In the _Roman de Tristan_, a composition of unknown antiquity, the frailty of nearly all the ladies at the court of King Marc is exposed by their essaying a draught from the marvellous horn, (see the English _Morte Arthur_, Southey's ed. i. 297.) In the _Roman de Perceval_, the knights, as well as the ladies, undergo this probation. From some one of the chivalrous romances Ariosto adopted the wonderful vessel into his _Orlando_, (xlii. 102, sq., xliii. 31, sq.,) and upon his narrative La Fontaine founded the tale and the comedy of _La Coupe Enchantée_. In German, we have two versions of the same story,--one, an episode in the _Krone_ of Heinrich vom Türlein, thought to have been borrowed from the _Perceval_ of Chrétien de Troyes, (_Die Sage vom Zauberbecher_, in Wolf, _Ueber die Lais_, 378,) and another, which we have not seen, in Bruns, _Beiträge zur kritischen Bearbeitung alter Handschriften_, ii. 139; while in English, it is represented by the highly amusing "bowrd," which we are about to print, and which we have called _The Horn of King Arthur_. The forms of the tale of the Mantle are not so numerous. The _fabliau_ already mentioned was reduced to prose in the sixteenth century, and published at Lyons, (in 1577,) as _Le Manteau mal taillé_, (Legrand's _Fabliaux_, 3d ed., i. 126,) and under this title, or that of _Le Court Mantel_, is very well known. An old fragment (_Der Mantel_) is given in Haupt and Hoffmann's _Altdeutsche Blätter_, ii. 217, and the story is also in Bruns _Beiträge_. Lastly, we find the legends of the horn and the mantle united, as in the German ballad _Die Ausgleichung_, (_Des Knaben Wunderhorn_, i. 389,) and in the English ballad of _The Boy and The Mantle_, where a magical knife is added to the other curiosities. All three of these, by the way, are claimed by the Welsh as a part of the _insignia_ of Ancient Britain, and the special property of Tegau Eurvron, the wife of Caradog with the strong arm. (Jones, _Bardic Museum_, p. 49.)
In other departments of romance, many other objects are endowed with the same or an analogous virtue. In Indian and Persian story, the test of innocence is a red lotus-flower; in _Amadis_, a garland, which fades on the brow of the unfaithful; in _Perceforest_, a rose. The _Lay of the Rose_ in _Perceforest_, is the original (according to Schmidt) of the much-praised tale of Senecé, _Camille, ou la Manière de filer le parfait Amour_, (1695,)--in which a magician presents a jealous husband with a portrait in wax, that will indicate by change of color the infidelity of his wife,--and suggested the same device in the twenty-first novel of Bandello, (Part First,) on the translation of which in Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, (vol. ii. No. 28,) Massinger founded his play of _The Picture_. Again, in the tale of _Zeyn Alasman and the King of the Genii_, in the _Arabian Nights_, the means of proof is a mirror, that reflects only the image of a spotless maiden; in that of the carpenter and the king's daughter, in the _Gesta Romanorum_, (c. 69,) a shirt, which remains clean and whole as long as both parties are true; in _Palmerin of England_, a cup of tears, which becomes dark in the hands of an inconstant lover; in the _Fairy Queen_, the famous girdle of Florimel; in _Horn and Rimnild_ (Ritson, _Metrical Romances_, iii. 301,) as well as in one or two ballads in this collection, the stone of a ring; in a German ballad, _Die Krone der Königin von Afion_, (Erlach, _Volkslieder der Deutschen_, i. 132,) a golden crown, that will fit the head of no incontinent husband. Without pretending to exhaust the subject, we may add three instances of a different kind: the Valley in the romance of _Lancelot_, which being entered by a faithless lover would hold him imprisoned forever; the Cave in _Amadis of Gaul_, from which the disloyal were driven by torrents of flame; and the Well in _Horn and Rimnild_, (_ibid._) which was to show the shadow of Horn, if he proved false.