would seem to have given accounts or partial translations of the
Jurgen legends. No thorough investigation of this epos can be said
to have appeared in print, anywhere, prior to the publication, in
1913, of the monumental _Synopses of Aryan Mythology_ by Angelo
de Ruiz. It is unnecessary to observe that in this exhaustive digest
Professor de Ruiz has given (VII, p. 415 _et sequentia_) a
summary of the greater part of these legends as contained in the
collections of Verville and Buelg; and has discussed at length and
with much learning the esoteric meaning of these folk-stories and
their bearing upon questions to which the "solar theory" of myth
explanation has given rise. To his volumes, and to the pages of Mr.
Lewistam's _Key to the Popular Tales of Poictesme_, must be
referred all those who may elect to think of Jurgen as the
resplendent, journeying and procreative sun.

Equally in reading hereinafter will the judicious waive all
allegorical interpretation, if merely because the suggestions
hitherto advanced are inconveniently various. Thus Verville
finds the Nessus shirt a symbol of retribution, where Buelg,
with rather wide divergence, would have it represent the dangerous
gift of genius. Then it may be remembered that Dr. Codman says,
without any hesitancy, of Mother Sereda: "This Mother Middle is
the world generally (an obvious anagram of _Erda es_), and this
Sereda rules not merely the middle of the working-days but the
midst of everything. She is the factor of _middleness_, of
mediocrity, of an avoidance of extremes, of the eternal compromise
begotten by use and wont. She is the Mrs. Grundy of the Leshy; she is
Comstockery: and her shadow is common-sense." Yet Codman speaks with
certainly no more authority than Prote, when the latter, in his
_Origins of Fable_, declares this epos is "a parable of ... man's