Indeed, Jim — but are you not begging the question as to whether the subjects of these yarns were original with Boccaccio, Chaucer, et al, or whether they in turn had not taken them from tradition? Chaucer, e.g., well in the tradition of literary persons' having always, from Homer onwards, been expected to rework tales already known to all their audience, never pretended to have invented the tale of Troilus&Criseyde, any more than Shax did later, or than Henrysoun did even sooner after. So that your McAlpine man's yarns might well have come to him, as it were, in parallel, rather than via Dan C?