wolf's body had rectified his error. To this day the visitor
to Snowdon is told the touching story, and shown the place,
called Beth-Gellert,[3] where the dog's grave is still to be
seen. Nevertheless, the story occurs in the fireside lore of
nearly every Aryan people. Under the Gellert-form it started
in the Panchatantra, a collection of Sanskrit fables; and it
has even been discovered in a Chinese work which dates from A.
D. 668. Usually the hero is a dog, but sometimes a falcon, an
ichneumon, an insect, or even a man. In Egypt it takes the
following comical shape: "A Wali once smashed a pot full of
herbs which a cook had prepared. The exasperated cook thrashed
the well-intentioned but unfortunate Wali within an inch of
his life, and when he returned, exhausted with his efforts at
belabouring the man, to examine the broken pot, he discovered
amongst the herbs a poisonous snake."[4] Now this story of the
Wali is as manifestly identical with the legend of Gellert as
the English word FATHER is with the Latin pater; but as no one
would maintain that the word father is in any sense derived
from pater, so it would be impossible to represent either the
Welsh or the Egyptian legend as a copy of the other. Obviously
the conclusion is forced upon us that the stories, like the
words, are related collaterally, having descended from a
common ancestral legend, or having been suggested by one and
the same primeval idea.

[3] According to Mr. Isaac Taylor, the name is really derived
from "St. Celert, a Welsh saint of the fifth century, to whom
the church of Llangeller is consecrated." (Words and Places,
p. 339.)