_Source._--MacInnes, _Folk-Tales from Argyleshire_, vii., combined with
Campbell of Tiree's version.
_Parallels._--The earliest version, from an Egerton MS. of the fifteenth
century, has been printed by Mr. S. H. O'Grady in his _Silva Gadelica_,
No. 20, with an English version, pp. 332-42. Mr. Campbell of Tiree has
given a short Gaelic version in the _Transactions of the Gaelic Society
of Inverness_, 78-100. Campbell of Islay collected the fullest version
of this celebrated story, which is to be found among his manuscript
remains now in Edinburgh. Mr. Nutt has given his English abstract in
_Folk-lore_, i. 373-7, in its original form. The story must have
contained twenty-four tales or episodes of stories, nineteen of which
are preserved in J. F. Campbell's version. For parallels to the various
incidents, see Mr. Nutt's notes on MacInnes, pp. 470-3. The tale is
referred to in MacNicol, _Remarks on Dr. Johnson's Journey to the
Hebrides_, 1779.
_Remarks._--Nothing could give a more vivid idea of what might be called
the organisation of the art of story-telling among the Celts than this
elaborate tale. Mr. Nutt is inclined to trace it, even in its present
form, back to the twelfth or thirteenth century. It occurs in an MS. of
the fifteenth century in an obviously unoriginal form which shows that
the story-teller did not appreciate the significance of many features in
the folk-tale he was retelling, and yet it was orally collected by the
great Campbell in 1871, in a version which runs to 142 folio pages.
Formally, its interest consists in large measure in the curious
framework in which the subsidiary stories are imbedded. This is not of
the elaborate kind introduced into Europe from the East by the Crusades,
but more _naive_, resembling rather, as Mr. Nutt points out to me, the
loosely-knit narratives of Charles Lever in his earlier manner.