Chapter XXII: Story of Ivan

_Source._--Lluyd, _Archaeologia Britannia, 1707_, the first comparative Celtic grammar and the finest piece of work in comparative philology hitherto done in England, contains this tale as a specimen of Cornish then still spoken in Cornwall. I have used the English version contained in _Blackwood's Magazine_ as long ago as May, 1818. I have taken the third counsel from the Irish version, as the original is not suited _virginibus puerisque_ though harmless enough in itself.

_Parallels._--Lover has a tale, _The Three Advices_. It occurs also in modern Cornwall _ap._ Hunt, _Drolls of West of England_, 344, "The Tinner of Chyamor." Borrow, _Wild Wales_, 41, has a reference which seems to imply that the story had crystallised into a Welsh proverb. Curiously enough, it forms the chief episode of the so-called "Irish Odyssey" (_Merugud Uilix maice Leirtis_--"Wandering of Ulysses M'Laertes"). It was derived, in all probability, from the _Gesta Romanorum_, c. 103, where two of the three pieces of advise are "Avoid a byeway," "Beware of a house where the housewife is younger than her husband." It is likely enough that this chapter, like others of the _Gesta_, came from the East, for it is found in some versions of "The Forty Viziers," and in the _Turkish Tales_ (see Oesterley's parallels and _Gesta_, ed. Swan and Hooper, note 9).