Note 173 — Chapter V
Edward Rehatsek translation
Our hero understood bird-language, and the author has probably omitted to mention that he acquired that knowledge by possessing the snake-stone. In the folk-tales of all countries we find that great benefits accrue to a forlorn hero by his overhearing the conversation of birds or beasts, and of demons in Indian stories. The reader will find much to interest him on this subject in an able paper on the Language of Animals by Mr. J. G. Frazer in the first vol. of the Archæological Review, 1888; and I may be permitted to refer him also to my Introduction to John Lane’s Continuation of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, published for the Chaucer Society.