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THE BOY AND THE MANTLE. 5
Lastly, we find the legends of the horn and the mantle united, as in the German ballad Die Ausgleichung, (JDes Knaben Wunderhorn, i. 389,) and in the English ballad of The Boy and The Mantle, where a magical knife is added to the other curiosities. All three of these, by the way, are claimed by the Welsh as a part of the insignia of Ancient Britain, and the special property of Tegau Eurvron, the wife of Caradog with the strong arm. (Jones, Bardic Museum, p. 49.)
In other departments of romance, many other objects are endowed with the same or an analogous virtue. In Indian and Persian story, the test of innocence is a red lotus-flower; in Amadis, a garland, which fades on the brow of the unfaithful; in Perce-forest, a rose. The Lay of the Rose in Perceforest, is the original (according to Schmidt) of the much-praised tale of Senece", Camille, ou la Manikre defder le parfait Amour, (1695,)—in which a magician presents a jealous husband with a portrait in wax, that will indicate by change of color the infidelity of his wife,—and suggested the same device in the twenty-first novel of Bandello, (Part First,) on the translation of which in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, (vol. ii. No. 28,) Massinger founded his play of The Picture. Again, in the tale of Zeyn Alasman and the King of the Genii, in the Arabian Nights, the means of proof is a mirror, that reflects only the image of a spotless maiden; in that of the carpenter and the king's daughter, in the Gesta Romanorum, (c. 69,) a shirt, which remains clean and whole as long as both parties are true ; in Pdlmerin of England, a cup of tears, which becomes dark in the hands of an inconstant lover; in the Fairy Queen, the famous girdle of Florimel; in |
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