Editorial note — Note on Chapter XIII.

See also note in Wilson’s Essays on Sanskrit Literature, Vol. I, p. 218. He tells us that in Perce Forest the lily of the Kathá Sarit Ságara is represented by a rose. In Amadis de Gaul it is a garland which blooms on the head of her that is faithful, and fades on the brow of the inconstant. In Les Contes à rire, it is also a flower. In Ariosto, the test applied to both male and female is a cup, the wine of which is spilled by the unfaithful lover. This fiction also occurs in the romances of Tristan, Perceval and La Morte d’Arthur, and is well known by La Fontaine’s version, La Coupe Enchantée. In La Lai du Corn, it is a drinking-horn. Spenser has derived his girdle of Florimel from these sources or more immediately from the Fabliau, Le Manteau mal taillé or Le Court Mantel, an English version of which is published in Percy’s Reliques, the Boy and the Mantel (Vol. III.) In the Gesta Romanorum (c. 69) the test is the whimsical one of a shirt, which will neither require washing nor mending as long as the wearer is constant. (Not the wearer only but the wearer and his wife). Davenant has substituted an emerald for a flower.