194 H. Oerkl, 



Excursus : The probable Hindu origin of the h'gciid coiiceniing 

 the three qualities of ivine (Gesta Roiuanonnu, no. ijg). 



The comparison of a drunken man's talk with the twittering of 

 a sparrow (JB. ii. 154. 3, above p. 181) suggests a passage in a 

 modern Greek legend in which St. Dionysius takes the place of 

 Dionysus (cf. Gruppe, Griech. Mythol. ii, p. 1654 20 ff. with note 3, 

 on this identification). This modern Greek tale was told in 1846 

 by an old Boeotian peasant of the village of Kokino at the foot of 

 the Ptoon mountains to Professor Christian Siegcl and is repeated, 

 in a German translation, from J. G. v. Hahn's Griechische mid al- 

 banesische Mdrchen, Leipzig, 1864, ii, p. 76 by C. Wachsmuth, Das 

 alte Griecheuland im neuen, Bonn, 1864, p. 24 f. A Naxian parallel 

 to it (cf. Gruppe, Griech. Mythol. i, p. 245, 1-2 and 366, 4 ff., for 

 the connexion between Naxian and Bo?otian Dionysus legends) is 

 given by N. G. Polites, MeUrca ntol toS /Mov y.ai Trjg yh'iGar^g tov t'/.'^- 

 vixov Xctov, Ilu(}c(SuGug i, no. 175, and thence summarized b}- Miss 

 jNIary Hamilton in the Annual of the British School at Athens xiii, 

 Session 1906-7, p. 351 as follows: 'The modern Naxian story is 

 told about a journey of the saint [= St, Dionysius] from Mount 

 Olympus to Naxos. He noticed an herb by the way and first 

 planted it in the bone of a bird, then in the bone of a lion, and 

 lastly in the bone of an ass. At Naxos he made the first wine 

 with its fruit. The intoxication which followed the drinking of this 

 wine had three stages; first he sang like a bird, then felt strong 

 as a lion, and lastly became foolish as an ass." 



This Naxian tale belongs to a well defined C3^cle of medieval 

 legends for which no. 159 of the Gesta Komanorum may serve as 

 type. The parallels have been collected by Oesterley, p. 738 of 

 his edition of the Gesta Ronianoruni, Berlin, 1872, to which must 

 be added those given by R. Kohler, Anzeigcr f. d. deutsche Alterthuniy 

 ix, 1883, p. 402-7, reprinted, with many additions by Bolte, in 

 Reinhold Kohler's Kleinere Schriften i, 1898, p. 576-8). Ever since 

 T. Tyrvvhitt in his note to line 24 of Chaucer's Manciple's Prologue 

 [The Canterbury Tales, ii, London, 1775, p. .302) connected Chaucer's 

 ' win of ape ' with the Rabbinical story quoted in the note to vol. i, 

 p. 275 of Fabricius ' Codex Pscttdepigraphns J \ieris Testamenti 

 (Hamburgi, 1722) and T. Warton (The History of English Poetry, 

 London, vol. iii, 1781, p. Ixvi = vol. i, 1840, p. clxxxv) referred 

 chapter 159 of the Gesta Ronianoruni to the same source, these 

 lecrends have been assumed to l^e founded on Raljbinical tradition 



