Note 1 — VI.—Contes des Fées.

We have chosen the designation Keltic, because the burning question concerning the Basques at present is their relation to the Keltic race. Anything that can throw light upon this will have a certain interest for a small portion of the scientific world. That these legends do in some degree resemble the Keltic ones will, we think, be denied by no one. Whether they have a closer affinity with them than with the general run of Indo-European mythology may be an open question. Or, again, whether the Basques have borrowed from the Kelts, or the Kelts from the Basques, we leave undetermined. One legend here given, that of “Juan Dekos,” has clearly been borrowed from the Gaelic, and that since the Keltic occupation of the Hebrides.1 The very term Keltiberi, as used by the classical writers, shows some contact of the Kelts with the Basques in ancient times, whether we take Basque and Iberi to be co-extensive and convertible terms or not. What the rôle of the “White Mare” is in these tales we do not understand. Can it be connected with the figure of a horse which appears so frequently on the so-called Keltiberian coins, or is it a mere variation of the Sanscrit “Harits, or horses of the sun?” Campbell, Vol. I., p. 63, says these “were always feminine, as the horses in Gaelic stories are.”