versions of those originals [6]. Thence it passed into the Latin
_Gesta Romanorum_, where, as well as in the Old English version
published by Sir Frederick Madden, it may be read as a service
rendered by a faithful hound against a snake. This, too, like Tell's
master-shot, is as the lightning which shineth over the whole heaven
at once, and can be claimed by no one tribe of the Aryan race, to the
exclusion of the rest. 'The Dog of Montargis' is in like manner
mythic, though perhaps not so widely spread. It first occurs in
France, as told of Sybilla, a fabulous wife of Charlemagne; but it is
at any rate as old as the time of Plutarch, who relates it as an
anecdote of brute sagacity in the days of Pyrrhus.

There can be no doubt, with regard to the question of the origin of
these tales, that they were common in germ at least to the Aryan
tribes before their migration. We find those germs developed in the
popular traditions of the Eastern Aryans, and we find them developed
in a hundred forms and shapes in every one of the nations into which
the Western Aryans have shaped themselves in the course of ages. We
are led, therefore, irresistibly to the conclusion, that these
traditions are as much a portion of the common inheritance of our
ancestors, as their language unquestionably is; and that they form,
along with that language, a double chain of evidence, which proves
their Eastern origin. If we are to seek for a simile, or an analogy,
as to the relative positions of these tales and traditions, and to
the mutual resemblances which exist between them as the several
branches of our race have developed them from the common stock, we
may find it in one which will come home to every reader as he looks
round the domestic hearth, if he should be so happy as to have one.
They are like as sisters of one house are like. They have what would
be called a strong family likeness; but besides this likeness, which