_ 1743. To explain their
skill and uncanny knowledge of herbs, the folk traced them to a
supernatural ancestress, who taught them their craft in a place still
called Pant-y-Meddygon ("Doctors' Dingle"). Their medical knowledge did
not require any such remarkable origin, as Mr. Hartland has shown in a
paper "On Welsh Folk-Medicine," contributed to _Y Cymmrodor_, vol. xii.
On the other hand, the Swan-Maiden type of story is widespread through
the Old World. Mr. Morris' "Land East of the Moon and West of the Sun,"
in _The Earthly Paradise_, is taken from the Norse version. Parallels
are accumulated by the Grimms, ii. 432; Koehler on Gonzenbach, ii. 20;
or Blade, 149; Stokes' _Indian Fairy Tales_, 243, 276; and Messrs.
Jones and Koopf, _Magyar Folk-Tales_, 362-5. It remains to be proved
that one of these versions did not travel to Wales, and become there
localised. We shall see other instances of such localisation or
specialisation of general legends.

VIII. THE SPRIGHTLY TAILOR.

_Source._--_Notes and Queries_ for December 21, 1861; to which it was
communicated by "Cuthbert Bede," the author of _Verdant Green_, who
collected it in Cantyre.

_Parallels_.--Miss Dempster gives the same story in her Sutherland
Collection, No. vii. (referred to by Campbell in his Gaelic list, at
end of vol. iv.); Mrs. John Faed, I am informed by a friend, knows the
Gaelic version, as told by her nurse in her youth. Chambers' "Strange
Visitor," _Pop. Rhymes of Scotland_, 64, of which I gave an Anglicised
version in my _English Fairy Tales_, No. xxxii., is clearly a variant.

_Remarks_.--The Macdonald of Saddell Castle was a very great man
indeed. Once, when dining with the Lord-Lieutenant, an apology was made
to him for placing him so far away from the head of the table. "Where
the Macdonald sits," was the proud response, "there is the head of the
table."

IX. DEIRDRE.

_Source_.--_Celtic Magazine_, xiii. pp. 69, _seq_. I have abridged
somewhat, made the sons of Fergus all faithful instead of two traitors,
and omitted an incident in the house of the wild men called here
"strangers." The original Gaelic was given in the _Transactions of the
Inverness Gaelic Society_ for 1887, p. 241, _seq._, by Mr. Carmichael.
I have inserted Deirdre's "Lament" from the _Book of Leinster_.

_Parallels_.--This is one of the three most sorrowful Tales of Erin,
(the other two, _Children of Lir_ and _Children of Tureen_, are given
in Dr. Joyce's