Gaelic and Welsh-Gypsy stories

Gypsy Folk Tales, by Francis Hindes Groome, [1899], at sacred-texts.com

Gaelic and Welsh-Gypsy stories.

Now, of 'The Battle of the Birds' we have a Welsh-Gypsy version, 'The Green Man of Noman's Land' (No. 62), lacking, it is true, this episode, which may be an interpolation in the Gaelic story, but unmistakably identical with the Gaelic story, of which, however, it forms only a fragment. In the Gaelic version the hero is set four tasks by the heroine's father, in the Gypsy version five tasks, as follows:--

The story, of course, is a very widespread one. We have a Sanskrit version of it on the one hand, and on the other an African Negro version from Jamaica, with many more referred to in the notes on two other Gypsy versions--one from the Bukowina, 'Made over to the Devil' (No. 34), and the other from Galicia, 'The Witch' (No. 50). But in the Gaelic and in the Gypsy version there are two special points to be noted. The first is that the almost absolute identity of the tasks imposed seems to preclude the idea that the likeness between the two versions can be explained by their being derived from a common original, three or four thousand years old. The second point is that in some respects the Gypsy version is decidedly the better of the two: the fir-tree beside a loch cannot compare with the glass mountain in the middle of the lake; and the selection of the youngest daughter at the dance is inferior to the selection of her as she flies in bird-shape over the castle.