IN this paper I propose to deal with some of the folklore and folk-tales to be found in the Homeric poems, and it is not my intention to join, except indirectly, the mellay of the Unitarians,-those who, like Mr. Lang, contend that the Iliad and Odyssey are the work of a single writer,-and the Separatists, or, as they used to be called, the Chorizontes, represented by Mr. Leaf. But the study of the folk-lore and folk-tales of Homer is so closely connected with the problem of origins that it is impossible to pass by this controversy in silence. As students of tradition and romance our sympathies are probably on the side of the old-fashioned view which attributes both epics to a single writer. The arguments in its favour have been forcibly stated by Mr. Lang in his recent book.' In the first place, he has made a well-timed protest against the "analytical reader," "the literary entomologist," as he has recently been profanely called. "The poet," he justly remarks, "is expected to satisfy a minutely critical reader, a personage whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not address." He accepts the statement of Mr. Leaf that the epics were "Court poems. They were composed to be sung in the