In this literature we find a remarkable parallel to the whole Gawain-Orgelusé episode. 'The Wooing of Emer' by Cuchulainn is one of the most famous stories about the greatest Irish hero. Emer was the daughter of Forgall the Wily, the chief maiden of Ireland in all virtues and qualities, and therefore the only one whom Cuchulainn deemed worthy of him. But she is by no means minded to take him at his own estimation; when he recounts his achievements, 'these are goodly fights of a tender boy,' says she, nor will she consent to see him until he perform certain definite feats. Moreover, her father is by no means anxious that she should marry, and to get rid of the wooer has him sent off with two companions on a perilous expedition to Skye. The first danger he encountered (I quote textually from the oldest version of the story, ascribed by the editor, Professor Kuno Meyer, to the eighth century) is 'some dreadful beast like a lion, which fought with him, but did him no harm, and the foul play of the youths who laughed at him' (_Revue Celtique_, vol. X. 44). Afterwards he has to make his way across the 'plain of ill-luck' on which men freeze, and by a narrow path over a glen, and a 'terrible stony height.' Cuchulainn of course comes safely through all these and other ventures, and carries off Emer, whom he weds. Here, then, we have the contemptuous attitude of the wooed maiden, her indication of feats to be performed before she can be won; and before the final marriage a series of incidents bearing no small resemblance to those which befall Gawain at the Wonder Castle.--ALFRED NUTT.] BOOK XI TRADITIONAL EVENTS Gawain, against the advice of the Chrêtien gives the incidents in Boatman, visits Château Merveil, the same order, but with some seats himself on the magic couch, difference in details, and is assailed, first by unseen adversaries, then by a lion which he kills and ends the enchantments of the Castle. (There is a Castle of Wonders in 'Peredur,' but the adventures connected with it are quite different.) The entire episode of the Magic Castle and Gawain's adventures therein is stamped with a weird, fantastic character, unlike the rest of the poem, and gives the effect of a Mährchen introduced into the midst of a knightly epic. More than one critic has pointed out the similarity between the tasks to be achieved by Gawain, before he becomes lord of the castle, and those which, in old folk-tales, fall to the lot of those who dare a venture to the shadowy under-world. Some of the features in the story, which will be noted as they occur, seem to distinctly indicate that such was the original nature of this episode, related with so much spirit by the German poet.