79.  Two fragments are in the Bodleian; see Hales and Furnivall, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript (1867), i. 521-535.

[63] In this year it is mentioned, as having been amongst Captain Cox’s books, in Laneham’s famous Letter.  See Shakespeare Library reprint, p. xxx.

[64] Brit.  Mus.  MS. Addl. 27,879; see Hales and Furnivall, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript, i. 142.

[65] Harl. 3810 (British Museum), printed by Ritson in Ancient English Metrical Romances (1802) ii. 248; the Auchinleck MS. (W. 4. 1, in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh), printed by D. Laing in Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland, iii; and Ashmolean 61 (Bodleian Library, Oxford), printed by Halliwell in his Fairy Mythology, p. 36.  The three are collated by O. Zielke, Sir Orfeo (Breslau 1880), a fully annotated edition.  The last is used here.

[66] A grafted fruit tree; here probably an apple.

[67] It may be seen in Child’s Ballads, i. 215, with a full analysis of the romance, and in the present editor’s Popular Ballads of the Olden Time, Second Series, p. 208.

[68] Ballads, i. 338-340; see also various “Additions and Corrections” in the later volumes, and s.v. Elf, Elves, etc. in the Index of Matters and Literature.

[69] Morte Darthur (ed.  Sommer), vi. l. 3.

[70] See below, p. 131.

[71] See J.M.  Synge, The Aran Islands (1907), p. 48, and A. Nutt, Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare, p. 22.

[72] See Synge, op. cit., p. 47.

[73] See his admirable article on Sir Orfeo in the American Journal of Philology, vii. 176-202. The Courtship of Etain may be seen in English, translated from the two versions in Egerton MS. 1782. and the “Leabhar na h-Uidhri”—­an eleventh century Irish MS.—­in Heroic Romances of Ireland, by A. H, Leahy, i. 7-32.

[74] A. Nutt, Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare, p. 12.

[75] Wyf of Bathe’s Tale, 1-6.

[76] See A. Nutt, op. cit., pp. 16-17; and various authorities given by G.L.  Kittredge, op. cit., p. 196 notes.

[77] Pronounced shee.

[78] Mr. Alfred Nutt (op. cit., pp. 19-23) is at pains to show the close association of the Tuatha De Danann with ritual of an agricultural-sacrificial kind, in the aspect they have assumed—­“fairies”—­to the modern Irish peasant.  The Sidhe have fallen from the high estate of the romantic and courtly wooers and warriors, as they must once have fallen from the Celtic pantheon.