The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027271588 889 tZ2 LZO ^ZQi Z u|eM| PREFATORY NOTE TO IWAIN. This study, in a form somewhat more extended, was presented in May, 1900, to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard Univer- sity in fulfillment of a requirement made of candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The manuscript was revised and sent to the composing room in this same year, and has been in type for a long time. Hence it has been impossible to insert references to a number of recent books and articles. The object of the dissertation is to investigate the vexed question of the sources of Chretien's Ivain. No attempt has been made to pursue the study of Iwain through the later romances,^ though that would without doubt lead to interesting results. Nor has any dis- cussion been attempted of the exact relations of the versions of the story in the different languages of Western Europe, or of the still- disputed question of the connection between the Welsh Owein atid Lunet and the French poem. It did not appear that those subjects could be treated with absolute thoroughness until the real nature of the story of the Ivain had been determined, — that is to say, until the question of the sources of the Ivain had been settled, at least so far as the nature of the evidence admitted. It was felt that this could 1 To the section on the Giant Herdsman (pp. 70-74) ought to be added a note referring to the Livre d'Artus, MS. P (summarized by Freymond, Zt. f. franz. Sprache, XVII, 1-128, 1895), where is an account of a combat at a fountain that exhibits almost verbal borrowings from the Ivain, but changes the story in certain striking particulars. The Huge Herdsman is expressly said to be MerHn in dis- guise, who has assumed this shape in order to lead Calogrenant to the fountain. This passage in the Livre d'Artus proves that the wood-monster in Chretien's Ivain was easily understood as somebody in disguise. PREFATORY NOTE TO IWAIN. This study, in a form somewhat more extended, was presented in May, 1900, to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard Univer- sity in fulfillment of a requirement made of candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The manuscript was revised and sent to the composing room in this same year, and has been in type for a long time. Hence it has been impossible to insert references to a number of recent books and articles. The object of the dissertation is to investigate the vexed question of the sources of Chretien's Ivain. No attempt has been made to pursue the study of Iwain through the later romances,' though that would without doubt lead to interesting results. Nor has any dis- cussion been attempted of the exact relations of the versions of the story in the different languages of Western Europe, or of the still- disputed question of the connection between the Welsh Owein and Lutiet and the French poem. It did not appear that those subjects could be treated with absolute thoroughness until the real nature of the story of the Ivain had been determined, — that is to say, until the question of the sources of the Ivain had been settled, at least so far as the nature of the evidence admitted. It was felt that this could 1 To the section on the Giant Herdsman (pp. 70-74) ought to be added a note referring to the Livre d'Artus, MS. P (summarized by Freymond, Zt. f. franz. Sfrache, XVII, 1-128, 1895), where is an account of a combat at a fountain that exhibits almost verbal borrowings from the Ivain, but changes the story in certain striking particulars. The Huge Herdsman is expressly said to be Merlin in dis- guise, who has assumed this shape in order to lead Calogrenant to the fountain. This passage in the Livre d'Artus proves that the wood-monster in Chretien's Ivain was easily understood as somebody in disguise. vi Prefatory Note to Iwain. only be done by a study of all accessible Celtic other-world stories, whether Irish or Welsh, and an investigation of the primitive char- acter and the development of that particular type of " fairy mistress " story which it might appear that the Ivain most resembled. This is the object of the present discussion, and all other questions have been subordinated. It is believed that the results have justified the undertaking. Not only does the supposed connection of the Ivain with The Matron of Ephesus appear to be disproved, but the theory of a Celtic origin for the Ivain story has, it is thought, been established beyond a reasonable doubt. It is hoped that the following pages may also be of service in throwing some new light on the nature of Celtic fairy tales and in pointing out new parallels between Irish and Welsh literature. I wish to express my hearty thanks to Professor Schofield, who suggested the subject of this investigation and has continually aided me with friendly criticism and advice ; and to Professor Kittredge and Professor Sheldon, who have given me invaluable direction and have permitted me to draw upon their time and scholarship in many ways. All three, with Professor Robinson, have had the great kindness to read the entire paper in proof. I am also indebted for various services to Professor Arthur R. Marsh, Professor G. W. Benedict of Brown University, Professor W. D. Howe of the University of Indianapolis, Dr. Alma Blount, for- merly of Radcliffe College, Professor R. H. Fletcher of Washington University, and Professor E. F. Langley of Dartmouth College. A. C. L. B. The University of Wisconsin, March 15, 1903. IWAIN. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. DEFINITE study of the sources of Chretien's Ivain is not very old. The earliest discussion of the subject that requires mention here was that of Rauch ' in 1869. Rauch argued that the Welsh Owein and Lunet is not the source of Chretien's Ivain, as La Villemarque and other earlier writers had supposed, but that both tales go back to a common original. This common original- must, he thought, have been " eine zum Zweck des Erzahlens zusammen- gestellte Sammlung mehrerer in verschiedenen Zeiten entstandener Erzahlungen " (p. n), which had perhaps no other connection than that they all dealt with a knight called Iwain. One of these stories, that of the Fountain, repeats itself in true mdrchen style " nach der Weise des Volksmarchens unermiidlich mit derselben Ausfiihrlichkeit und denselben refrainartig wiederkehrenden Ausdriicken," and con- tains in the Welsh version some very primitive features. For exam- ple, " es zeigt uns die Konigin mit ihren Frauen am Fenster des Saales Nadelarbeit verrichtend, wahrend der Konig in demselben Raume schlummert." Rauch regarded it as certain, therefore, that this part of the story at least is a Celtic tale much older than the period of Chretien de Troies. In 1879 Blume brought into prominence a comparison between Laudine and the theme of the Easily Consoled Widow. Blume 1 Diewdlischejfranzosischeund deutsche Bearbeitung der Iweinsage, Berlin, 1869. Holland, Crestien von Troies, Tubingen, 1854, sliould perhaps be mentioned also ; see especially p. 171. 2 A. C. L. Brown. quoted^ from Gervinus, who had expressed himself^ as shocked by the sudden change of feeling experienced by Laudine, and added : " Aber war Gervinus denn die Geschichte von der treulosen Witwe " unbekannt, die in den Literaturen aller Zeiten und Volker begegnet und also doch wohl in der Psychologie des Weibes ihre Erklarung finden muss ? Hat er vergessen, wie die Prinzessin Anna bei Shakespeare sich von Richard von Gloster kirren lasst ? " In 1883 Goossens* published a dissertation in which he undertook to deal with the whole question concerning Iwain. He thinks the kernel of the story was a folk-tale localized in Brittany, aBout a wonderful fountain that revenged itself on its profaner. In the course of time, he thinks, the punishment became personified in the knight whom Iwain slew. He thinks that Chrdtien heard the story from a Breton bard, and that the Welsh version is founded on some French form of the Breton tale. The story, as told by the bards, was probably well settled in its main features, but Chrdtien doubtless altered it somewhat. He put in many reflective passages, enriched the dialogue, and introduced the courtly manners of his time. On the whole, however, the Ivai?t is a string of adventures somewhat disconnected and not entirely understood by the author. In 1884 appeared the first ^ of the excellent editions of the works of Chretien prepared by Professor Wendelin Foerster. In his intro- duction this scholar adopted the unfortunate idea that the kernel of the Ivain is the theme of the Easily Consoled Widow, an idea that he has ever since defended with much vigor. He says : " Sehen wir scharfer zu, so finden wir, dass, abgesehen von der Oertlichkeit (Broce- liande u. s. f.) und den Namen der handelnden Personen, keine Spur von keltischem Stoff zu finden ist, und — vielleicht ist dies ein nicht zu unterschatzendes Moment — es fehlt auch thatsachlich jede 1 Ueber den Iwein des Hartmann von Aue, ein Vortrag, p. 19. '^ Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, 4th ed., 1853, I, 371. 8 The comparison of Laudine to the Widow of Ephesus was first suggested by Simrock, Altdeutsches Lesebuch in neudeutsdier Sprache, Stuttgart, 1854, p. 230 (quoted by Holland, Crestien von Troies, 1854, p. 158). ^ Heinrich Goossens, Ueber Sage, Quelle und Komposition des Chevalier au Lyon des Crestien de Troyes, Paderborn, 1883. * Cligis, Christian von Troyes, Samtliche Werke, I. Iwain. 3 Erwahnung und Anspielung auf eine vom Dichter benutzte Quelle. Der Kern des Lowenritters ist vielmehr ein alter Bekannter, der aus weiter Feme auf vielen Umwegen nach Frankreich gekommen war, nemlich die Sage von der leicht getrosteten Wittwe, die in der Variante der ' Matrone von Ephesus' am bekanntesten ist. Um diesen Kern ist alles andere gewickelt. Aber welch eine wahrhaft geniale Kunst, diesen abgedroschenen, plumpen Stoff zu behandeln ! . . . Um diesen Kern gruppirt nun Christian den Konig Artus und seinen Hof, er fiihrt uns an die Zauberquelle im Wald Broceliande, er fiihrt uns Riesen im Kampfe vor, lasst uns in die (schpn damals existirende) Sklaverei der Fabriken (hier eine Seidenweberei) einen fliichtigen Blick werfen — aber all dies ist nichts als Beiwerk, ange- than, um sich gewogene Leser zu verschaffen, die alle den modernsten aller Stoffe, die grosste ' actualM,' nemlich die Artussage, heissgierig verlangten. Allein um dem Roman die richtige Lange zu geben, greift der Dichter zu einem von ihm bereits friiher {Erec} behandelten Thema, dem ' Verliegen ' des Ritters, das er diesmal (mit Erec ver- glichen) auf den Kopf stellt und so lasst er den gliicklichen Brautigam, eben dass er sich nicht 'verHege,' gleich nach der Hochzeit in die Welt auf Abenteuer ziehen " (pp. xvi-xvii). Foerster adds that Cliges is made out of the well-known story of the "betrogener Ehemann," just as Ivain is made out of the " Matrone von Ephesus." In his edition of Ivain in 1887 Foerster reiterated this opinion about the source of the story, adding the following remarks ' : " Uber die Eigenart der echten keltischen Sagenstoffe kann man sich wohl ein Urteil aus der Vergleichung der vorhandenen, gesicherten Proben, wie Mellon und den damit eng verwandten Bisclavret, Yonec, Corn, Ignaure, Tydorel,^ machen. Allen ist das Ubernatiirliche gemeinsam : Wehrwolf, Zaubertrank, Fee u. dgl. oder grausiger Mord und andere fremdartige Dinge. Jedermann denkt sofort an die Zauberquelle, den Zauberring Lunetens (vgl. aber Gyges) und auch ich habe nichts dagegen, dieses Beiwerk als keltisch gelten zu lassen ebenso wie den ^ Der Lowenriiter, Christian von Troyes, SdmtUche erhaltene Werke, II, xxii- xxiv. ^ In a footnote Foerster remarks : " Selbst Tristan kann ich nicht fiir keltisch halten." 4 A. C. L. Brown. Riesen, den Yvaiti besiegt. Zuletzt kame Artus und sein Hof, deren keltischer Ursprung nicht gelaugnet werden kann ; man nehme aber statt dessen frankische, griechische oder romische Namen und Lokali- taten, und die ganze Geschichte bleibt dieselbe. Es ist also rein aussere Zuthat. — Damit ist aber auch alles keltische erschopft, und man muss zugeben, dass diese Elemente fehlen konnen, ohne dass der Yvain darunter litte. Die Quelle von Broceliande gibt dam Dichter bloss die Gelegenheit, seinen Helden mit der Heldin in Verbindung zu bringen, wie der Galgen und das Grab; er konnte ebensogut ein anderes Mittel wahlen. Der Riese ist nur eine Nummer mehr in der Reihe der von Yvain bestandenen Abenteuer und hat mit der Erzahlung iiberhaupt gar nichts welter gemein. Alleln der Kern selbst, dass namlich die Heldin den Morder ihres geliebten Gatten heiratet, scheint keltisch sein zu konnen : allein es ist, wie ich oben bemerkt, ein internationaler SagenstofE, der in Frankreich durch die Fabeldichtung langst bekannt war, bevor die matiere de Bretagne anfing, dort Aufnahme zu finden. Doch selbst zugegeben, dass Christian diesen Stoff durch Vermittlung der breto- nischen Legende erhalten haben sollte, hatte er ihn doch selb- standig verarbeitet, und sein Verdienst ist daher in beiden Fallen dasselbe. Denn die Art, wie Christian diesen Kern zur Schiirzung und Losung des Knotens verwendet, ist eine seiche, dass sie, inhalt- lich betrachtet, keltisch nicht sein kann. Der Held nimmt, um durch Verliegen seinen Ritterwert nicht einzubiissen, Urlaub von der eben gewonnenen Gattin und zieht auf Abenteuer aus. Er lasst die ihm bewilligte Frist verstreichen und, von der Gattin verstossen, wird er wahnsinnig.^ Durch eine Zaubersalbe Morgan's der Fee (er konnte ' Foerster here adds a note which shows his characteristic method of reason- ing about this subject : " Dieses Motiv kehrt auch sonst in Artusromanen wieder. Ist es keltisch oder hat Christian es zuerst angewandt und so in die Artuslitteratur eingefiihrt? Fragen, die sich nicht entscheiden lassen, die aber unsere Ansicht nicht beeintrachtigen." Foerster is evidently entirely at a loss to explain the " madness motive," and yet it is evident that any theory, to hold its ground, must explain such a curious feature of the story as this. He continues : " Die keltische Legende (wenn es wirklich eine solche gegeben hat, die zu den Franzosen gekommen) kann im besten Fall nur die einzelnen Mosaiksteinchen geliefert haben, daraus dann die franzbsischen Kiinstler die feinen bunten Gemalde Twain. c natiirlich auch anders genesen oder gar nicht wahnsinnig werden : blosser Zierrat) genesen, erwirbt er sich unter dem fremden Namen des Lowenritters hohen Ruhin und wird endlich, ohne eigentliche Siihne, ausserlich durch einen Kunstgriff der Zofe, mit seiner Herrin •wieder ausgesohnt. Diese beiden treibenden Ideen nun : ' Verliegen und Ritterehre ' sind rein franzosisch,^ und konnen daher ebenso wenig aus der Bretagne (sei es der grossen und der kleinen) stammen, wie der vom Helden befreite und ihn begleitende Lowe, der zwar in Nordafrica (Androclus 1) vorkommt, aber nicht bei den Kelten." These views of Foerster's were speedily objected to by Gaston Paris.^ Paris said: "Je crois qu'il va trop loin dans la reaction legitime qu'a provoqu^e le celticisme k outrance ; mais c'est Ik une question qui demande un examen long et special. Je me borne ici k remarquer que je ne comprends pas comme M. F. le sujet primitif du rdcit que Chrdtien a mis en vers. II y voit une variante du conte de la Matrone d'Ephese; j'y vois bien plutot une forme alt^r^e du thfeme que nous retrouvons dans Guingamor, dans Oger le danois, dans Tanhduser, etc. : le h^ros quitte une fe'e, dont il est devenu zusammenstellten " (p. xxiii). So far as this means that Chretien dressed up his Celtic material in the costume of the age of chivalry, it is certainly justified, but the figure of a mosaic made up of stones gathered here and there is an unwarranted one to use till it has first been proved that Chretien could not have found the greater part at least of the separate incidents of the Ivain already in combination. A priori, the probabilities are against any patchwork theory. 1 Foerster's main argument against the Celtic theory is really that the Arthurian romances in the form in which they have come down to us are full of the ideas of the age of chivalry, and therefore can have no foundation in rude antiquity. I have already called attention to the weakness of this argument, in an article (The Round Table before Wace") in Harvard Studies and Notes, VII, 193-194, note : " It is not true, as has been sometimes carelessly maintained, that the chivalrous setting in which Arthurian stories have come down to us disproves their foundation in Tude antiquity. A primitive story may be beautified and adorned as civilization advances, and may, so to speak, change its costume in accordance with the fashion of later times. . . . Many cases are known in which rude incidents have been pressed up in the chivalrous costume of later times. The French Horn et Rimen- hild, e.g., represents the same story as the cruder English King Horn, only ' expanded by many courtly details of feast and tournament ' (Ward, Catalogue of Romances, I, 455)" 2 Romania, XVII, 334-335 (18 6 A. C. L. Brown. l¥poux, avec rintention de revenir, et il oublie une promesse qu'il lui a donnde ou une ddfense qu'elle lui a faite ; I'anneau que la ' dame de la fontaine ' (certainement une f^e dans la version origi- naire) fait enlever k Ivain rappelle des incidents analogues de plusieurs contes qui ont la meme donne'e. Ce nom de ' dame de la fontaine,' devenu incomprdhensible (cf. Guingamor, v. 122), a fait inserer ici I'histoire de la fontaine dont I'eau agit^e provoque Torage (croyance d'ailleurs celtique), et de la manifere chevaleresque dont le hdros s'en empare ; mais ces Episodes, pas plus que celui du lion reconnaissant, n'appartiennent au fonds primitif." In his smaller edition of Yvain in 189 1 ' Foerster replied to Paris by (i) stoutly asserting, without offering any proof, that Laudine is not a/ee, and (2) by admitting that Chre'tien may have borrowed the " forgotten promise " episode from some [f^l story like those men- tioned by Paris : " Mag nun auch der Dichter wirklich das folgende (Vergessen des Versprechens) sich aus einem solchen Stoff geholt haben, sicher ist, dass die Episode, welche ich auf die Witwe von Ephesus zuriickfiihrte, damit unter keinen Umstanden etwas zu thun hat." ^ This passage contains a fatal admission of the true character of Foerster's method of dealing with literary origins. He searches about for sources and finds one incident here and another there. Chretien, he says, must have combined these various incidents. To such a theory the addition of a few more entirely disconnected 1 Romanische Bibliothek, V, xiv, footnote. 2 In this same introduction to Yvain Foerster dwells particularly on his compari- son of the Matron of Ephesus. He says (p. xiii) : " Diese leicht getrostete Witwe [Laudine] ist ein direkter Nachkomme der bekannten ' Witwe von Ephesus.' Kein einziger aller der boshaften Ziige, die das Original besitzt, fehlt dem neuen Abbild desselben." The central point of the whole episode is, he thinks, indicated by the lines C'est cele qui prist Celui qui son seignor ocist (w. 1809-10), and this he regards as proved by the following reflection of the poet's : Mes or est mes sire Yvains sire, Et 11 morz est toz obliez. Cil qui I'ocist est mariez An sa fame et ansanble gisent (w. 2164 ff.). I warn. 7 sources can make little difference. A view like this cannot be refuted, just as it cannot be established. It can hold the field only in default of any explanation that shows, already combined, most of the elements which Foerster asks us to believe were brought together by Chretien. The mosaic character of Foerster's theory is clearly shown by the analysis of Chretien's Ivain which he has very recently published in his edition of the Lancelot ^ : " Ivain : ortliche Quellen- sage + Ring des Gyges + Wittwe von Ephesus + Lowe des Androklus." This, then, is the best outline Fqerster is able to make of his theory, and it indicates four entirely disconnected sources. Moreover, there are, on his own admission, one or two other sources (e.g., for the Forgotten Promise and the Madness Motive) which he has simply omitted, not explained away. Such a theory is manifestly unfair. Everybody knows that the most complicated story can be taken apart into simple elements, and these simple elements can then be found separately almost anywhere. It is not the finding of a single element that proves a source. The combination of elements alone is significant. The more elements already in combination a supposed source can show, the stronger, other things being equal, is the probability of its being the true one. These are the simplest principles of reasoning, but Foerster's method of dealing with this problem in literary origins seems to ignore them. Of course this theory of Foerster's did not pass without challenge. In 1889 Mussafia^ said: "So viel gestatte ich mir zu bemerken, dass ich die Ansicht, nach welcher das Motiv der leicht getrosteten Wittwe den eigentlichen Kern der Erzahlung bilden soil, so bestechend sie auch erscheinen moge, als durchaus unhaltbar betrachte. Das wesentlichste Merkmal der weit verbreiteten Mahre bildet doch deren satirische Tendenz ; sie will den Wankelmuth eines der sinn- lichen Lust frohnenden Weibes geisseln. Ein solcher Stoff lasst sich nicht veredeln und vertiefen, ohne dass er seine Existenzberechtigung einbiisse; Chrestien, welcher die Liebenden der Vergangenheit im Gegensatze zur Entartung der Zeitgenossen preist, kann doch nicht 1 Christian von Troyes, Sdmtliche erhaltene Werke, IV, Ixxxi (1899), Der Kar- renritter und das Wilhelmsleben. 2 A. Mussafia, Literaturblatt f. germ . u. rem. Phil., 1889, col. 221. 8 A. C. L. Brown. eine solche Untreue an dem heimgegangenen Gemahle als den eigent- lichen Vorwurf seiner Dichtung gewahlt haben." Similarly, in 1890, Muret^ remarked with reference to Foerster's theory that the Chevalier au Lion is only a variant of the story of the Matron of Ephesus : "A ce point de vue, le noyau du r^cit serait formd par les trois ou quatre cents vers oli Laudine, pressde par les arguments de Lunfete, se decide k ^pouser le meurtrier de son mari bien-aime. La fontaine enchant^e de la for6t de Brocdliande, Arthur et sa cour, les aventures du chevalier Ivain — presque toute la nar- ration en un mot, — ne fourniraient que des accessoires, habilement disposes pour charmer un public engoud des hdros de la Table- Ronde. II est certain que la plupart des episodes ne convergent nullement autour du prdtendu centre du pofeme. Comme celui-ci compte prfes de sept mille vers, on s'attendrait k ce que M. F. le jugeat un des ouvrages les plus mal composes qu'il y ait dans aucune littdrature. Nous sommes done un peu surpris de lire, en tete de la pr^sente Edition [1887] du Chevalier au Lion, que ce roman reprd- sente I'art d'un Chretien de Troyes parvenu k son plus haut point de perfection." Finally, in 1896, Ahlstrom^ replied to Foerster's arguments at length : " M. Foerster affirme d'abord que notre roman est le seul oil Chrdtien ne donne aucune indication sur I'origine du sujet. Cela prouve — selon M. Foerster — que I'auteur doit avoir eu une raison toute sp^ciale pour garder le silence, r^sidant dans ce fait que I'auteur ne devait sa matifere k aucun livre ni k aucun conte, mais seulement k sa propre imagination. " La v^ritd des premisses est au moins bien douteuse ; la conclusion semble I'^tre encore plus. " D'abord, on ne peut pas dire qu'il manque k notre roman toute mention d'origine. M. Holland a ddjk attir^ I'attention sur les vers 6816 et suiv.° . . . : 1 Ernest Muret, Revue Critique, XXIX, 67 (1890). 2 Axel Ahlstrom, Sur VOrigine du Chevalier au Lion, in Milanges dSdiis h Carl Waklund, Macon, 1896, pp. 289-303. = Ahlstrom quotes also vv. 33 ff., but I have omitted them, for it seems clear, as Paris pointed out in 1897 {Romania, XXVI, 106), that they are not in particular about Ivain, " mais en general d'Arthur." I wain. g V. 6814 Del Chevalier au lion fine Crestiiens son romanz einsi ; Qu'ongues plus cottier n'an oi Ne ja plus n'an orroiz center S'an n'i viaut mangonge ajoster. " II nous semble que dans ces quelques vers I'auteur se prononce assez positivement sur I'origine de son thfeme. II I'a entendu center. ... A notre avis, cela doit indiquer que Chre'tien a rim^ son roman d'aprfes un conte en ce temps populaire chez les Bretons. . . . "Nous croyons done que le pobte a voulu lui-meme indiquer un conte frangais our breton comme ayant €\.€ la base de son roman ; quand m6me il aurait gardd un silence complet, une conclusion comme celle de M. Foerster resterait toujours trfes incertaine " (pp. 290-291). Ahlstrom then quotes Foerster's explanation of the story as a development from the theme of the Easily Consoled Widow, and adds : " En lisant ces lignes, ne croirait-on pas que la f ameuse veuve d'£phfese ait, elle aussi, commencd par maudire le meurtrier de son mari, qu'elle ait grondd sa pauvre suivante et que peu 'k peu elle ait changd d'avis pour finir par dpouser le meurtrier ? " On the con- trary, as Ahlstrom points out, there is in the Matron of Ephesus no marrying of the murderer of the husband. "D'un autre cot^ M. Foerster dit en propres termes qu'il ne manque k la copie aucun des vilains traits de I'original. Oil M. Foerster trouve t-il done dans le pofeme de Chrdtien le trait le plus fameux et le plus affreux du conte : I'attentat de la veuve contre les restes de son mari ? ^ . . . II n'existe, en verity, aucune de ces infamies 1 Ahlstrom brings forward several other traits of the mediaeval Matron of Ephesus story which separate it entirely from that of Laudine. I have omitted these points because Paris, who entirely agrees as to the vast chasm that separates any forms of the two stories, admits that Ahlstrom " n'aurait pas du citer, comme les plus connus et les plus essgntiels, des traits qui ne sont ni dans Phidre ni dans Petrone et n'appartiennent qu'aux redactions m^didvales contenues dans le roman des Sept Sages " {Somania, XXVI, 106). For references to various forms of the story, see Keller, Li Romans des Sept Sages, 1836, pp. clixff. ; Grisebach, Die Wanderung der Novelle von der treulosen Wittwe durch die Weltlitteratur, Berlin, 1886 (2d ed., 1889); Cesari, Come pervenne e rimase in Italia la Matrona d'Efeso, Bologna, 1890. 10 A. C. L. Brown. dans le beau roman de Chretien. La dame de la fontaine pleura slncferement son ^poux et honore son corps et sa memoire. " Mais, dit k la fin M. Foerster, celui qui n'est pas encore con- vaincu le sera sans doute par les mots que le pofete lui-meme a mis dans la bouche de la veuve : V. 1809 C'est cele qui prist Celui qui son seignor ocist," which the poet repeats in v. 2166. " Selon notre opinion, le poete accentue dans ces lignes precisd- ment et exclusivement un des points dans lesquels le roman s'eloigne le plus du conte, savoir ce fait que la veuve du roman epouse le meurtrier de son mari. II est done peut-etre un peu hardi de vouloir ainsi prouver la relation intime entre les deux sujets. " La ressemblance entre le roman et le conte se borne, en effet, S. ce point commun qu'une veuve desolde change de sentiments en peu de temps et veut se remarier. Tous les details sont diffdrents. II y a pourtant, dans la littdrature comme dans la vie, trop de jeunes veuves qui desirent se remarier le plus tot possible, pour que ce fait seul puisse prouver I'existence d'un rapport plus intime entre le conte et le roman." Up to the present time, then, a violent controversy has raged about the Matron of Ephesus theory, in which, on the whole, it has been rather badly damaged. It will be the purpose of the next chapter to examine the question afresh. CHAPTER IL THE MATRON OF EPHESUS AND CHRETIEN'S IVAIN. In order to bring out as fairly as possible the fatal difficulties that stand in the way of Foerster's hypothesis, it will be necessary to quote in full the story to which he refers and to follow it with a tolerably complete summary of Chretien's Ivain. I wain. 1 1 The version of the Matron of Ephesus given by Petronius is longer than that of Phaedrus ' and more favorable than any other to Foerster's hypothesis. It is therefore the one here selected. THE MATRON OF EPHESUS.2 Matrona quaedam Ephesi tarn notae erat pudicitiae, ut vicinarum quoque gentium feminas ad spectaculum sui evocaret. Haec ergo cum virum extu- lisset, non contenta vulgari more funus passis prosequi crinibus aut nudatum pectus in conspectu frequentiae plangere, in conditorium etiam prosecuta est defunctum, positumque in hypogaeo Graeco more corpus custodire ac flare totis noctibus diebusque coepit. Sic afflictantem se ac mortem inedia persequentem non parentes potuerunt abducere, non propinqui ; magistratus ultimo repulsi abierunt complorataque singularis exempli femina ab omnibus quintum iam diem sine alimento trahebat. Assidebat aegrae fidissima ancilla, simulque et lacrimas commodabat lugenti, et quotienscunque defecerat positum in monumento lumen renovabat. Una igitur in tota civitate fabula erat, solum illud affulsisse varum pudicitiae amorisque examplum omnis ordinis homines confitabantur, cum interim imparator provinciae latrones iussit crucibus affigi secundum illam casulam, in qua receus cadaver matrona deflabat. Proxima ergo nocte, cum miles, qui cruces asservabat, ne quis ad sapulturam corpus datraherat, notasset sibi [et] lumen inter monumenta clarius fulgens at gamitum lugantis audis- set, vitio gentis humanae concupiit scire, quis aut quid facarat. Descendit igitur in conditorium, visaque pulcherrima muliera primo quasi quodam monstro infarnisqua imaginibus turbatus substitit. Dainda ut et corpus iacentis conspexit et lacrimas considaravit faciemqua unguibus sactam, ratus scilicet id quod erat, desiderium extincti non posse feminam pati, attulit in monumentum cenulam suam coepitque hortari lugentem, ne per- severaret in dolore suparvacuo ac nihil profuturo gemitu pectus diduceret : omnium eundam esse exitum [sed] et idem domicilium, et cetera quibus exulceratae mentas ad sanitatam revocantur. At ilia ignota consolatione percussa laceravit vehementius pectus ruptosque crines super corpus iacen- tis imposuit. Non recessit tamen miles, sed eadem exhortatione temptavit 1 For the story in Phaedrus, see Hervieux, Les Fabulistes Latins, II, Phedre et ses Anciens Imitateurs, Paris, 1884, pp. 66-67 (2d ed., 1894, pp. 72-73). See also p. 269 (2d ed., pp. 340-341). 2 Petronius, Satirae, Buecheler's 3d ed., Berlin, 1882, chaps, in, 112, pp. 77-78. 12 A. C. L. Brown. dare mulierculae cibum, donee ancilla vini certe ab eo odore corrupta primum ipsa porrexit ad humanitatem invitantis victam The Lady's Maid manum, deinde refecta potione et cibo expugnare dominae 'dt"s'part.^" pertinaciam coepit et "quid proderit" inquit "hoc tibi, si soluta inedia fueris, si te vivam sepelieris, si antequam fata poscant, indemnatum spiritum efiuderis ? id cinerem aut manes credis sentire sepultos ? vis tu reviviscere ? vis discusso muliebri errore, quam diu licuerit, lucis com- modis frui ? ipsum te iacentis corpus admonere debet, ut vivas." Nemo invitus audit, cum cogitur aut cibum sumere aut vivere. Itaque mulier aliquot dierum abstinentia sicca passa est frangi pertinaciam suam, nee minus avide replevit se cibo quam ancilla, quae prior victa est. Ceterum scitis, quid plerumque soleat temptare humanam satietatem. The newly Be- Quibus blanditiis impetraverat miles, ut matrona vellet vivere, raa^es suddrnly' isdem etiam pudicitiam eius aggressus est. Nee defor- mis aut infacundus iuvenis eastae videbatur, conciliante gratiam ancilla ac subinde dicente : " placitone etiam pugnabis amori .' Nee venit in mentem, quorum consederis arvis ? " Quid diutius moror? Ne hanc quidem partem corporis mulier abstinuit, victorque miles utrumque persuasit. lacuerunt ergo una non tantum ilia nocte, qua nuptias feeerunt, sed postero etiam ae tertio die, praeclusis videlicet eonditorii foribus, ut quisquis ex notis ignotisque ad monumentum venisset, putaret expirasse super corpus viri pudicissimam uxorem. Ceterum delectatus miles et forma mulieris et secreto, quicquid boni per faeultates poterat, coemebat et prima statim nocte in monumentum ferebat. Itaque unius cruciarii parentes ut viderunt laxatam custodiam, detraxere nocte . pendentem supremoque mandaverunt officio. At miles eireumseriptus dum desidet, ut postero die vidit unam sine cadavere crucem, veritus supplicium, mulieri quid accidisset exponit : nee se expectaturum iudicis sententiam, sed gladio ius dicturum ignaviae suae. Commodaret ergo ilia perituro locum et fatale eonditorium familiari ac viro faceret. Mulier non minus miserieors quam pudica " ne istud " inquit " dii sinant, ut eodem tempore duorum mihi earissimorum hominum duo funera spectem. Malo mortuum impendere quam vivum oecidere." Secundum hanc orationem iubet ex area corpus mariti sui toUi atque illi, quae vacabat, cruci affigi. Usus est miles ingenio prudentissimae feminae, posteroque die populus miratus est, qua ratione mortuus isset in crucem. Iwain. 1 3 THE IVAIN OF CHRETIEN DE TROIES.l I. The story opens at Carduel in Wales, where Arthur is holding The Tale of <^°"'^t. King Arthur and the queen have withdrawn a Previous to their chamber, and Calogrenant has begun a tale Adventurer, ^q jj^g assembled knights, of whom Iwain is one. The queen enters to hear it also, and he begins again at her request (vv. 1-174). II. " About seven years ago," says Calogrenant, " I wandered all day through the Forest of Broceliande till I came to a strongly The Hospitable fortified place. The lord of the forteresse gave me ^°^'- a splendid welcome, and a fair maid disarmed me and entertained me in a meadow till supper. The supper was entirely to my taste because of the maid who sat opposite to me. I spent a pleasant night in that castle" (vv. 175-269). III. " In the morning I set out, and not far off I found fierce bulls fighting and a black creature with a head larger than a horse's, The Giant armed with a club, guarding them. Finding that Herdsman. ^j^jg creature could speak, I asked him to direct me to some adventure. He showed me the path to a fountain [the Fountain Perilous], telling me also what I might do" (vv. 270-409). IV. " I reached the Fountain about noon. By it stood the Marvellous most beautiful tree that ever grew on earth. I took Landscape. ^ basin of gold that was attached by a chain to the tree, and, dipping up some water, I poured it on the rock " (vv. 410-438). V. "Forthwith there ensued a terrible storm of wind and rain; then a calm in which the birds sang sweetly on the tree. After The Rain-Making this there appeared a knight on horseback, who attacked Fountain. ^jj^j overthrew me. I came home on foot like a fool and like a fool have told my story." During the talk that follows, Arthur comes out of his chamber, hears the story repeated, and declares that he will go with his knights within a fortnight, namely just before St. John the Baptist's Day, to essay the adventure. Iwain, however, is anxious to try it alone ; so ^ Summarized from Foerster's Yvain, Romanische Bibliothek, V. 14 A. C. L. Brown. he steals away secretly. He is entertained at night by the Hospitable Host; next morning he sees the Giant Herdsman, and he comes at last to the Fountain Perilous. He pours water on the rock. The storm follows (vv. 439-810). VI. After this the armed knight appears and attacks Iwain. They fight till Iwain deals the knight a blow that cleaves his helmet and wounds him in the brain. The knight flees, pur- The Combat. ° '^ sued by Iwain, through the streets of a town and up to the gate of a palace (vv. 811-906). VII. The knight rides under a sharp iron gate, which is arranged to drop like the fall of a rat trap if one touches the spring. Iwain The Falling follows hard after, and his horse accidentally touches Gates. the spring. The gate falls close behind Iwain and with its knife edge cuts his horse in two, cutting off the hinder part of the saddle and also the rider's spurs. Another gate at the same time descends in front, and Iwain is imprisoned in a sale (vv. 907-969). VIII. But a damsel, called Lunete, issues from a narrow door and recognizes him as Iwain, son of King Urien. She was once sent on Protection ^ message by her lady to King Arthur's court, and, by the perhaps because she was not so courteous as a damsel Lady's Confidante, ^^^j^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^ Vra^x deigned to speak to her except Iwain. He honored and served her, and she is glad to recompense him now (vv. 970-1019). IX. She gives Iwain a magic ring that, when the stone set in it is Invisible-Render- cnclosed in the hand, makes its wearer invisible, and ingRing. ghe brings him food to eat (vv. 1020-1054). X. Presently men come with clubs and swords, seeking him who slew their lord, Esclados le Ros. They do not find Iwain, for the It was the Lady's ""& renders him invisible. Lunete's mistress, whose Husband that the name is Laudine, a most beautiful lady, now enters, Hero has killed, .^ggping fg^ her lord, who is carried on a bier (1055-1172). XI. When the corpse is brought into the hall where Iwain is. The Corpse bleeds it begins to bleed. The men feel confident that the before the Slayer, murderer must be hidden there, and they renew their search (vv. 1 173-1242). Twain. IS XII. When Iwain sees Laudine, he is smitten with violent love for her. He even watches the funeral, so as to catch a better glimpse of her. He refuses to go when Lunete offers to help him to escape. Effects of the Lunete persuades her lady that she ought to feel no Lady's Beauty, hatred against the knight who slew her husband. She reminds her that the Dameisele Sauvage has sent word that King Arthur is coming within a week to essay the Fountain. Laudine feels that a knight is needed to defend it. Lunete tells her that the knight who slew her husband would undertake to do it. When Laudine learns that his name is Iwain she consents (vv. 1243-1942). XIII. Iwain is terrified when ushered into Laudine's presence and says that anything she may lay upon him, even death, he will Marriage with take without ill wiU. She receives him kindly when the Lady. jje promiscs to defend the Fountain. Iwain and the lady are speedily married, and there is great joy (vv. 1943-2 169). XIV. The wedding feast lasts till King Arthur comes to essay the adventure of the Fountain. Kay is assigned to the adventure. The Arrival of king pours water on the rock, and presently Iwain King Arthur, appears mounted on a powerful horse and overthrows Kay. Iwain then reveals himself to Arthur and escorts him and his knights to the castle, where they are entertained for a week (vv. 2170-2475). XV. When Arthur departs, Iwain is persuaded to accompany him. Laudine does not give Iwain permission to go till he has promised Departure of to rctum within a year. If he does not come back iwam. ijy. ^-jjat time, "her love will turn to hate." She gives Twain a ring that will protect him from imprisonment and be his shield and hauberk (vv. 2476-2638). XVI. A year has passed, and Iwain is busy in tournaments. Suddenly he recollects that he has overstayed his time. The same Broken Promise iustant a damsel rides up and calls him a hypocrite, and Madness, ^^^j ^ jjjief who has stolcn her lady's heart and for- gotten his promise to return. She demands back the ring. When Iwain does not reply, she snatches the ring from his finger and departs. Iwain goes mad and runs into the forest, where he lives like a beast. A hermit supplies him with musty bread (vv. 2639- 2884). i6 A. C. L. Brown. XVII. At length one day a lady, accompanied by two damsels, finds a naked man asleep in the forest. One of the damsels recog- Curebya nizes Iwain by a scar on his cheek. At her request Magic Remedy, (.jjg j^jjy. ^q^^ the damsel to bring a box of ointment, a gift from Morgue the Wise,' by means of which Iwain is cured of his madness. In return Iwain frees the lady from the oppression of a powerful enemy. Count Alier (vv. 2885-3340). XVIII. As Iwain is riding through a deep forest, he finds a serpent and a lion fighting. He succors the lion and slays the serpent. The lion kneels down before Iwain and indicates by his The Thankful tears that he thanks him. After this the lion accom- ^'™- panies Iwain everywhere. Iwain comes to the Foun- tain Perilous and finds Lunete shut up in the little chapel near by. She tells Iwain a wicked seneschal has accused her of treason in persuading Laudine to marry Iwain. She is to be burned to-mor- row unless a knight can be found who will fight the seneschal and two others, in order to prove her innocence. Iwain promises to undertake the combat but is obliged to go some distance before he finds lodgings for the night at a castle (vv. 3341-38 16). XIX. This castle is beset by a giant, Harpin of the Mountain, who will kill the lord's sons or carry off the daughter of the house Conflicting in the morning unless a champion can be found to Appointments, ggjjj jji^_ j^^j^^ promlsBs to fight the giant if the latter appears early in the morning; otherwise he shall be obliged to go to keep his promise and save Lunete (vv. 3817-4087). XX. In the morning Iwain waits till prime for the giant to appear. Combat with and, Es he does not come, is distracted in his mind Giant Harpin. .^^hether to go or stay. At last Harpin comes and Iwain subdues him, aided in the struggle by his faithful lion (vv. 4088-4312). XXI. Iwain rides hurriedly to the Fountain Perilous, and arrives The Rescue of a ^" ^™^ ^^ rescue Lunete by fighting at once the wicked Damsel by a scncschal and two others. The lion again helps Iwain. Laudine does not know who Iwain is. He calls himself the Knight of the Lion (vv. 4313-4702). 1 That is, Morgain la fee. Twain. 17 XXII. Iwain is met by a messenger from the younger daughter of the lord of La Noire Espine. The lord is dead, and the elder Daughters of the daughter has usurped all the land and secured Gawain Black Thorn, ^q defend her claim. Iwain, who does not know that his opponent will be Gawain, agrees to fight for the younger daughter. He does not reveal his own name but is called the Knight of the Lion (vv. 4703-5106). XXIII. Iwain and the messenger come to a place called the Castle of 111 Adventure and are advised not to enter. They do enter, however, and find three hundred girls behind a row of stakes. The Castle of These girls are pale and thin and obliged to toil at 111 Adventure, y^orking silk with thread of gold. It is explained that many years ago the King of the Isle of Maidens went like a fool in search of adventure. He fell into the power of two " fiz de deable " who own this castle. Being not yet eighteen years old, he ransomed himself as best he could by swearing to send each year thirty maidens as tribute till the monsters should be vanquished. Iwain is well entertained for the night by the lord and lady of the castle, but in the morning he is obliged to fight the monsters. He overcomes them, with the aid of his lion, and frees the maidens (vv. 5107-5811). XXIV. Iwain arrives at Arthur's court clad in armor and known as the Knight of the Lion. Gawain, too, is disguised by his armor, Combat of and the two friends fight a terrible battle. When Fratres jurati. jjight comcs on, they grow tired, and reveal them- selves to each other. There is great joy, and people are surprised to see how evenly they are matched (vv. 5812-6526). XXV. Iwain soon returns to the Fountain Perilous and stirs up .,. . such a storm that the castle is almost destroyed. ReconcUiation ^ ^ "* between the Hero Lunctc is Sent to find out who is at the Fountain, and and the Heroine, -^^ j^^j. niejjiatjon Iwain is reconciled to Laudine. Now Iwain has peace and through joy the past is forgotten (vv. 6527- 6818). Every reader who compares the Ivain with the Matron of Ephesus will at once observe that they belong to two entirely different kinds of writing. Chretien's Ivain is romantic in the highest degree. It is far removed even from realistic literature, and much more from that class of disillusioned, cynical stories to which the Matron of 1 8 A. C. L. Brown. Ephesus so evidently belongs.^ The strongest proofs in the world would barely suffice to make one believe that Chretien drew the theme of his curiously high-spirited, un-matter-of-fact romance from a cheap satire on women. But what are the proofs ? Merely similarities of incident. His- torical evidence is of course unobtainable. Now there are but two incidents in the two stories that are similar. The first is, that in both there is a lady's maid who takes the hero's part. Surely not much can be based on this. Every lady has a maid, and from time immemorial approach to a lady has been by means of her maid. The other incident, upon which so much stress has been laid, is, not that in both stories the widow marries the slayer of her husband, — a parallel that might have some significance, — but simply that in both stories a newly bereaved widow marries again suddenly. As Ahlstrom has well said, it is not necessary to go to the Matron of Ephesus for this. The incident is not unknown in real life. One should also remember that in the Middle Ages every vifidow left in possession of a fief was practically forced to marry again to protect her possessions. Such a marriage might foUov/ the death of the widow's husband almost immediately if there was danger of invasion or attack. Some one may remind me that it has been urged also that a simi- larity lies in the heartlessness of the lady's treatment of her husband in both stories. This is the weakest point of all. Laudine is not described by Chrdtien as heartless. So far as can be made out, he represents her as respecting her husband's memory to the last. Furthermore, stretch the Matron of Ephesus theory to its greatest conceivable limits, it still will not account for more than five or six hundred lines out of the almost seven thousand of the Ivain. The remainder of the romance would have to be explained as a mere compilation from various disconnected sources. Even, therefore, if 1 The cynical side of the Matron of Ephesus is brought out in a still more repellent way in the mediaeval versions of the tale, which Chretien would naturally have known. In them the widow with her own hands mutilates the body of her husband to make it resemble the stolen corpse, which had lost its ears and some teeth. Twain. jq there were no other theory in the field, it would seem as if the hypothesis which derives the plot from the Matron of Ephesus would have to be rejected. It has, so far as I can see, not a le^ to stand on. • ' s CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF THE CELTIC THEORY. The view which would explain the Ivain as in origin a Celtic story of a "fairy mistress " was first distinctly set forth by Alfred Nutt in 1887.' " The Lady of the Fountain seems to me to be an expansion of a Goldenlocks story. The hero leaves his wife (breaking a taboo thereby), is forsaken of her, becomes rough and hairy, rescues her from three successive dangers, is recognized by and reunited to her. It is to be noted that the hero is accompanied by a helping, animal. The opening incident of this story may be compared to Joyce's Pur- suit of the Gilla Backer [i.e. the story of Diarmat].^ ... In both stories the heroes drink of the fountain, the lord of the fountain appears, and a fight ensues in which the hero proves victor." This view was expressed by Paris in his usual felicitous way in the passage already quoted^ from Romania, 1888. It is also the view of Muret, set forth in 1890 in the article from which a quotation has 1 The Celtic Magazine, XII, 555. Osterwald, Iwein, ein keltischer FriihUngsgott, 1853, pointed out that Laudine is an other-world person, and that this is the clue to her sudden marriage to the slayer of her husband. His article, however, is overlaid with vague mythologizing. The remark of Alexander Macbain in 1884 should also be noted : " Visits of the nature of that undertaken by Ulysses, in Homer, to the Land of the Shades, were made by at least three champions of the Gael, . . . Cuchulainn, Cormac and Diarmat We find a double account of Diarmat's visit to Tir-fa-tonn, one Irish, one Gaelic. The Irish one is in its main features the counterpart of the Welsh Mabinogion, ' The Lady of the Fountain ' " (Celtic Magazine, IX, 278). ^ Rhjs (Lectures on Celtic Heathendom, London, 1888, pp. 187 if.) has made this same comparison, and so has Ferdinand Lot (Romania, XXI, 67-71). 8 Pp. 5-6, above. 20 A. C. L. Brown. already been made.^ He thinks that it is clear to any unprejudiced person that the principal donnie of the Chevalier au Lion is one of those stories of a mortal loved by z.fie so common in popular tradi- tion. He points to the existence of analogous situations in many of those lais bretons of which nobody disputes the Celtic origin, and concludes : " A des yeux non prdvenus, les circonstances singuliferes du mariage d'lvain avec la Dame de la Fontaine n'ont que le plus vague et le plus lointain rapport avec I'anecdote de la Matrone d'fiphfese." Muret thinks that Chretien's original was probably some prose recital he had heard, though he admits that a few " aventures banales " may be of the poet's own introduction. Ahlstrom, who expresses himself at some length in the article already referred to," agrees that the original of the Ivain story is the well-known account of the union of a mortal to a supernatural being, whether, as in Cupid and Psyche, the hero is supernatural, or as in Graelent, Lanval, Guingamor, Guigemar, Dhirk, Partenopeus de Blois, Floriant et Florete, Bel Inconnu, La ChAielaine de Vergi, Perceval (several times), Erec, Lancelot, and Ogier le Datiois, it is the heroine who is i^fke. In one or two of these stories, as Ahlstrom thinks, the fte was originally a swan-maiden caught by stealing the swan-raiment which she had temporarily laid aside while bathing in a fountain. It is certainly true that in Graelent and Guingamor swan-maiden features have been mixed up with the story, for in both the hero obtains the love of the lady, surprised while bathing in a fountain, by possessing himself of her clothes. In neither case, however, has this confusion destroyed her real character as a fie princess. In neither case, as Schofield has clearly pointed out,' is the heroine like the maiden in Dolopathos (which he shows to be a genuine swan- maiden story) "a weak, defenceless captive." She is "a queenly princess. She does not humbly accept a marriage forced upon her, but comes from a distant land solely to carry back the hero whom 1 Revue Critique, XXIX, 67. ''■ Milanges Wahlund, 1896, pp. 294-303. ' See his important articles, The Lay of Guingamor, in Harvard Studies and Notes, V, 236 ff., and The Lays of Graelent and Lanval, in Publ. of the Mod. Lang. Association of America, XV, J45. Twain. 2 1 she loves, — not in the future to be a wife patiently enduring all sorts of indignities, but a proud supernatural mistress whose com- mands when not followed to the letter bring sorrow to him whose life even is in her hands." ' In both cases she speaks her mind with dignity and is not really surprised, while a swan-maiden is always taken unawares. Dr. Schofield's view that these heroines are true fies to whom the authors, confused by the resemblances of their stories to tales like that in the Dolopathos, have ascribed certain swan-maiden features, is altogether the most reasonable. Ahlstrom, however, holds the opposite opinion, that the swan character of the lady was original and has been modified by stories of fkes. He also maintains that Desirk, where it is the lady's maid that is caught at the fountain, and Lanval, where two maids are met while carrying water to their mistress, are in origin swan-maiden stories which have lost most of their primitive character. Not content with this, he goes on to draw the unwarranted inference that Ivain is another such swan-maiden story. He admits that no trace of this supposed origin can be found except the name " Lady of the Fountain," but this single hint is enough, he thinks, to enable him to reconstruct the whole. The weakness of Ahlstrom's argument becomes apparent when one reflects that it would prove practically all fairy mistresses to be swan-maidens. They are nearly all first seen near a spring or river or lake or by the seaside. Especially is this the case in Celtic fairy stories, because of the belief, strongly held by the Celts, that the approach to fairyland lay across the sea or beneath the waves. There are plenty of ways in which a fairy might come to be called a lady of the fountain without her having been in origin a swan-maiden at all. Nor is this swan-maiden feature at all necessary to the rest of Ahlstrom's explanation. Ahlstrom's confusion oi fies with swan-maidens leads him to explain that Laudine's sudden remarriage is due to her /airy nature,^ which (he seems to think) places her at the disposal of the conqueror of the Fountain. Any one who studies the Celtic //^, however, will see 1 Schofield, I.e., p. 236. " See Milanges- Waklund, pp. 296-297. 22 A. C. L. Brown. that she was originally bound by no restrictions and at nobody's dis- posal. (The sudden remarriage is really due to the fact that the slain warrior was originally a supernatural being in the service of the fke, and not her husband at all.) Ahlstrom, with some prob- ability, explains the ring given to Iwain as originally the ring that brought the fairy mistress at any time and place, while she remained invisible to every one but the hero. It is easy to see how this might get changed to a ring that renders its wearer invisible. Its being taken away when Ivain is unfaithful is paralleled in DksirL It would be absurd, therefore, to regard it as an adaptation of the ring of Gyges.* Ahlstrom's most interesting suggestion is that the Joy of the Court episode in Erec is really a defective version of the fairy mistress story. As Erec was written before Ivain, it becomes clear that a fairy mistress story in which the knight was obliged to do battle with all who approached his lady existed before Ivain was written. Chretien's original, then, must have been a story of some length, comprising at least three of the chief incidents of the poem : the fight at the fountain, the remarriage, and the thankful lion.^ This story, he believes, came from Brittany, where it had been localized. " C'est done, si Ton veut, un sujet breton ; mais on ne peut dire qu'il soit nd dans ce pays ni que le pofete I'ait directement empruntd des Bretons" (p. 303). In 1897 Baist,' in a short but important note, discussed the whole question of the sources of Ivain. With regard to Ahlstrom's swan- maiden explanation he says : " Ich bin von jeher der Meinung gewe- sen, dass in Laudine sich eine Wasserfrau verberge." He naturally, however, fails to see that she can be made such a water-nymph, simply because she happens to be 2. fke. Baist divides the romance of Ivain 1 Ahlstrom believes also that he has found a parallel to the madness of Ivain iriLanval, v. 416: "Mult dotouent qu'il s'afolast"; but Paris and Tobler more properly translate this by "do injury to himself" (Romania, XXVI, 107; Zt. f. rom. Phil., X, 168). 2 Ahlstrom regards the episode of the thankful lion as an invention to explain the title " Chevalier au Lion," which he, without good reason, thinks came in the first place from the name of a country, Lhnnois (pp. 299-300). ^ Zt. f. rom. Phil., XXI, 402-405. Iwain. 23 into two parts. The second part, beginning immediately after the hero loses Laudine, he believes to be Chretien's own invention or compilation. The madness of Ivain is, he thinks, borrowed from that of Tristan. (But surely this muSt have been a part of the original fairy mistress story, of which it is a well-recognized feature.) The introduction of the thankful lion he with much reason ascribes to Chretien. He points out that the interest centres in this brilliant piece of decoration up to the time of the combat of Iwain and Gawain. None of the adventures related in this second part could belong, he thinks, to an original Journey of Wonders that led the hero back to his fairy mistress, except that of the Castle of the Black Thorn, and that shows no evidence of having belonged to such a tale. The Maiden Castle comes from some Mdrchen. The recon- ciliation at the end is, according to Baist, entirely the invention of Chretien, because it is only a variant of the way in which the lady was at first persuaded by Lunete to receive the hero. (Yet Baist could hardly deny that a happy ending, though not perhaps a feature of the most primitive form of the theme, might easily have become attached to it long before it reached Chretien.) The first part of the romance Baist ascribes to " ein genau lokali- siertes bretonisches Marchen." He finds in it, to be sure, a verbal borrowing from Wace : Einsi alai, einsi raving, Au revenir per fol me ting. Si YDS ai cont^ come fos Ce qu'onques mes center ne vos. — Yvain (vv. 577 ff.). Fol m'en reuinc, fol i alai, Fol i alai, fol m'en reuinc, Folie quis, por fol me tine. — Roman de Rou (vv. 6418 ff.). This parallel might at first make one think that Chre'tien developed his story of the Fountain out of the hint given in the Romati de Rou, but Baist shows that this cannot be, for the Giant Herdsman who points out the way is plainly "eine marchenhafte Gestalt" whose invention is not to be ascribed to Chretien. There remains, how- ever, the possibility that Chre'tien transferred a story about some Magic Fountain to the particular Fountain of Barenton of which he 24 A. C. L. Brown. learned from the poem of Wace.^ That this part of the Ivain is based on a popular tale is proved, Baist thinks, by the repeated pointing out of the way, both at the Hospitable Castle and by the Giant Herdsman, by the contrasting of a first adventurer who fails with a second who succeeds, and by the repetition in both cases of the various particulars, all of which is "ganz genau im Marchenstil." One may guess, says Baist, that originally the Hospitable Castle and the Giant Herdsman "stood in more intimate relations with the adventure than Chretien has cared to preserve." The change which Chretien has made from the stags and hawks mentioned by Wace ^ to a herd of wild cattle, Baist believes to be significant, for mar- vellous herdsmen are common in insular Celtic stories. They are generally giant swineherds, but in the Voyage of Maelduin^ there is a gigantic cattle driver who points out the way. The figure, Baist thinks, is surely traditional. Finally, Baist declares that to the Welsh it was a matter of course that the Fairy of the Fountain belonged to the Winner of the Fountain. The French did not understand this, and so Chretien introduced out of his own head the long psychological discussion by which Laudine is persuaded to marry the conqueror. To the Welsh the lady was a mere prize.^ 1 It seems more probable that the Other-World fountain had been already localized at Barenton before the time of Chretien and Wace. 2 Roman de Rou, 6409 ff. (ed. H. Andresen, II, 284) : La [Barenton] seut I'en les fees ueeir, Se 11 Breton nos dient ueir, E altres merueilles plusors ; Aires i selt aueir d'osiors E de gram cers mult grant flente ; Mais vilain ont tot deserte. La alai io merueilles querre, Vi la forest e ui la terre, Merueilles quis, mais nes trouai. Then follow the three lines just quoted (p. 23). ' D'Arbois de Jubainville, Cours de Litt. Celtique, V, 472. 4 Baist compares Kulhwch and Olwen (J. Loth, Les Mabinogion, I, 188-189), in which Kilydd asks where he shall find a wife : " ' I know one who will please you,' said one of his counsellors, ' that is the wife of King Doget,' and they resolved to fetch her, slew the king and carried away the lady." In the next sentence she is the wife of KUydd. That she has become so the narrative does not think it Iwain. 2 5 A brief but powerful statement of the view whose development has just been sketched, and one that may be appropriately quoted in conclusion, was published by Kittredge in 1898.^ "The Cligis, we may remark in passing, formed no original part of 'the matter of Britain ' ; its Arthurian relations are due entirely to Chretien. On this point there is no controversy. If now the ' Cliges ' be compared with those works of the same author which are commonly thought to be referable to Celtic sources, the essential difference will be found striking, and in our opinion, significant.^ ... In the Knight of the Lion we have an admirable specimen of what one means by a ' romance of the Round Table.' . . . The lady is of course a fie, whose fate it is to marry whoever can overcome the (eldritch) knight who guards the well in the forest. But her husband can retain her favor only on terms of obedience and fidelity. Just as actual unfaith- fulness to a fairy wife or fairy mistress always brings disaster and sometimes death, so, in this softened and rationalized form of the tale, the forgetfulness of Iwain and his failure to keep his day come near costing him the love of his lady. Her implacability is originally an essential trait of her fairy nature, though Chretien himself may not have understood it in this way or have been aware that she was a fee at all, any more than Shakspere fully understood the mythological antecedents of the Scandinavian Norns whom he found in Holins- hed's account of Macbeth." Every one, it will be observed, who has advocated what may be called the fairy mistress explanation of the romance of Ivain, has looked for a source in Celtic tradition. This is evidently the natural view. Chretien practically tells us that he is following a conte, which he evidently expects us to regard as based on Celtic tradition ; nearly necessary to mention. This parallel is of course interesting, but the real point is not the brutality of Welsh customs, but the fact that Laudine was a fairy, and not originally the wife of Esclados at all. 1 In a book review in the New York Nation, Feb. 24, 1898, LXVI, 150-151. 2 Important evidence for the theory of a different origin of the Ivain from that of the Cligis is here brought forward. No one can pass directly from the former to the latter without being struck by the absence of those peculiarly Celtic features of fairy, wild man, and magic forest which give a distinctive flavor to the Chevalier au Lion. 26 A. C. L. Brown. all the names of the dramatis personae are Celtic ; and the scene is laid in Wales or Armorica. There is, moreover, a special reason why this antecedent probability that the story of Ivain comes from Celtic sources is very great. The Celtic fkes are distinctly superior beings, never surprised and taken captive by the hero, as the Germanic fairies regularly are, but dwelling like Laudine in a magic land, which must be visited by the hero, who thus puts himself in their power before his courtship even begins. They retain their superiority, and, like Iwain's mistress, insist on being obeyed even in the verbal details of a promise or else they punish and forsake their lover, who is always thought of as in their power.^ Evidently it is from creatures ■ like these, as distinguished from Germanic and other fairies, thai: such a character as Laudine must be derived. 1 The important suggestion that the typical heroine of the French Arthuriar romances of the twelfth century, who is thought of as far above her lover or hei husband, was derived essentially from the ancient Celtic//? is due to Alfred Nuf {Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, pp. 232 ff.). Nutt points out that ir Teutonic fairy stories the man plays the chief part, sometimes even forcing the fairy maiden to become his mistress. It is otherwise with the Celts; "Connls and Bran and Oisin must all leave this earth and sail across ocean or lake before they can rejoin their lady love ; even Cuchullain, mightiest of all the heroes, is constrained, struggle as he may, to go and dwell with the fairy queen Fand, who has wooed him. Throughout, the immortal mistress retains her superiority. . . . This type of womanhood, capricious, independent, severed from ordinary domestic life , is assuredly the original of the Viviens, the Orgueilleuses, the Ladies of the Fountain of the romances ; it is also one which must have commended itself to knightly devotees of mediaeval romantic love. Their ^ dame d'amour' -was as a. rule another man's wife; she raised in their minds no thought of home or child. In the tone of their feelings towards her . . . they were closer akin to Oisin and Neave, to Cuchullain and Fand, than to Siegfried and Brunhild, or to Roland and Aude." In a more recent publication ( Voyage of Bran, I, 1 56, note) Nutt has also said : " There is no parallel to the position or the sentiments of a Celtic heroine like Fand in the post-classic literature of Western Europe before Guinevere.'' (He might have said, before Laudine.) I wain. 27 CHAPTER IV. ANCIENT CELTIC STORIES OF THE JOURNEY TO THE OTHER WORLD. I. The Type. To reach any just conclusion with respect to the question of the dependence of Chretien's Ivain on Cehic Other-World stories, it is indispensable to secure as clear a conception as possible of what a typical Celtic fairy mistress story really was. It is extremely impor- tant, therefore, to have before us, at least in outline, all significant tales of this character which are unmistakably attested, on manu- script or other evidence, as belonging to a period more ancient than that of Chretien. In the case of Irish materials the evidence is of the most satis- factory sort imaginable. All of the Irish stories that will be quoted or summarized in the text of this chapter are preserved, at least in part, in one of two ancient manuscripts, the Lebor na h-Uidre and the Book of Leinster, which were written before the period of the rise of French Arthurian romance. The Lebor na h-Uidre (LU) was com- piled and transcribed about the year 11 00 by Moelmuiri mac Ceilea- chair, who died in 1106.'- The Book of Leinster (LL) is as old as the year 1150.^ These two manuscripts have preserved a mass of Irish Other-World lore of greater proved antiquity and of a more distinctive character than the fairy tales of any other Western people. In Welsh, as in most other modern languages, there exist no manuscripts of so ancient date containing fairy tales. In view of this fact, the method adopted in this chapter is to develop the idea of the typical Celtic fairy mistress story on the basis of Irish material, using the two or three Welsh tales whose ancient character is perhaps most universally admitted,^only as illustrative of incidents the presence 1 Zimmer, Kuhn's Zt., XXVIII, 417 (1887). Cf. Henderson, Fled Bricrend, pp. xxiv ft. 2 Windisch, Irische Texte, I, 60. 8 The Welsh tales used are ; Pwyll Prince of Dyvet (from the Red Book of Hergesi) and The Victims of Annwn. The Red Book is a fourteenth-century MS., 28 A. C. L. Brown. of which in Celtic story before the time of Chretien has been estab- lished by the Irish narratives. Thus the validity of the method can- not be impugned on the score of dates. It can only be attacked, therefore, by questioning the closeness of the resemblances between the Ivain and Irish story, — a matter which is perfectly open and definite, so that every reader may decide for himself. It ought, moreover, to be observed that there is a priori no reason to insist that, if the Celtic origin of the Iwain story be admitted, the resemblances between it and Irish tales must necessarily be very marked. The Brythonic stories were probably only parallel to the Goidelic, not identical with them, and it is only through the lost Brythonic stories that Celtic influences could have reached Chretien. Irish tales are therefore two removes from Chretien. The fact, then, that we do find marked resemblances between them and the Ivain must under the circumstances be regarded as doubly significant. Apparently the most primitive in form of Celtic fairy mistress stories is that describing the adventures of Connla the Fair, which is proved by considerations of language to have been originally written down as early as the ninth century. The manuscript in which the tale is preserved is the Lebor na h-Uidre. ECHTRA CONDLA CHAIM.l Why is he called Art All-alone ? Not hard ! One day Connla, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, was at his father's side when he saw a woman but mistakes in spelling and the actual existence of some fragments in a thirteenth- century MS. show that the scribe was copying an older text. Loth (Les Mabino- gion, I, 1 8) thinks the tales of the Red Book were written down toward the end of the twelfth century. Pwyll Prince of Dyvet, however, is one of the four genu- ine Mabinogion concerning which Loth says (p. 9) : " EUes appartiennent au cycle gallois le plus ancien et sont sans doute un reste du patrimoine commun aux Gaels et aux Bretons." Elsewhere (p. 20) he says : " Elles plongent dans le plus lointain pass^ de I'histoire des Celtes." The Victims of Annwn is put by Stephens- (Lit of the Kymry, 2d ed., p. 273) in the twelfth or thirteenth century, but it shows no signs of the influence of French romance. It is preserved in a manuscript dating from the early part of the fourteenth century. 1 Summarized from the Irish text as printed by Windisch, Kurzgefasste Irische Grammatik, pp. 118-120. For a French translation, see d'Arbois de Jubainville^ I wain. 29 in wonderful garments coming to him. She invited him to the Fields of the Living, to enjoy "perpetual feasts without preparation, where king Boadag is an everlasting king without complaint and without grief in his land since he took the kingdom." The land is one of peace, and the people are the peaceful people.^ The woman declared that she was young, beautiful, of noble race, not subject to age or decay. She loved Connla and had come to invite him to Mag Mell. She was invisible to every one but Connla, so that at first Conn wondered to whom his son was speaking. When he grasped the situation, he had his druid called to drive away the fairy by the use of spells. Before the woman departed she gave Connla an apple. On this apple he lived for a month, for it was not diminished, however much he ate of it, but continued entirely untouched. No other food seemed to him worthy to be eaten except his apple. He was, moreover, seized with longing for the woman that he had seen. At the end of a month the woman appeared again to Connla. She spoke to him of the delights of her land, where death was unknown, and invited him to enter her boat : We must embark in my ship of glass If we are to reach Sid Boadaig. There is another land, — It were not worse for thee to visit it. I see the bright sun is setting. However far it is, we shall arrive before night. It is a land where is joy Passing the thought of everyone who visits it (?). There is no one dwelling there Except women and maidens. Unable to resist his longing for the woman, Connla made a spring into her ship of glass, which thereupon withdrew gradually across the sea. He has not been seen since that time, nor is it known whither he went. Art, thus deserted by his brother Connla, returned alone to the assembly. VMpopie Celtique, I, 385-390, and F. Lot, Romania, XXVII, 559 ft. For one in German, see Zimmer, Zt.f. deutsch.es Alt, XXXIII, 262 ff. See Nutt, Voyage of Bran, I, 144 ff. 1 " &% sfde." This may mean rather " Her land is the land of the Sid [fairy hill] and her people the people of the Sid." Probably the words in the text are an attempt to etymologize as side. 30 A. C. L. Brown. When his father saw him approaching thus unaccompanied, he exclaimed : " Art is All-alone to-day ; probably so is not his brother." So from this time the name "All-alone" {penfer^ clung to Art. Like most Irish fairy tales, this story evidently owes its preserva- tion, not to its intrinsic charm, which surely for a modern reader is very great, but to the purely accidental fact that it has been at some time altered to explain, in a popular way, the name of one of Conn's sons. Art Oenfer. Fortunately the alterations in this case appear to have been very slight, — a mere tag at the beginning and the end, so that there is reason to hold that we have here a Celtic folk tale in practically its primitive form.^ The story well illustrates the exalted character of the primitive Celtic fee. She is really a queen of the Other World. She wooes the mortal hero with an almost haughty con- descension. There is no thought of his capturing or outwitting her, as is regularly the case in Germanic fairy tales. She seeks out the hero and lures him away to her own land, from which he never returns. The story is really an Other- World Journey. The fke lives across the sea, so that we have a hint of what is technically known as the imram.'^ The landscape of the Other World is not described. We learn, however, that it is a land of perpetual youth, where, without the intervention of a throng of servants, a never-ending feast is always ready. It is a land inhabited by women only. It possesses magic food that fails not, and is reached in a magic boat that accom- plishes any distance before night. The fee herself has the power of being invisible to every one except him whom she seeks. All these traits reappear continually in later tales. Their occurrence in this very ancient story is evidence of the substantial continuity of Irish tradition. ^ Probably the number of tales of this sort current in Ireland from pagan times on was very considerable, as indeed it continues to be. down to the present day. Only a few of these, either because they were connected with some his- torical personage, or because they were made to explain some proper name, had the good fortune to be written down and preserved in MS. "■ I distinguish between the genuine imram, a literary product, where stress is laid on the incidents of a voyage by sea and on the different islands visited, and the simple Other-World Journey, where, as here, though a voyage is mentioned, no importance is attached to it. • I wain. 31 Another very ancient tale, which has, however, suffered complete Temodelling by euhemeristic hands, is that called The Debility of the Ultonian Warriors. This is one of the remsdla (" introductory tales") brought into close connection with the famous Tain Bb CHailgne. An original fairy mistress story has been altered to explain in a popular manner the extraordinary debility that befell the Ultonian warriors in the Tain Bb at the moment when they were attacked by the forces of Medb.^ NOINDEN ULAD.2 Whence comes the Debility of the Ultonians ? Not hard ! Crunniuc, son of Agnoman, was a wealthy farmer. One day, as he was alone in his house, a woman of stately appearance entered. She seated herself and began to prepare food as if she had been in the house before. [She passed a whole day there without exchanging a word with any one.]^ When it was night, she gave directions to the servants without a question. She slept beside Crunniuc that night and remained with him for a long time. One day there was an assembly held by the Ultonians to which they were accustomed to go, both men and women, sons and daughters. Crun- niuc made ready to go with the others. [" Go not, said his wife, lest you run into danger by speaking of us ; for our union will continue only if you do not speak of me in the assembly." ■*] " That shall not be," said he. 1 This debility, which lasted for five nights and four days, whence the name Noinden, was perhaps really a sort of couvade: see Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 140, 363, and, for references on this strange custom, Suchier, Aucassin und AHcolete, 4th ed., pp. 54-55; Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, pp. 289- 297. Miss Hull, however, suggests that it originated rather in a sort of tabu (Cuchullin Saga, p. 293). 2 Summarized from the Irish text in the Book of Leinster as printed by Win- disch, Berichte der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Phil.-hist. Classe, XXXVI, 336 fE. (1884). The story is found also in the later MSB. Harleian ^280 (about 1560), The Book of Fermoy (fifteenth century), The Yellow Book of Lecan (fourteenth century). The Harleian text with a translation was printed by Windisch (I.e.). For a French translation, see d'Arbois, V Epopee Celtique, I, 320 ff. ; ef. E. Hull, Cuchullin Saga, pp. 77-100. 3 This sentence is not in LL. I insert it from the Harleian text. * This sentence is from the Harleian MS. In place of it LL. reads: '"It befits you,' said his wife, 'not to be overconfident and speak recklessly.'" 32 A. C. L. Brown. The assembly was held. Toward the end of the day the king's chariot with its horses won the victory. The people cried : " There is nothing swifter than these horses ! " But Crunniuc said : " My wife is swifter." He was instantly seized by the king and ordered to be put to death unless he could prove his rash words. A messenger was sent to tell his wife. " It is truly a misfortune for me," said she, " that I must go to free him, for I am with child." The woman, however, went to the assembly and ran the race to save her husband. She reached the goal before the horses, but was delivered of twins on the spot and died. In her agony she screamed, and all the men who heard her cry fell into a weakness like that of a woman in travail for five nights and four days. This weakness returned periodically till the ninth generation : hence the Noinden Ulad. The woman's name was Macha, daughter of Sainreth mac Imbaith. In the above outline I have at two points (marked by brackets) followed the Harleian manuscript rather than the Book of Leinster, because at these points the later manuscript seems to me to have suffered less from the hands of the euhemerizer. In any case, the original fairy character of the lady appears beyond dispute. Her ancestry as given in the Book of Leinster is enough to indicate this : " Macha, daughter of Sainreth (' strange '), son of Imbath (ocean)." ' That is to say : daughter of the Stranger and granddaughter of the Sea. She is therefore of the race of Manannan son of Ocean, who, as we shall see, plays an important part in most Celtic fairy tales.^ This story is important because its great antiquity is supported, not only by the external evidence already set forth, but by the primi- tive savagery attributed in it to the king, a bit of internal testimony sufficiently significant of itself. Taken together, these two stories, the Connla and the Noinden, whose ancient character is assured, seem to show that of the different conceptions of the fee, that which regarded her as a supreme being to whom every one else in the Other World is subject, was the older. In the Connla, to be sure, a king (Boadag) of Mag Mell is mentioned, but, as nothing is told about 1 D'Arbois de Jubainville has pointed this out (VMpopie Celtique, I, 325). The meaning of imbath (= ocean) is supported by Cormac's Glossary, p. 94. 2 Manannan mac Lir, who appears In the Welsh tales of the Red Book of Hergest as Manawyddan ab Llyr, an Other-World power. Twain. 33 him and as the land is said to be inhabited by women only, perhaps he is a mere name inserted because it was felt that every land must have a king. Certainly it does not appear that he had power to limit in any way the liberty of the fie. In the euhemerized Noinden the most distinguishing feature of the original story, so far as we can make out, must have been that in it the position of the fie was so exalted that a single disobedience to her directions brought as its punishment^ perpetual separation. In the Irish tales next to be taken up (which are perhaps of later origin or at least are not preserved in so primitive forms as the I A parallel to the Noinden may be found in the Latin of Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, ii, 12. The tale is told of Wild Edric, who was lord of Ledbury North, a place in Hereford on the borders of Wales, and therefore very likely goes back to Welsh tradition. If so, it has suffered modification under Teutonic influence, for it represents the hero as carrying off the fairy, an incident never found in genuine ancient Celtic story. The true Celtic fee is never surprised. She is far too exalted for that. She always comes of herself, as in the Noinden, — an important distinction between it and the tale of Edric. In other respects, however, the story is so much like that of the Noinden (in both they% is silent at first for a long time ; in both she disappears when the prohibition is broken) that it may rest at bottom on a Welsh fairy mistress tale. If so, it is an example of the substantial parallelism of Welsh and Irish tradition. " One day as Edricus Wilde was returning from the hunt, accompanied only by a lad, he lost his way in the forest. About midnight he came to a brilliantly lighted house {gkildkus), within which he saw a band of noble women engaged in a solemn dance. One, more beautiful than the rest, charmed him beyond measure. Fired with love, he rushed into the house and forcibly carried off the object of his passion. She remained mute for three days, though she did not refuse his caresses. On the fourth day she spoke, saying ; ' Hail, my dearest I You will be happy and prosperous till ihe day that you reproach me concerning the place or the wood in which I was found or concerning anything of the sort.' Edric promised to be faithful in his love. But some years later he chanced to return from the hunt at the third hour of the night. He called for his wife, and when she was long in appearing, he <;ried angrily : ' Pray, is it your sisters that have so long detained you .' ' At the -words she instantly vanished. Edric mourned exceedingly, and visited again the place whence he had carried her off, but he was unable to call her back by any entreaties. He wept day and night even to the point of foolishness toward him- self, for he wore out his life in perpetual grief." Of. also Liebrecht, Die Todten von Lustnau, Germania, XIII, 161 ff. (and Zur Volkskunde, pp.54 ff.), where many similar tales are cited. 34 A. C. L. Brown. Connla and the Noinden), although the fie retains the exalted position which is a distinctive mark of Celtic tradition, she is no longer absolutely independent. There are kings as well as queens of the Other World. The. fie is regarded as the wife or the daughter of the king of Mag Mell. With the intrusion of the masculine element has come also the idea of combat. The Other World is no longer altogether a Land of Peace. It is easy to see how these ideas may have been developed from the notion of a king of the Other World found already in the Connla. It is possible also that they may have existed from the earliest times side by side with the conception of the fke as supreme in authority over a land of peace. But the fact that the latter view is indicated in the two oldest tales is at least significant. More important, however, is the consideration that in the Serglige Conculaind (the most complete of all the ancient tales of this genre), in which the fie is represented as the wife of Manannan, and in which a combat in the Other World is an important feature, all the leading parts are played by women. It is a fairy woman, Liban, who comes as a messenger to Cuchulinn and conducts him through the dangerous passage, and a woman, the fie herself, comes part way to meet him. The other-world actors in the story are all women. It looks, therefore, as if the men were originally mere servants or dependents of the fie. Although the story of Cuchulinn' s Sick Bed is tolerably accessible, yet, on account of its importance to this investigation, I have ventured to outline it at considerable length, following the Irish text as edited by Windisch.^ SERGLIGE CONCULAIND. Two birds linked together by a chain of gold visited a lake in Ulster and by their song put the host to sleep. Cuchulinn, though warned that 1 Irische Texie, I, 197-227, from the Lebor na h-Uidre, where it is said to be extracted from "The Yellow Book of Slane," evidently an earlier MS. For English translations of the tale, see O'Curry, Atlantis, I, 362-392, II, 98-124 (1858) ; O'Looney in J. T. Gilbert, Facsimiles of /National MSS., I, 27-28, II, App. iv (1874-78). For a French translation, see d'Arbois de Jubainville, L'kpople Celtique, I, 170-216. Cf. Zimmer, Kuhn's Zt., XXVIII, 594 ff. Iwaiii. 35 there was "some power behind the birds," sought to slay them (§7).^ Being unsuccessful, he went away in bad spirits, and, sitting down against an upright stone, fell asleep. He saw two women come towards him, one in green and one in a five-folded crimson cloak. The woman in green went up to him and laughed and gave him a stroke of a whip. Then the other, coming up, also laughed and struck him, and this they did alternately till they left him nearly dead (§ 8).^ He was carried into a house, where he lay till the end of a year without speaking to any one (§ 9). Then, as he lay in the bed, a man mysteriously appeared, who sang verses promising him health and strength if he would accept the invitation of the daughters of Aed Abrat, one of whom, named Fand, wished to marry Cuchulinn (§10). The man departed after that, and they knew not whence he came or whither he went (§ 12). Cuchulinn rose up and spoke and went back to the upright stone, where he saw again the woman in the green cloak. From her he learned that Fand, deserted by her husband Mananndn mac Lir, had fallen in love with him. Her own name is Liban. She is sister to Fand and wife to Labraid Swift- Hand-on-Sword, who has sent her to ask Cuchulinn for one day's assistance against Labraid's enemies, Senach Si'abortha, Eochaid Iiiil, and Eogan Inbir, promising in return to give him Fand to wife. Cuchulinn sent his charioteer Loeg to see the mysterious land from which she came (§ 13). Liban and he went till they^came to the place where Fand was waiting for them. Then, it is said, Liban took hold of Loeg by the shoulder. " O Loeg," said Fand, " thou wilt not come out alive to-day unless a woman protect thee ! " "I have not been much accustomed to woman's protection," was Loeg's reply. Then they came to the water's edge, where they entered a boat of bronze and crossed over to an island (§ 14). Loeg saw Labraid and his palace and returning told his story to Cuchulinn and to every one else (§§ 16, 20). Again ^ Liban came to invite Cuchulinn to Mag Mell. She sang : Labraid is over a pure lake In a place that bands of women frequent. 1 The references are to Windisch's sections. 2 Cf. Perlesvaus, Potvin, I, 7, where a squire, wounded in a dream, wakes and finds the knife in his side. ' Zimmer, Kuhn 'j Zt., XXVIII, 600, in his demonstration of the compilatory character of the sagas in LU, well says that this double preliminary visit of Loeg, as well as the double invitation by Liban, must have arisen from the contamination of two different versions of Cuchulinn's adventures. 36 A. C. L. Brown. It would not be tedious to thee to go to his people If thou art to visit Labraid Luath. A bridle of gold is on his horses, And it is not only this, A pillar of silver and of glass, — This it is which is in his house (§ 31). " I will not go," said Cuchulinn, " at a woman's invitation." " Let Loeg come then," replied Liban, " to know everything." " Let him go," said Cuchulinn. Loeg therefore went with Liban and came to the place where Fand and Labraid were. Fand said : " Let Cuchulinn come with speed, for it is to-day that the battle is appointed " (§ 32). Thus admonished^ Loeg returned, in company with Fand, to Cuchulinn, and sang these verses in praise of the land he had seen ; I came in the fraction of a moment To a place wonderful although known. Up to a cairn with a band of twenty, Where I found Labraid Long-Hair. There were two kings in the house, Failbe Find and Labraid. Three fifties about each of them, This was the number of one house. Fifty beds on the right side And fifty their burden (?), Fifty beds on the left side And fifty their burden (.'). Front rails to the beds of wood. Their posts of white gilded over. And the light that they have Is a precious glittering stone. There is at the door toward the west, In the place where the sun goes down, A stud of pale horses with gay manes ; There is another, purple brown ; There are at the door toward the east Three trees of shining purple From which calls down the flock of birds, Always gentle to the youths from the royal city. There is a tree at the door of the enclosure. Not hateful the harmony from it, A tree of silver ; against it the sun shines, Iwain. 57 Like unto gold its great splendor. There are three-score trees, Their tops barely touching. Three hundred men are nourished by each tree, With fruit manifold, without rind. There is a well in the noble sld, With three fifties, gay mantled ; And a brooch of gold, fair its color, In every one of the gay mantles. There is a cask there with joyous mead. Which is distributed to the household. It continues ever, enduring is the custom, So that it is always constantly full. There is a woman in this noble house ; She is superior to the women of Ireland ; With golden hair she comes out In her accomplished beauty. Her speech to the men of each king Is beautiful, is wonderful. She breaks the heart of every man For her love and her affection. Loeg declared that so great was her beauty as to cause him " to fear for his honor." He added : If there were to me all Ireland And the kingdom with the yellow hills, I would give it — no slight temptation — For the company in the place to which I came (§ 33). If I had not come away quickly, They had wounded me so that I had been powerless. The woman whom I speak of there. She robs the hosts of their wits (§34). Cuchulinn, persuaded by these words, mounted his chariot and accompanied Loeg and Fand to Mag Mali (§35). The combat now took place. At early dawn, Cuchulinn transfixed with his spear Eochaid luil, who was washing himself at a well. After that, he slew Senach Siabortha and won a victory for Labraid (§ 36). In return, he received Fand, with whom he lived for a month. When he departed she said to him : " I will meet thee in whatever place thou shalt appoint for me to come." After Cuchulinn returned home, he revealed to his wife Emer the appointed place of meeting. The jealous queen lay in wait with knives 38 A. C. L. Brown. to murder Fand. Cuchulian rescued her (§ 39), but when Mananndn mac Lir heard of it, he suddenly appeared, visible to Fand alone. When she saw him she sang : See the son of the host of Lir Across the plains of Eogan Inbir 1 It is Manannan more beautiful than the world. There was a time when he was dear to me. I see over the ocean yonder — No foolish person sees him — The Horseman of the Hairy Sea. He is not accompanied by a boat. In his approach he has passed by us here. No one sees him except fairy folk (§ 45). Thereupon Fand forsook Cuchulinn and went with Manannd.n (§46). When Cuchulinn perceived his loss of Fand, " he sprang three leaps upward and three leaps to the right of Liaacra, so that he was for a long time with- out drink and without food among the mountains, and 't is there that he slept every night upon the road of Midluacra '' (§ 47). Emer persuaded Conchobar to send " poets and people of wisdom and druids of the Ulstermen " to heal Cuchulinn, but " he sought to murder the people of wisdom. However, they sang their druidical charms over him till they captured his feet and hands and till he recovered a little of his senses. He asked for a drink then. They gave him a drink of forgetful- ness." As he drank the drink, there was no recollection to him of Fand nor of anything that he had done. Manannin shook his cloak between Cuchulinn and Fand so that they should never meet again (§48). This is the oldest known example of that particular type of Celtic fairy mistress story to which, on the hypothesis of a Celtic source, the original tale of Iwain must have belonged. The story, it will be observed, shows no noticeable modification by either Christian or classical infliiences. It appears, therefore, to embody genuine pagan tradition,^ though, as I have hinted, it may not be so old a form of the type as that which represents ihtfie as altogether supreme. The 1 Whether the primitive Celtic character of the story be admitted or not, is, however, of no consequence to the question of Chretien's source. For the pur- poses of this study, it is enough to know that the story in its present form was current among the Celts at the time when LU was written. Twain. 39 tale of course owes its preservation to the fact that it is told of the great hero Cuchulinn, who was regarded as an historical personage.^ In the same way, the original tale of Iwain, from which, according to the hypothesis, Chretien drew, was connected no doubt with the historical Owen, a hero of the Brythonic Celts. The resemblances between the story of Cuchulinn's Other-World Journey and the Ivain may be put somewhat compactly as follows : In the Serglige, it is the account given by a- previous adventurer, Loeg, that stirs Cuchulinn to undertake the Other-World Journey. The same is true in the Ivain, where the tale of Calogrenant supplies the incentive. In both stories the encounter with the Other-World folk is provoked by going to a particular spot and performing a particular act. Cuchulinn sits down against an upright stone ; Iwain pours water on the stone at the Fountain Perilous. The Other- World landscape as described by Loeg reminds one distinctly of the marvel- lous scenery at the Fountain Perilous. In both there is a tree from which a flock of birds sings with harmony, while close at hand is "a noble well." Loeg's description of the beauty of Fand, "which robs the hosts of their wits," reads like an extract from Iwain's reflections at the sight of Laudine. There is a dangerous passage on the way to the Other World, according to the Serglige, from which Loeg is told that he will not return alive unless a woman protects him. Liban therefore takes him by the shoulder at this point. Similarly in the Ivain the hero escapes from the peril at the falling gates by the aid of a woman, Lunete, who is, like Liban, the mes- senger and confidante of the lady.^ In both stories the hero must be 1 The best authorities still so regard him (see Zimmer, Keltiscke Studien, II, 189). 2 Chretien does not say that Lunete is, like Liban, the sister of the lady, but he represents her as occupying such a position of influence that it is natural to think that she may have been, in a more primitive form of the tale, the lady's sister. Cf. Ivain, vv. I589ff. : La dameisele estoit si bien De sa dame que nule rien A dire ne li redotast, A quoi que la chose tomast, Qu'ele estoit sa mestre et sa garde. In Le Bel Inconnu the messenger is a sister of the enchanted lady for whom she seeks help at Arthur's court, and so in other similar stories. 40 A. C. L. Brown. the victor in a combat before he secures the lady's hand. Cuchulinn slays Eochaid luil and Senacfa Siabortha. Iwain slays Esclados the Red. In both, the hero marries the lady. In both, he leaves her to return to his own land. In both, for a slight offense (in the Serglige, because of his having revealed to his wife the appointed place of meeting; in the Ivain for having overstayed his time), he loses her. In both, the result is the madness of the hero, who runs wild in the forests or on the mountains.-' In both cases he is cured by a marvellous remedy : Iwain by an ointment of "Morgue la sage," Cuchulinn by a druidical " drink of forgetfulness." In carrying this parallel out, Laudine naturally equates with Fand,^ Lunete with Liban, 1 Cuchulinn, it is said, " went without drink and without food." Iwain's hunger in the same situation is thus described in v. 2852 : " Mes li fains I'angoisse et esforce." 2 The meaning of the name Fand is given in the Serglige (" Fand ainm na dere": Windisch, Irische Texte, I, 210) as "tear-drop." Manannan, son of Ocean, is evidently a sea divinity. Rhys is perhaps therefore right in identifying this Liban, daughter of Aed Abrat, with a Liban, daughter of Eocho, who, in the story called the Destruction of Eocho mac Mairedo (in LU, 39, a 22 ff., edited and translated by Crowe, Proceedings of R. H. and A. A. of Ireland, 1870, pp. 94-112; the same tale, from a late MS., is in O'Grady, Silv. Gad., II, 267 ff.), is a woman in charge of a magic well, which, neglected by her, overwhelmed her and changed her into a mermaid, half salmon, half woman (Rhys, Hib. Led., p. 463, mistakenly says into " an otter "), while the water formed Loch Neagh. After she had ranged the sea for three hundred years, Beon heard her singing beneath his boat. She told him that she had come on purpose to make an appointment to meet him a year hence. On that day she was caught. Comgall baptized her Muirghein (sea-birth). The Land beyond the Waves, where the fairy folk are represented as dwelling (cf. Labraid's Isle in the Serglige), was no doubt confused with the Land beneath the Waves, just as Zimmer has shown that the Fairies of the Sid and the Fairies of the Land beyond the Waves are never kept separate {Zt. f. deutsches Alt., XXXIII, 276). It is not, therefore, surprising to find the people of the Other World provided with names appropriate to the waters (cf. Macha, granddaughter of the Sea, in the Noinden). That the Celtic Other World was early confused with the Land beneath the Waves is clear from the tale of Loegaire mac Crimthann in the Book of Leinster. This story has never been translated from the ancient manuscript. A translation from a fifteenth century manuscript may be found in O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, II, 290-291. The following outline is made from the R. I. A. Book of Leinster Facsimile, 275, /3, 22—276, |S, 20 : Twain. 41 and Esclados with Manannan, son of Ocean, for Cuchulinn secures the love of Fand after the departure of Mananndn, just as Iwain does that of Laudine after the death of Esclados. The fee is in both tales already married to a husband, with whom possession of her must be disputed. Crimthann Cas, king of Connaught, held a great assembly by Bird Lake in the plain of Aei. When the host arose early in the morning, they saw approaching through the mist a man in a five-folded purple mantle. A gold-rimmed shield was slung on him, a gold-hilted sword was in his belt, and golden hair streamed behind him. The stranger was welcomed by Loegaire, the king's son, to whom he declared that he was Fiachna mac Retach of the Fairy Folk. His wife has been carried off by a hostile prince. He has fought several unsuc- The Tale of r , l , Loegaire. cessful battles to recover her, and this very day another battle is appointed. It is to solicit help that he is come. " Not to aid this man were a shameful thing," said Loegaire, and together with fifty fighting men he stepped out after the stranger, who, still preceding them, dived into the lochf and they followed him \Gaibidside remib fon loch. Gabaiiseotn dono ina dhiaid. 276, a, 20]. When they reached Mag Mell, they engaged in the battle against Fiachna's enemy GoU. GoU was slain, and Fiachna's wife was rescued. That night Fiachna's daughter was bestowed on Loegaire, and on his fifty lads fifty other women. So to a year's end they abode. One day Loegaire asked leave to go and seek tidings of his land. "If ye would come back," Fiachna enjoined, "take horses with you and by no means dismount from them." So when he and his companions had reached their own land of Connaught, their friends rushed forth to meet them, but were warned off by Loegaire, who said, " Touch us not ; 't is to bid you farewell that we are here." " Leave me not ! " implored his father Crimthann. But Loegaire sang : " One night of the nights of the Sid I would not give for thy kingdom." So he turned from them and entered the Sid, where with Fiachna he exercised kingly rule and the daughter of Fiachna beside him. A striking parallel to this prohibition of dismounting is to be found in what we must regard as essentially the Welsh tale of Herla (Walter Map, De Nugis, It 11), "a king of the very ancient Britons," who visited the Under World and on returning was given a dog and warned not to allow any of his train to dismount till the dog had done so. Herla, on coming out into daylight, found that he had been absent more than two hundred years, though it seemed but three days. One of his train dismounted, disregarding the injunction respecting the dog, and forth- with fell in a heap of dust. As the dog has not yet dismounted, Herla and his train are compelled to wander over the world. On the punishment for dismount- ing, cf. the fate of Nechtan, Voyage of Bran, § 65, and that of Guingamor (see Schofield, in Studies and Notes, V, 221 ff.). Other parallels might easily be collected. 42 A. C. L. Brown. The diligent reader of Arthurian material must feel a certain probability in this parallel between Esclados le Ros and Manannan, the tricky magician and shape-shifter of the Celts.' The mysterious 1 Rhys, Hib. Led., pp. 370-371, suggests a connection between Manannan and the Irish stem mon- ("a trick"). The shape-shifting character of Manannan is well established. In a quotation from the Tain Bo (LU) in O'Curry's Manners and Customs, II, 310, it is said: "Cuchulinn threw his mantle of invisibility over him, manufactured from the precious fleeces of the land of the immortals, which had been brought him by Manannan mac Lir.'' In the Book of Leinster, 152, ^, 16, we read that one of Manannan's messengers, Fer-Fi, had the power of assuming at pleasure a woman's shape. In some fragmentary Annals in Egerton lySz, a fifteenth century MS. (translated by O'Grady, Silva Gad., II, 425), it is said: " The notable Mongan was son to that same Fiachna ; for albeit certain dealers in antiquarian fables do propound him to have been son to Manannan, and wont to enter at his pleasure into diverse shapes, yet this we may not credit," where the connection felt between Manannan and shape-shifting is clear. In the Legend of Eithne, in the Book of Fermoy, a fifteenth century MS. (summarized by Todd, R. I. A., Irish MS. Series, I, i, 46), we are told that Manannan was the great astrologer and magician of the Tuatha De Danaan. He settled them in the most beautiful valleys, drawing round them an invisible wall, impenetrable to the eyes of other men, and impassable. Manannan also supplied them with the ale of Goibhnenn the Smith, which preserved them from old age and death, and gave them for food his own swine, which, although killed and eaten one day, were alive again and fit for eating the next, and so would continue for ever. In the Sons of Usnech, edited and translated in Irische Texte, II, ii, 109-184, Naisi exclaims (p. 171) : " Behold the sword of Manannan mac Lir. It leaves no relic of stroke or blow behind." In the Fate of the Children of Tuirenn (translated by Joyce, Old Celtic Romances, pp. 36 ff., from a fifteenth century MS.) Luge is described as possessing a full set of Manannan's belongings : " He rode Manannan's steed Enbarr of the flowing mane. No one was ever killed on this steed, for she travelled vrith equal ease on land and on sea. He wore Manannan's coat of mail, through which no one could be wounded. He had on Manannan's breast plate, that no weapon could pierce, and Manannan's helmet Cannbarr, that glittered with dazzling bright- ness (p. 49). Manannan's sword. The Answerer, hung at his side ; no one ever recovered from its wound. Those who were opposed to it in battle had no more strength in looking at it than a woman in violent sickness." (There is a remark- able parallel in this sword to Caliburnus, Geoffrey, ix, 4.) Manannan is connected with the Isle of Man, which was perhaps confused by the early Celts with the Land beyond the Waves. There is in Cormac's Glossary and in the Yellow Book of Lecan (Skene, Four Books, I, 79; Rhys, Hib. Lect., p. 664) a strictly euhemer- ized account of him, which yet lays stress on his shrewdness : " Manannan mac Lir, a celebrated merchant between Erin, Alban and the Isle of Man. A druid Iwain. 43 red knight ^ who encountered Iwain at the fountain has absolutely no character of his own. One cannot but fancy that he was, in an earlier form of the story, some one in disguise. It is convenient for the purpose of illustration to arrange the inci- dents of the Serglige and those of the Ivain in parallel columns, as on the following page. From this table it will be seen that of the seventeen incidents which make up the main portion of the Ivain,^ ten may be traced (i.e. magician) was he also, and he was the best navigator, and used to know through his science the calms and storms." Modem Celtic folk-tales agree in representing Manannan as a shape-shifter (cf. Larminie, West Irish Folk-Tales, p. 64, and especially Gloss Gavlen, Larminie, pp. 1-9). It is plain, from a poem in the Black Book of Caermarthen (written before 1189) that this character of Manannan was shared by the ancient Welsh Manawyddan ab Llyr. See Skene, Four Books, I, 262 (text, II, 51) : Manawydan the son of Llyr, Deep was his counsel. Did not Manawyd bring Perforated shields from Try wruid ? In the Book of Taliesin (fourteenth century MS.), Skene, I, 276 (text II, 153), he is connected with the Other World : Complete is my chair in Caer Sidi . . . It is known to Manawyd and Pryderi. In the Mabinogi of Manawyddan ab Llyr (Loth, Les Mabinogion, I, 97 ff.) he is represented as outwitting Llwyd ab Kilcoet, the greatest enchanter of Britain. Perhaps the numerous different trades that Manawyddan successively takes up in this tale are a relic of his habit of assuming different shapes. 1 See pp. 1 14 ff., below. 2 The Serglige furnishes no parallel to the latter portion of the Ivain. Celtic fairy mistress tales usually end, as the Ivain appears to do, with a reconciliation between the hero and the fee, and his permanent residence with her in the Other World. Whether the original tale of Fand ended in this way or not, such a denouement could not be retained when the story was worked up into its present form as a definite part of the Cuchulinn saga, for the later adventures and the death of Cuchulinn are there related. We may suppose, therefore, that the original ending of the Serglige has suffered modification. The first part of the Serglige is not paralleled in the Ivain. It is to be noted, however, in regard to the coming of Liban to invite Cuchulinn to the Other World (incident 4 of the table), that Lunete is made to say in the Ivain (vv. 1004 ff.) that she had been sent once as 44 A. C. L. Brown a z i-i D U z o u H 2 lj o .£■->.<: to d ^ *^ ^ ■a -i-oK •K^'js'? 's^ • •So a o Twain. 4 5 more or less distinctly in the older tale. The arrangement of the episodes, too, is essentially the same, for incidents 6 and 7 of the Serglige have been inserted in the table from Loeg's narrative. It would be fair to transpose them to the later journey of Cuchulinn, of which of course they must have been episodes also. The table is given at this point as an aid to the study of the Other- World Journey type of story. It is not maintained that by itself it proves much. Doubtless one or two of the parallels noted, as per- haps that between the perilous passage encountered by Loeg and the falling gates in the Ivain, may for the present seem not to be significant. But the matter does not end here. We are able, and this will be our next task, to trace these motives through the mass of Celtic Other-World story and thus determine their typical develop- ment. In this way it will be possible to ascertain what the signifi- cance of the parallels here indicated really is. The table serves to make it plain that parallels of some sort to most of the incidents of the main portion of the Ivain can be pointed out in this one ancient story, which, it must be remembered, is, so to speak, two removes from Chretien. In the first place, it is a Goidelic and not a Brythonic tale, and, in the second place, Chre'tien either did not understand the Other- World character of what, according to the hypothesis, we must suppose to have been the essentially Brythonic material he was using, or else he deliberately rationalized it so far as he was able. For the present, it is plain that enough striking resemblances have been observed to make the theory that the Ivain is at bottom an Other-World tale parallel to the Serglige, at least very plausible. If we take but four significant parallels, — (i) the fact that both Cuchulinn and Iwain are persuaded to their journey by the tale of a previous adventurer ; (2) Loeg's description of the Other- World landscape, which is very like that at the Fountain Perilous ; (3) the parallel between Liban, the messenger and co?tfidante of Fand, and Lunete ; (4) the madness of the hero consequent upon the loss of the mistress in both stories, — surely we have here at least a better framework. a messenger by her lady to Arthur's court. Perhaps, therefore, an older form of the tale of Iwain had a parallel here. Lunete may have been sent to Arthur's court to invite one of his knights to the marvellous land where her lady dwelt. 46 A. C. L. Brown. out of which we may suppose that Chretien built up his romance, than the Matron of Ephesus could ever furnish. In the Matron of Ephesus one can find at most but two motives parallel to the Ivain, — the remarriage of a newly bereaved widow, and the presence of a lady's maid or confidante who favors the suitor. Whatever discretion, therefore, at this point the reader may exercise about drawing too definite conclusions as to the certainty of a Celtic origin for the Ivain, the Matron of Ephesus hypothesis must, it would seem, from now on, be regarded as permanently disposed of. CHAPTER IV {Continued). ANCIENT CELTIC STORIES OF THE JOURNEY TO THE OTHER WORLD. II. The Combat Motive. From the Serglige, as well as from the Tale of Loegaire (where as a reward for his aid the hero receives the daughter of the fairy king), it is clear that participation in a successful combat in the Other World was very early ^ represented as a necessary condition for win- ning the hand of a fte. In these two stories, however, the parallel to the Ivain is not very close, because it is a general battle, not a single combat like that with Esclados, which is described. It is interesting, therefore, to compare at this point an ancient Welsh tale in which a distinct account of a single combat in the Other World appears : PWYLL AND ARAWN.2 Arawn, a king of the Other World {Annwn), appeared to Pwyll, prince of Dyfed in Wales, and proposed an exchange of kingdoms, his object 1 Though, as has been hinted, perhaps not in the earliest tales. 2 Summarized from Pwyll Prince of Dyvet, one of the four genuine Mabinogion. See Loth, Les Mabinogion, I, 27-38, and, for the Welsh text, Rhys and Evans, Red Book, I, 1-8. I wain. 47 being to have the other take his place in a single combat which had been appointed for a certain day one year from that time."^ The antagonist was Hafgan, an Other-World king with whom Arawn was continually at war. Arawn declared to Pwyll : " I will set thee in my place in Annwn and give thee the most beautiful woman thou hast ever seen to sleep with thee every night. And I will put my shape and semblance on thee, so that not a page of the chamber that has always followed me shall know that it is not I. I will take thy kingdom and will cause that no one in all thy dominions shall know that I am not thou." Pwyll agreed to this, and went to Annwn in Arawn's shape, where he took his place beside a queen of wondrous beauty .2 When the day appointed for the combat was at hand, the fairy hosts assembled. An officer made this announcement : " The battle is between two kings, and between them only. Each claims the other's land and territory. Ye are to remain quiet and allow the two to decide the fight" Pwyll wounded Hafgan mortally. Afterwards he re-exchanged^ with Arawn, who "gave to Pwyll his own proper semblance while he him- self took his own." When Pwyll returned to Dyfed he found that no one had been aware of his absence, and that his kingdom had been better governed than usual that year. In this tale Arawn takes the place of Manannan as the husband of the fie. It will be observed that, like the latter, he is a shape- shifter. He has power to exchange his appearance with that of Pwyll. As in the Serglige, a contest between the husband and the mortal hero for the possession of the/^^ seems to be hinted at. Cuchulinn enjoyed the company of Fand, after she had been forsaken by Manannan, and lost her when her husband returned. So Pwyll was entertained in Annwn during the absence of Arawn. There is in the same mabinogi another tale in which the element of contest for the possession of the fee comes out clearly : 1 Similarly in the Serglige (§ 32) and in the Tale of Loegaire, the time of the Other-World combat was iSx&2.&^ fixed before the message came to the mortal hero urging him to participate. This is a good example of the parallelism of Welsh and Irish story. 2 The Welsh tale, however, with unprimitive scrupulosity, makes him respect the chastity of Arawn's queen. ' The second meeting of Pwyll and Arawn occurs at the same particular spot as the first, just as Cuchulinn returned to the same upright stone {Serglige, § 13). Another parallel between Welsh and Irish story. 48 A. C. L. Brown. PWYLL AND GWAWL.l Pwyll visited the summit of a mound concerning which the tradition was that whoever sat there would see a prodigy. Pwyll had no sooner seated himself than he saw a lady riding past on a white horse. She was clad in a garment of shining gold. As no one could tell who she was, he despatched one of his followers to pursue her. After a chase on foot, the man returned, saying that he could not overtake her. Pwyll gave him the swiftest horse he had, but the man was even then unsuccessful. " There was some magic about the lady that kept her always the same distance ahead, though she appeared to be, riding slowly." The next day Pwyll returned to the mound. Again he saw the lady. Again he despatched a mounted servant, and again pursuit was unsuccessful. The third day Pwyll himself, mounted on a swift steed, pursued the lady. Finding himself unable to gain on her, he exclaimed : " For the sake of the man whom you love, wait for me ! " At his cry she stopped and waited for him to come up. Pwyll never saw a lady so beautiful. She told him she came solely for love of him. She is Rhiannon, who is to be married to Gwawl, a suitor whom she detests. She will have no one unless it be Pwyll. At her suggestion, Pwyll promised to come at the end of a year to rescue her for himself. At the appointed day Pwyll went, and was received by Rhiannon at a feast. But a petitioner came in and sought a boon. Pwyll rashly promised him whatever he should ask. He asked for Rhiannon. It was Gwawl, the hated suitor, who had disguised himself as a petitioner in order to trick Pwyll.^ Pwyll's princely honor kept him from breaking his word once given, and he handed Rhiannon over to Gwawl. However, she persuaded Gwawl to depart for a year's time, and before sending Pwyll away she gave him a magic bag, and instructed him how to entrap his hated rival. At the end of a year the two suitors returned to Rhiannon, and Pwylt entrapped Gwawl in the bag. His enemy once in the bag, Pwyll wound his horn. His warriors, who were in ambush without, entered and seized all who attempted to resist. Each warrior as he passed dealt a blow at the bag. At length, to escape the punishment of the bag, Gwawl consented to release Pwyll from his rash promise. Thus Pwyll remained in possession, of Rhiannon. 1 Summarized from Loth, Les Mabinogion, I, 38-52. For the Welsh text see Rh^s and Evans, Red Book, I, 8 ff. 2 No one recognizes Gwawl. It is probable, therefore, that he, like Manannati and Arawn, had the power of shape-shifting. I wain. 49 Several of the motives traced in the previous tales recur distinctly in this. There is ever a particular spot to which one must resort in order to meet the fairy folk. Cuchulinn returned to the upright stone. Pwyll, in the previous tale, made his way to the spot where he first met Arawn. In the present narrative, it is from the top of a particular mound that Pwyll on three successive days descries the approach of the fke. So in the Ivain, whoever makes his way to the Fountain Perilous and pours water on the rock, will encounter the hostile knight. One of the notes of the Other- World Journey is that the coming of the hero is always expected. He may fancy that he has stumbled upon the fee by chance, but as a matter of fact she has chosen him long before and lured him to her. Not always, as in the Echtra Condla, and as here, does she come in person to escort him. But when her messenger appears, as Liban did to Cuchulinn, it is none the less surely at her suggestion.^ Although in this tale of Pwyll a set combat with the unearthly suitor for possession of the fie is lacking, yet in the episode of the bag a situation of the sort is closely approximated. Certainly, from a story of this type the idea of representing the fie as guarded by a suitor or a husband, who must be overthrown before she can be approached, might naturally be developed. In the first place, as we have seen, it is likely that the fie was supreme. She dwelt in a Land of Women, where, though there may have been a king, he was a mere name and did not interfere with the perfect liberty of the fie. But the tendency to make the Other World a counterpart of this earth was strong. In the Serglige, the Loegaire, and their Welsh analogues, the notion of fighting is present, and Xh^fie, except in the Tale of Loegaire, has a husband or a suitor like any mortal woman. From this the step to regarding her as more or less in the power of a warrior, who must be overthrown before she can be reached, is a natural one. Originally this opposing warrior was probably only a creature of the/^^, sent out by her to test the hero's valor. He may have appeared for this purpose in various gigantic shapes. If so, 1 For this reason it is probable that the previous visit of Lunete to Arthur's court, referred to in Ivain, vv. 1004 ff., was at bottom for the purpose of persuad- ing Iwain to his marvellous journey. so A. C. L. Brown. the tendency for confusion to arise between this situation, and the common incident of a giant who has a charming wife, or a pretty daughter, who gladly yields herself as prize to the hero who can slay the tyrant, would be strong. Even, therefore, if our analogues stopped here, we might safely explain the situation of Laudine with respect to Esclados, as a natural development of the combat-episode found in the Serglige and in the Welsh parallels, most probably helped by confusion with the well-known motive of the giant ^ and the lady. There is evidence that Esclados may have been repre- sented as a giant in an earlier form of the tale. Calogrenant's description of him ("[II] fu sanz dote Plus granz de moi la teste tote," v. 521. 2) and of his lance (" n'estoit mie legiere, Einz iert plus grosse au mien cuidier Que nule lance a chevalier ; Qu' einz nule si grosse ne vi," vv. 534-537) is borne out by the description of the corresponding warrior in the analogous episode of " La Joie de la Cort " in the Erec : " Qui mout estoit granz a mervoilles " and Estoit un pid plus granz A tesmoing de totes les janz, Que chevaliers que I'an seiist (vv. S900-5905). 1 Whoever doubts that the popular tale of a giant -with a beautiful captive was current among the ancient Celts should read a passage from the Tockmarc Emere (LU, 126, a 11-41), translated and discussed by Zimmer in Haupt's Zt., XXXII, 240-241. The whole saga has since been published by K. Meyer in Zt. f. Celt. Phil., Ill, 229 (from MS. Harl. 5280). Cuchulinn, on his way to Ireland, stops at an island. He finds the daughter of the king about to be given to two giants (fomoir) unless a champion can be found. Cuchulinn slays the giants. Many go to the palace of the king and pretend to have done the deed, but the girl recognizes Cuchulinn. The king thereupon offers his daughter to Cuchulinn, who refuses her and departs. The incident of others who claim credit for the rescue, while the hero alone is recognized by the girl, marks this as essentially a popular tale. Rhys has pointed out I^Hib. Led., pp. 342 ff.) that in one of Cuchulinn's expeditions to the Other World (preserved only in a fourteenth- century manuscript: see Irische Texte, II, i, 173-209) a giant has to be fought. Cuchulinn goes in a mysterious boat belonging to the Prince of Alban to a beau- tiful island surrounded by a wall of silver and a palisade of bronze, where he is entertained. He is directed to an adjoining island, where he encounters the giant Coirpre. After a long battle, the giant is overcome. He thereupon becomes very hospitable, brings Cuchulinn to his house, and bestows on him his daughter. I wain. 5 1 By good fortune, moreover, there is another ancient fairy-mistress story told of Cuchulinn, in which an exact parallel to the incident of Laudine's speedy marriage to the slayer of her husband appears. It is therefore certain that a development similar to that just assumed had actually taken place among the Celts before the time of Chretien. The story occurs in a Dinnshenchas which gives only the summary of an ancient tale, rationalized so as to read like history. It runs in brief as follows ■' : THE TALE OF CUROI. Curoi mac Dairi's wife Bldthnat, daughter of Menn, king of Falga, loved Cuchulinn and urged him to come and take her from Curoi. Cuchulinn did so. At an appointed signal, he stormed the fort, slew its owner, and mar- ried Bldthnat. Together with her he secured the famous cows and cauldron belonging to Curoi. Falga is glossed in the manuscript " the Hebrides of to-day," '^ but there can be no doubt that it was a synonym for the Other World.' It is sometimes identified with the Isle of Man,* which, as we noted when treating of Manannan, was confused by the ancient Celts with the Land beyond the Waves. Menn (or Mider), king of the Isle of Man (or Fairyland), is well known.^ It is clear, then, that Blathnat was a fSe. Curoi, her husband, is an exactly parallel figure to Manannan mac Lir.° He is a magician and shape-shifter, and also Lord of 1 Facsimile of the Book of Leinster, 169, /3, 42 ff. Printed by O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, II, 482 (translation at p. 530). 2 "Inse Gall indiu" (LL, 169, /3, 46). 3 It is so used in the Bodley Dinnshenchas (see Nutt, Voyage of Bran, I, 213, and Folk Lore, III, 471). * Henderson, Fled Bricrend, p. 142 ; Rhys, Hib. Led., p. 476. 5 He so appears in the Tochmarc Etdine in the Lebor na h-Uidre, edited by Windisch, Irische Texte, I, 127 ff. ; cf. I, 204, note. 6 O'Grady, Hist, of Ireland, p. 220, note (cited by Henderson, Fled Bricrend, p. 195), views Curoi "as the great Southern marine genius, corresponding to Manannan amongst the Northern Irish." Henderson (p. 197) calls him " a great magician, really an Other-World power, at any rate a water-demon like Grendel." 52 A. C. L. Brown. the Sea. His combat with Cuchulinn is referred to in an ancient Welsh poem, Marwnat Corroi map Dayry^ which shows that his story was famous among the Brythonic as well as the Goidelic Celts. ^ No. xlii in the Book of Taliessiji, a manuscript considered by Skene (Four Books, I, 3) to belong to tlie beginning of the fourteenth century. The text is printed by Skene, II, 198, with a translation, I, 254-255. I quote a more recent translation by Rh^s in Proc. of Roy. Soc. of Ant. of Ireland, XXI, 642 fE. (1891). A LAMENT FOR CORROI. Thy broad fountain replenishes the world ; It comes, it goes, it hurries to Dover. The death-wail of Corroi has startled me ; Cold the deed of him of rugged passions, Whose crime was one which few have heard of. Daire's son held a helm on the Southern Sea, Sung was his praise before his burial. Thy broad fountain replenishes Nonneu : It comes, it goes, it hurries to Dover ; But mine is the death-wail of Corroi ; Cold the deed of him of rugged passions, Whose crime was one that few have heard of. Thy broad fountain replenishes thy tide. Thine arrow speeds for the . . . strand of Dover, Subjugator, vast is thy battle-front. And after Man it is to the towns They go . . . of Gwinionydd. Whilst victorious the space of . . . morning News I am told of men on the ground, The adventures of Corroi and Cuchulainn, Of many a turmoil on their frontier, Whilst the head of a gentle host was . . . The noble fort that falls not nor quakes. Blessed is the soul that meant it. Instead of " Daire's son held a helm," etc., Skene translates, " Mac Daire, lord of the southern sea." In any case, it is plain that the poem calls the ocean Curoi's " broad fountain," which is enough to mark him as a kind of sea-divinity. It is fair to add that O'Curry, Manners and Customs, III, 81, quotes a story that repre- sents Cuchulinn as having in the first place carried off Blathnat from her father Mider ; Curoi stole her from him, and therefore Cuchulinn, in slaying the latter, was only regaining his rights. Even if this be a part of the old tale, it in no way modifies any conclusions reached above. Curoi is as surely an Other-World king as Mider. I wain. 5 3 Curoi appears in the Irish Fled Bricrend'^ as a magician dwelling in a revolving castle beside a loch. The three champions of Ulster 1 Edited by Henderson, froni the Lebor na h-Uidre and later manuscripts. The story, like most of the texts in LU, shows evidence of having been compiled from various older sources. Henderson says (p. xliv) : " One is assuredly right in holding that a tale like the Emain-Curoi story was current in Erin during the last quarter of the ninth century. For anything to the contrary I see no reason why, in the main essentials, it should not orally go back to the earliest period of Irish Saga." The story is, that, — at the feast given by Bricriu, — Loigaire, Conall, and Cuchulinn fell to quarrelling as to which should have the Hero's Portion. They were directed to go to Curoi mac Dairi: " ' He will adjudge ye truly. To ask him demandeth courage.' " Loigaire set out first. When he approached the place, " a dim, dark, heavy mist overtook him, confusing him in such wise that it was impossible for him to fare farther on the way." A huge giant now appeared and overthrew him, robbing him of his horses, his chariot, and his arms. "Not long thereafter Conall the Victorious took the same way and arrived at the plain where the druidical mist overtook Loigaire." The like hideous, black, dark cloud overtook him, and he fared in the same way at the hands of the giant. Cuchulinn then set out, and overthrew the giant, bringing back with him his own horses and arms, as well as those of his fellows. [It is not said that the giant is Curoi, but as they set out to go to Curoi it is natural to suppose that they found him.] His two rivals still refused to yield Cuchulinn the championship. After another quarrel, the three heroes are told to go to the ford of Yellow, son of Fair. " He will adjudge ye." Yellow felt that the task was too difficult. " But I know," he added, " one who will venture it, viz.. Terror, son of Great Fear . . . , at yonder loch." Off then in quest of him they went. Terror was " a big powerful fellow. . . . He used to shift his form into what shape he pleased, was wont to do tricks of magic and such like arts. He in sooth was the wizard from whom Muni, the Wizard's pass, is named. [This reminds one of Rhys's connection of Manannan with mon-\ see p. 42, note.] He used to be called wizard from the extent to which he changed his divers shapes." Terror proposed the beheading game. He allowed Loigaire to cut off his head, picked the head up and went with it into his loch. On the morrow the giant returned, but Loigaire shirked his part of the bargain. The same was true of Conall, but Cuchulinn stood the test. Terror spared him and awarded him the supremacy, because he did not shrink. As soon, however, as the heroes had returned to the palace, " Loigaire and Conall disputed the verdict given in favor of Cuchulinn. . . . The Ultonians advised them to go for judgment unto Curoi. To that too they agreed." They set off for Fort Curoi, where they were entertained by Blathnat, Mind's daughter. 54 ^- C- L. Brown. betook themselves to his mysterious fort to secure his decision as to which was the greatest warrior. He knew beforehand of their com- ing (as is always the case in the Other- World journey) and arranged wife of Curoi. " That night on their arrival Curoi was not at home. But know- ing they would come, he counselled his wife regarding the heroes." When bedtime came, she told them that each was to take his night, watching the fort until Curoi should return. "In what airt soever of the globe Curoi should happen to be, every night o'er the fort he chaunted a spell, till the fort revolved as swiftly as a mill-stone. The entrance was never to be found after sunset." Loigaire was sentry the first night. He was attacked by a monstrous giant from the sea, who tossed him out over the wall of the fort into the mire of the ditch. The second night Conall fared in the same way. The third night Cuchulinn kept watch. First he was attacked by twenty-seven warriors, whom he slew one after another. Then the monster of the loch came towards the fort " opening its mouth so that one of the palaces could go into its gullet." Cuchulinn dispatched it. "Then a giant approached westwards from the sea." Cuchulinn overcame him, and only spared his life on condition that he grant him the sovereignty of Erin's heroes. " It shall be thine," quoth the giant, who thereupon vanished, he knew not whither. Cuchulinn then by a tremendous effort sprang over the wall of the fort, as he supposed his fellows to have done. When he had entered the house " Blathnat made speech : ' Truly, not the sigh of one dishonored but a victor's sigh of triumph,' " for she knew full well the strug- gle Cuchulinn had had that night. It was not long when they beheld Curoi com- ing towards them. He complimented Cuchulinn, and assigned to him the sovereignty. The heroes thereupon returned to Emain. But Cuchulinn's superiority was again disputed ; whereupon, as the Ultonians were assembled, an ugly black giant entered the hall. He was clad in an old hide and had ravenous yellow eyes protruding from his head, each the size of an ox-vat. In his left hand he carried a club, a burden for twenty yoke of oxen, and in his right hand an axe. He proposed the beheading game, in which Loigaire and Conall were found wanting. [Here the ancient manuscript (LU) breaks off. The remainder of the tale is supplied from a fifteenth-century manuscript, which agrees so perfectly with what precedes that it must be regarded as authentic] Cuchulinn does not flinch when his turn comes to put his head on the block. The giant, however, merely taps him with the blunt side of the axe and exclaims ; " O Cuchulinn, arise ! The sovereignty of the heroes of Erin is thine henceforth." " Then the giant vanished. It was Curoi mac Dairi who had come in that guise to fulfill the promise he had given to Cuchulinn." The present form of this story, with its many repetitions, has probably, as Henderson suggests, resulted from the addition of several variants of what was at Iwain. 55 for them a warm reception. The failure of Loigaire and of Conall is contrasted with the success of Cuchulinn after a tremendous com- bat in which he won a compliment from Curoi's wife Blathnat ^ (very much as in the Ivaiji the failure of Calogrenant is set off against the bottom the same tale. Certainly, Terror, son of Great Fear, seems to be a mere variant of Curoi. He does the same things, and like Curoi is a water demon. He dives into the loch so that, like Fiachna in the Tale of Loegaire, his home must be beneath the waves. Furthermore, "Terror" can hardly be his real name. He is probably Curoi in disguise. Whether this be so or not, I do not see how there can be any reasonable doubt that the giant whom Cuchulinn overcomes at Curoi's fort and compels to promise him the sovereignty, is Curoi in one of his magic shapes. Curoi has purposely absented himself just before the arrival of the heroes, and he returns directly after the sudden vanishing of the giant. What more natural than that he should himself test the heroes, just as we are expressly told that he did in the beheading game? Furthermore, if the giant is not Curoi, how can he promise the sovereignty, inasmuch as Cuchulinn is sworn to abide by the decision of Curoi.' If this explanation be correct, the kind words of praise bestowed by Blathnat on Cuchulinn when he proves himself victor over her husband are significant. The Fled Bricrend may preserve another form of the tale of which the LL Dinnshenchas gives ii euhemerized account. There is a combat in both, though only the Dinnshenchas represents Curoi as slain. But the killing of the husband would naturally be omitted in the Fled Bricrend, where it is needful to have Curoi come to the court at Emain in person in order to assign permanently the sovereignty to Cuchulinn. It is interesting to compare a modern Irish tale in which Cuchulinn by over- coming a giant and entering a revolving castle wins a fairy mistress (see Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland, pp. 304-326). Cuciilin, as his name is here spelled, is represented as one of the champions of Finn mac Cool. He is per- suaded to the adventure by the fairy herself, whose name is Gil an Og (Water of Life). She comes to the court of Finn with a magic shirt that would fit no one but Cuculin. She also presents him vpith a marvelkius speckled boat, in which to journey to the scene of the adventure. Cuculin is obliged to overcome a gruagach, who lives in an island surrounded by a chain and a ring of fire seven miles wide. He has also to slay a creature called " Thin-in-Iron " and to enter a turn- ing castle that has but one door, before he finally vrins the hand of Gil an Og. " Thin-in-Iron " may plausibly be regarded as a magician in disguise, and therefore as a parallel figure to Curoi. ^ Zimmer rightly interprets this as meaning that Cuchulinn alone could force his way to the under world : " Hierin liegt wol, dass Cuchulinn urspriinglich allein in die unterwelt vordrang " (Zt.f deutsches Alt., XXXII, 331). 56 A. C. L. Brown. success of the hero). One of Curoi's disguises in this story is the form of a black giant whom not even beheading can kill. Keeping clear of theory, it is plain from a comparison of this ancient account with that in the Dinnshenchas in LL, that Cuchulinn was credited with an Other- World Journey, in which he slew a giant who dwelt in a revolving castle, and married the giant's fairy wife. No closer parallel to the incidents of Laudine's marriage to Iwain could be found. The situation in the Matron of Ephesus, which has been put forward as a close parallel to the remarriage of Laudine, falls far short of this, for in it the lady does not marry the slayer of her husband, but only a soldier appointed to guard the corpses of some criminals. The Matron of Ephesus theory, whose only claim to attention was its supposed ability to explain this situation, is thus shown to break down utterly, even at the central point of its supposed strength. CHAPTER IV (Continued). ANCIENT CELTIC STORIES OF THE JOURNEY TO THE OTHER WORLD. III. The Imrama. The germ of the imram is found in the oldest Celtic fairy tales. Connla was carried off in a boat of glass. In the Serglige the hero was ferried over to Labraid's isle in a ship of bronze. The term imram., however, is generally reserved for a particular class of Other- World journeys, in which stress is laid on the incidents of a voyage by sea and on the number of islands visited. In the Imram Mailduin, the best example of the type, more than thirty islands are described. The imrama have been built up, apparently by scribes, out of the material of older Other- World journeys like the Echtra Condla} The » 1 Zimmer {Zt.f. deutsches Alt., XXXIII, 129-220, 257-338) has shown that the Navigatio Brendani, and especially the earlier imrama (such as the Mailduin), are based essentially on ancient Celtic tradition and story concerning the Other World. From the Latin Navigatio there arose, as he points out, a vast literature in all European languages. Twain. c 7 motive that seems to have determined the special form was a fond- ness for variety of adventure.' The interest is centred, not, as in the tales just discussed, on the struggle necessary to win the hand of thtfee, but on the strange incidents and dangers of the journey. The imrama are essentially books of adventure. Another motive that strongly affected the later imrama, and even the Voyage of Mailduin, though it scarcely touched the Voyage of Bran, was a desire to identify the Other World with Christian con- ceptions and thus to take advantage of the interest that Christians have always manifested in visions of any sort relating to Paradise. A word of explanation may be allowed here. It was a Christian belief that the souls of certain just men had gone, not directly to heaven, but to an intermediate place of happiness, there to abide till the Day of Judgment. This region was commonly identified with the Garden of Eden and thought of as containing the Tree of Life and other familiar features of the landscape of Paradise. The Celts, noticing a similarity between this place and their Happy Other World, strove in their imrama to show that those heroes who found their way to the Other World caught also glimpses of the Earthly Paradise.' This is probably the explanation of the absence of the combat motive from all the imrama, for evidently, if fighting were pictured in the Other World, all chance of identifying it with the Christian Paradise would be at an end. The process of identification of the Other World with the Earthly Paradise was a gradual one. The Imram Brain shows, as has been said, hardly a trace of it, and is indeed scarcely an i7nram at all. But two different islands are visited, and the incidents of the sea voyage are not much dwelt on. It might almost as well be classed with the Other-World journeys as with the imravia. This is an important fact, as showing how idle it would be to hold that the ^ Zimftier (I.e., p. 331) thinks the imrama were patterned in the first place after Virgil's jEneid. They arose, he says, in the seventh and eighth centuries in imitation of jEneas's voyage. 2 Zimmer holds (I.e., p. 286) that the definite descriptions of the Earthly Para- dise found in medisval literature after the twelfth century are based largely on Celtic conceptions of the Other World. 58 A. C. L. Brown. imrama could be essentially based on anything else than Celtic Other- World story. The Imram Brain is, indeed, a connecting link between the Other-World Journey and the imram. In the Mailduin the identification with the Earthly Paradise appears at several points. It is rather clumsily done, however, so that it is plain that the great body of the tale must go back to Celtic story. It is perfectly safe, therefore, to use the incidents in it, as well as those in the Bran, to throw light on the development which various themes found in the Serglige may have taken in Celtic literature before the time of Chretien. Besides the importance which the Voyage of Bran has as an illus- tration of the development of a journey into an imram, it is valuable also for the good description of the Other-World landscape that it contains. The story is very briefly this : IMRAM BRAIN MAIC FEBAIL.^ A woman, a messenger from an unknown land, mysteriously appeared in Bran's house one day when the doors were closed and the house was full of chiefs and princes. She sang many verses describing her pleasant country (§ i) : There is a distant isle Around which sea-horses glisten. . . . Lovely land throughout the world's age, On which the many blossoms drop (§4). . . . An ancient tree there is with blossoms, On which birds call to the Hours.^ 'T is in harmony, it is their wont To call together every Hour (§ 7). After inviting Bran to her land, the woman disappeared as suddenly as she had come (§ 31). 1 Summarized from Kuno Meyer's translation, The Voyage of Bran, I, 1-35. Meyer has also edited the text (I.e., I, 1-35) from LU and later MSS. From considerations of language Meyer thinks (I, xvi) that it " was originally written down in the seventh century." To this period it had been previously assigned by Zimmer {Haupfs Zt., XXXIII, 261), though with some caution. A summary of the tale is given by Zimmer (I.e., pp. 257-261). 2 Meyer (p. 6) notes that this must mean " the canonical Hours " and be " an allusion to church music." Iwain. 59 On the next day Bran chose his companions and put to sea. After sailing two days, they met Mananndn mac Lir driving his chariot across the ocean, which was for him a flowery plain (§§ 32-33). He, too, sang verses describing Mag Mell, which seems to He beneath the waves : Rivers pour forth a stream of honey In the land of Manannan, son of Ler (§ 36). . . . Though but one chariot rider is seen, In Mag Mell of many flowers. There are many steeds on its surface. Though thou seest them not (§ 39). . . Along the top of a wood has swum Thy coracle across ridges. There is a wood of beautiful fruit Under the prow of thy little skiff. A wood with blossom and fruit. On which is the vine's veritable fragrance ; A wood without decay, without defect. On which are leaves of golden hue (§§ 42-43). . . . Emne with many hues of hospitality Thou wilt reach before the setting of the sun (§ 60). After Bran parted from Manannan, he came to the Island of Laughter, where he lost one of his men, who landed and fell to laughing like the rest of the men on the island (§ 61). It was not long thereafter when they reached the Land of Women. There each man was provided with a partner in the usual manner. They remained there, supplied with all that they could desire, for what seemed to them a year. Then homesickness seized some of the men, and they persuaded Bran to depart (§§ 62-63). When their ship reached the shore of Ireland, they found that they had been gone for centuries (§ 64). One of the inen leaped from the coracle, but, as soon as he touched the earth of Ireland, he fell into a heap of ashes, as though he had been in the earth for many hundred years. ^ To the 1 This supernatural lapse of time in the Other World appears in many Celtic tales. See for example the Echtra Nera, edited and translated by Stokes, Rev. Celt., X, 214 ff. It is preserved only in a fourteenth-century MS., but, as its title appears in the celebrated list of Irish tales in the Book of Leinster (p. 245, ^, 32 ff.), and as internal evidence is in favor of its having taken shape in very rude times, it is probably as old as the majority of the tales preserved in the oldest MSS. The story is that Nera left his people at a feast and entered a fairy hill {sid). 6o A. C. L. Brown. people that assembled on the shore Bran told all his wanderings from the beginning until that time. And he wrote these quatrains in Ogam, and then bade them farewell. And from that hour his wanderings are not known (§§ 65-66). It will be seen that this tale does not differ essentially from the Echtra Condla. Both seem to draw from the same storehouse of Celtic fancy. The only distinct trace of Christian influence appears in the description of the Other-World landscape, where birds are said to sing " to the [canonical] Hours." In the Imram Mailduin, on the other hand, are found all the marks of the imram type. Older Celtic material has been worked up to form a tale of adventure comparable to those of other peoples : IMRAM CURAIG MAILDUIN.^ Maelduin determined to set out on the sea to search for his father's mur- derers. He was directed by a druid to take seventeen companions only, but at the last moment his three foster-brothers, who had not been included in the seventeen, begged to accompany him. When refused, they threw themselves into the sea and swam after the vessel. Out of pity Maelduin received them into his boat, but he was soon punished for disobeying the druid's injunction, because, though he speedily found the murderers in an The Island of the island, he was not able to slay them. A storm suddenly Murderers. came up and drove Maelduin's boat into =' the great boundless ocean" (§ i). The king of the sid assigned to him a single woman, with whom he dwelt and who conceived a son by him. After what seemed three days, he returned and found his people still around the same caldron, engaged in the same feast. He showed them the summer fruit of the sid in order to convince them of the truth of his tale, and then went back into the sid, " nor will he come out till the Day of Doom." The supernatural lapse of time appears in the Adventures of Teigue, and in Walter Map's tale of Herla. 1 Summarized and quoted from the text and translation of Whitley Stokes, Rev. Celt., IX, 447-495 ; X, 50-95. The MS. for the greater part of the tale is LU. Zimmer {Haupfs Zt., XXXIII, 148) holds that the tale took shape in the eighth or ninth century. The possibility of alterations and additions having been made as late as the beginning of the eleventh century is, however, to be admitted. For a French translation, see d'Arbois, L'Epopie Celtique, I, 449-500 ; for one in German, Zimmer, I.e., pp. 150 ff. Cf. Nutt, Voyage of Bran, I, 163 f£. I wain. 6 1 The Island of Enor- The first island they came to was inhabited by enor- mous Ants, mous ants (§ 2). „, , In the next island was a row of trees, and many great Huge Birds. 1.11 , birds on the trees. They slew and ate the birds (§ 3). When they came to the next island, they saw therein a beast hke a Horselike Monster. ^°'"^^- '^^^ ^^^s of a hound he had, with rough, sharp nails, and great was his joy at seeing them, for he longed to devour them and their boat (§ 4). In the next island they found enormous nuts and the emons rs s. t^.J^(;JJs pf monster horses that had been eating them (§ 5). Then they found an island having a great house, with a door above, and Empty Banquet ^ door into the sea, and against that door there was a valve Hall. of stone. This valve was pierced by an aperture, through which the sea waves were flinging the salmon into the midst of the house. Maelduin and his men entered that house, and therein they beheld a tes- tered bed for the chief of the house alone, and a bed for every three of his household, and food for every three before every bed, and a cup of glass on every vessel. So they dined off that food and liquor (§ 6). At the next island they found a cluster of three apples at the end of a rod. For forty nights each of those apples sufficed Wondrous Fruit. , them (§ 7). Thereafter they found another island, on which was " a huge beast," which raced round about the island swifter than the Racing Beast. ^^^^ (g g^. Then they found a lofty island on which " were many great animals like unto horses. Each of them would take a piece out of ig mg s . another's side, and carry it away with its skin and its flesh, so that out of their sides streams of crimson blood were breaking " (§ g). In the next island were " many trees full fruited with great golden apples." The fruit was devoured in the day time by " red ppes. animals like swine" and in the night by birds. Maelduin collected all the apples that were there. "Alike did the apples forbid hunger and thirst from them " (§ 10). Then they sighted an island " where stood a fort surrounded by a white, Treasure-House of high rampart as if it were built of burnt lime, or as if it the Cat. were all one rock of chalk. Great was its height from the sea : it all but reached the clouds. The fort was wide open. Round the rampart were great snow-white houses. When they entered the largest of these they saw no one there, save a small cat which was in the midst of the house, playing on the four stone pillars that were there." . . . After that 62 A. C. L. Brown. they saw three rows on the wall of the house, consisting of brooches and neck torques and swords made of gold and silver. " A roasted ox moreover and a flitch in the midst of the house and great vessels of good, intoxicating liquor. ' Hath this been left for US?' saith Maelduin to the cat. It looked at him suddenly and began to play again. Then Maelduin recognised that it was for them that the dinner had been left. So they dined and drank and slept." When they were ready to go, Maelduin's third foster-brother took one of the necklaces. But he got no farther than the middle of the enclosure, for the cat followed and sprang " through him like a fiery arrow, and burnt him to ashes," and then went back till itvi^as on its pillar. Mael- duin soothed the cat with his words, and, setting the necklace again in its place, they departed (§ ii). They espied another island divided by a brazen palisade. All objects Black and vs^hite placed on one side of this became black, and those on the Island. other side became white (§ 12). Then they came to an island in which was a great mountain, " and they purposed to go and view the island from it. Now when the Rhymer and Germdn went to visit the mountain, they found before them "®^ ^^ ' a broad river, which was not deep. Into this river Ger- man dipped the handle of his spear, and at once it was consumed as if fire had burnt it.^ So they went no further. Then they saw on the other side of the river great hornless oxen lying down, and a huge man sitting by them, then Germdn after this struck his spear-shaft against his shield to frighten the oxen. 'Why dost thou frighten the silly calves?' saith that huge herdsman. 'Where are the dams of those calves?' saith Germdn. 'They are on the other side of yonder mountain,' saith he. So they went thence" (§ 13). „ Thereafter they found an island with a great hideous Hideous Miller. •' ° mill, wherem was a huge hideous miller (§ 14). Then they came to the isle of wailing, where another of Maelduin's foster-brothers was lost. Four other companions who landed were directed ,, . .. by Maelduin not to look at the land or the air, and to put Magic Air. . > f their garments round their noses and their mouths, and not to breathe the air of the island, lest they should be detained like the foster-brother (§ 15). Then they came to a lofty island divided into four parts. "A maiden went to meet them . . . and gave them food. They likened it to cheese ; 1 In the Dutch poem Walewein there is a river of fire which has the appear- ance of water (see Paris, Romania, XII, 509). Iwain. 63 and whatever taste was pleasing to any one he would find it therein. And „ . ,, „ she dealt liquor to them ... so that they slept. When Hospitable Hostess. > , . they awoke they were in their boat at sea. Nowhere did they see their island or their maiden" (§ 16). Then they found an island that had a fortress with a brazen door and a bridge of glass, and when they went upon this bridge they fell down back- island of the chaste wards. A woman came out of the fortress, pail in hand, Maiden. took water and returned to the fortress. " A housekeeper for Maelduin," said his men, but she scorned them, and when they struck the brazen door, it made a sweet soothing music, which sent them to sleep till the morrow. Three days and three nights were they in that wise. " On the fourth day the woman came to them, beautiful verily and wearing a white mantle with a circlet of gold round her golden hair. Two sandals of silver on her rosy feet. A brooch of silver with studs of gold in her mantle and a filmy silken smock next her white skin." She greeted each man by his name: " It is long since your coming here hath been known and understood." She took them into the house, she gave them food, " every savor that each desired he would find therein." His men urged Maelduin to offer himself to her, and proposed to her that she should show affection to him and sleep with him. But, saying that she knew not and had never known what sin was, she left them, promising an answer for the morrow. When they awoke, they were in their boat on a crag, and they saw not the island nor the fortress, nor the lady, nor the place where they had been (§ 1 7). "As they went from that place they heard in the northeast a great cry and chaunt, as it were a singing of psalms. That night and the next day till none thev were rowing that they might know what cry Chanting Birds. , / , , S,, ,. , u i.. i , . or chaunt they heard. They behold a high mountainous island full of birds, black and dun and speckled, shouting and speaking loudly" (§18). The next island contained many trees and birds and a man whose cloth- Trees and the Pil- ing was his hair. He said : " The birds which thou behold- grim. est in the trees are the souls of my children and my kindred, both men and women, who are yonder awaiting Doomsday " (§ 19). The next island "had a golden rampart about it." Therein they saw a man "whose raiment was the hair of his own body." There was also a marvellous fountain, which on Friday and Wednesday agic oun am. yj^y^ water, on Sundays milk, but on feast-days wine. They drank of this fountain, which " cast them into a heavy sleep till the morrow " (§ 20). 64 A. C. L. Brown. Then they came to the island of the Savage Smiths, Savage Smiths. , , , , , ^ i ^t. x from which they fled (§ 21). Then they voyaged over a sea resembling green glass. " Such was its purity that the gravel and sand of the sea were clearly Sea of Glass. '^ ,f , , . „ ^„ s Visible through it" (§ 22). " They afterwards put forth into another sea like a cloud, and it seemed to them that it would not support them or the boat. Then they beheld under the sea down below them roofed strongholds and a Beast in Tree. . . , beautiful country. And they see a beast, huge, awful, mon- strous, in a tree there, and a drove of herds and ilocks round about the tree ; and beside the tree an armed man with shield and spear and sword. When he beheld yon huge beast that abode in the tree he goeth thence at once in flight. The beast stretched forth his neck out of the tree, and sets his head into the back of the largest ox of the herd and dragged it into the tree, and anon devours it in the twinkling of an eye. The flocks and the herdsman flee away at once " (§ 23). Thereafter they found an island around which rose the sea, making vast „, , „ , cliffs of water all about it. " As the people of that country Shouting People. *■ *• ^ perceived them they set to screaming at them and saying ; ' It is they ! It is they ! ' till they were out of breath " (§ 24). , , Then they came to an island above which was an arch of Water Arch. •' water like a rainbow (§ 25). " Thereafter they voyaged till they found a great silver column. . . . And not a single sod of earth was about it, but only the boundless c., „ , ocean." From its summit hung a silver net, through a Silver Column. ® ' o mesh of which the boat went under sail. And Diurdn cut a piece from the net with his spear, saying: "I do this so that my tidings may be the more believed [when I reach Ireland] " (§ 26). " Then they see another island standing on a single pedestal,^ to wit, one foot supporting it, . . . and they saw down in the base of Subaqueous Door. i j , ■ the pedestal a closed door under lock. They understood that thai was the way by which the island was entered " (§ 27). 1 It is possible that these islands rising like a pedestal or like a wall (of. § 11) were in the first place based on the exaggerated accounts of mariners. In Le Tour du Monde, supplement, A Travers le Monde, ^■aov., 1898, pp. 357-358, there is an account of an island called Rockall, which is situated in the Atlantic Ocean 295 kilometres from any land (the British Isles), which suggests the descriptions of the imrama. This island consists of a single rock, 75 metres around, which rises like a pillar from the sea. It does not occur in any charts before the seventeenth century. I wain. 65 After that they came to a large island, and there was a great plain therein, and on this a great table-land, heatherless but grassy and ^u , , ,^, ■:, smooth. And near the sea was a fortress, large, high, and The Isle of Maidens. ' & ' to j Strong, and a great house therein, adorned, and with good couches. Seventeen grown-up girls were there preparing a bath. When the wanderers saw this Maelduin felt sure the bath was for them. But there rode up a dame with a bordered purple mantle, gold-embroidered gloves on her hands, on her feet adorned sandals. She alighted, entered the fortress, and went to bathe. One of the damsels then welcomed the seafarers. " ' Come into the court : the queen invites you.' So they entered the fort, and they all bathed. The queen sat on one side of the house and her seventeen girls about her. Maelduin sat on the other side, over against the queen, with his seventeen men around him." Food and drink were served to them, and at nightfall the eighteen couples paired off, Maelduin sleeping with the queen. On the morrow she urged them to stay : " Age will not fall on you but the age that ye have attained. And lasting life ye shall have always : and what came to you last night shall come to you every night without any labour." Maelduin asked who she was, and she answered "wife of the king of the island, to whom she had borne seven- teen daughters ; at her husband's death she had taken the kingship of the island ; and unless she go to judge the folk every day what happened the night before would not happen again." Maelduin and his men stayed three months, " and it seemed to them that those three months were three years." The men murmured and urged Maelduin to depart, and reproached him with the love he bore the queen, and one day, when she was at the judging, they took out the boat and would sail off. But she rode after them, and flung a clew which Maelduin caught, and it cleaved to his hand ; by this means she drew them back to land. Thrice this happened, and the men accused Maelduin of catching the clew purposely. He told off another man to mind the clew, whose hand, when touched by it, was cut off by one ■of the seafarers. So in that wise they escaped (§ 28). Then they came to an island with trees bearing marvellous berries. Maelduin drank some of the juice of the berries, which Trees with Berries. ^^^^^ j^.^ .^^^ ^ ^^^p ^j^^p ^U, ^^^ morning. He said : « Gather ye this fruit, for great is its excellence " (§ 29). Then they landed on an island where was a wood of yews and great oaks. Here they found great herds of sheep, a church, and an ancient cleric. Here, too, they saw an ancient eagle renewing its youth by bathing e of Yout . .^ ^ j^^^ Diurin also bathed in the lake, and he never suf- fered weakness or infirmity from that time forth so long as he lived (§ 30). 66 A. C. L. Brown. Then they came to the Isle of Laughter, where the last Island of Laughter. ^^ Maelduin's three foster-brothers was lost (§31). " After that they sighted another island, which was not large, and a fiery rampart was round about it, and that rampart used to revolve round the island. There was an open doorway in the side of the Fiery Revolving rampart. Now whenever the doorway would come in its revolution opposite to them, they used to see the whole island, and all that was therein, and all its indwellers, even human beings, beautiful, abundant, wearing adorned garments, and feasting with golden vessels in their hands.'' And the wanderers listened to their ale- music (§ 32). Then they came to the island of the hermit of Torach (§ 33). They followed the direction in which they saw a falcon fly, and at length they sighted land like the land of Ireland. It was the small island on which they had found the murderers at the first. But Maelduin was now reconciled to them, and he returned to his own district in Ireland and declared his adventures (§ 34). It has seemed necessary to outline very fully this charming voyage story, in order to bring out with fairness its curious character. Some incidents are plainly drawn from Christian tradition,^ but in the case of only one island (§ ig) is there a definite attempt made at identi- fication with the Earthly Paradise where the souls of the just await the Day of Judgment. The Christian and pagan materials are not thoroughly worked together, and it is easy to see, by comparison with the older Celtic tales already studied, that most of the material comes straight, as Zimmer thinks, from the mass of Irish Other-World lore. A study of this imram, therefore, ought It) throw light on the development which the various incidents of the Other-World journey may have taken before the time of Chrdtien. In the Imram Mailduin, the idea of a single expedition to the Other World and return, as in the Imram Brain and in all the older stories, has been lost sight of. The compiler has either attached together several already existing variants of the same story, or else he or some preceding transcriber has divided up the adventures of a single Journey of Wonders, and the furniture of a single Other 1 Traces of Christian influence appear in §§ 18, 19, 20, 30, 33, and 34. I wain. 67 World, among a number of different islands,^ with the object of increasing the number of different adventures in his story. This point has been already made by Alfred Nutt, who sees a visit to the Other World not only in § 28 (The Isle of Maidens) but in § 17 (The Isle of the Chaste Maiden), which is, he maintains, a variant of the same episode. He also finds part of the gear of the Other World elsewhere in the story, and concludes that we are justified in making use of the several versions to recover the " original idea of Damsel Land as it existed in the material from which our story was drawn." He sees in § 32 (The Isle of the Fiery Revolving Ram- part), for example, a part of the Other-World incident. It is tolerably clear, I think, that §§ 6 and 11 ought to be added to this list. In § 6 (The Empty Banquet Hall) we have a palace in which food is served by invisible means, — a well-established form of the Other- World story.'' In § 1 1 (The Treasure-House of the Cat) there is the same empty palace, but it is guarded by a mysterious cat. It is interesting to find the several repetitions of the Other-World story (§§ 6, 11, 17, 28, 32) arranged at tolerably equal intervals in the order of islands visited. This can be conveniently shown by plac- ing the successive incidents in parallel columns as on pp. 68, 69. . A glance at this arrangement of the incidents of the Mailduin will show that, as § 28 is the longest and most characteristic description of the Other World, so, too, the adventures leading up to this capital episode are the most numerous and the most detailed. It appears, therefore, that this part of the tale (§§ 18-28) is either the original kernel of the whole, or else perhaps the most complete of several variants which have been put together to make up that whole. The incidents of this portion of the Mailduin should therefore form a basis for comparison. If, now, we compare column IV with columns I, II, III, and V, a certain paralleHsm is discoverable. In all of the columns, except ■■ The manner in which a new island is brought in at every turn suggests the invention of a single transcriber who had a new idea and developed it con amore in the mediaeval manner. 2 Connla was promised "perpetual feasts without preparation," and at Labraid's isle in the Serglige there was a never-failing cask of mead. 68 A. C. L. Brown. II III §1- Island of the Mur- derers. §2- Enormous Ants. §7- Wondrous Fruit. §3- Huge Birds. §12. Black and White Isle. §8. Racing Beast. §4- Horselike Monster. §9- Fighting Horses. §13- Huge Herdsman. §s. Demons' Horses. §14- Hideous Miller. §10. Golden Apples. §15- §i6. Magic Air. Hospitable Hostess. §6. Empty Banquet §"• Treasure-House of §17- Isle of the Chaste Hall. the Cat. Maiden. Ill, marvellous birds or trees are encountered. In all, except col- umn V, fighting beasts of one kind or another appear. In several of the columns, a difificult passage of some kind, such as a subaqueous door or a revolving rampart, is described. It is natural to conclude that these three themes, which recur over and over again in different shapes, must have been, like the love-making motive, stock incidents of the Celtic Other-World Journey. Otherwise it is not easy to explain why the compiler of this imram should have introduced them in so many forms. The first of these three themes may be called that of the Other- World Landscape. We have already met it in the Serglige and in the Imram Brain. The " great chaunt of birds," in § i8, " as it were a-singing psalms," reminds us of the birds calling to the canonical Hours in the Imram Brain. Much light is thrown on this incident by § 19, where are described trees full of birds that are the souls of men. It is absurd to find ordinary birds singing psalms, but for transformed souls this would be natural. We may be sure, therefore, that the birds in § 18 were originally one with those in § 19, and, like them, souls in bird shape. The separation must have been made by a stupid transcriber, anxious to increase the number of islands visited. In § 20 there is a marvellous fountain which yields milk on Sundays. Of course it is here a Christian marvel, but if we remember the " noble well " hard by the tree with singing birds in I wain. 69 IV §18. The Chanting Birds. §i9. The Trees and the Pilgrim. §29. Trees with Magic Fruit. §20. Magic Fountain. %7fi- Lake of Youth. §21. Savage Smiths. §22. The Sea of Glass. \n- The Beast in the Tree. §24- Shouting People. §31- The Isle of Laughter. §2S. The Water Arch. §26. The Silver Column. §27- Subaqueous Door. §28. The Isle of Maidens. §32- The Revolving Rampart. the Serglige, it seems certain that this Christian fountain has been substituted for the Other-World Fountain. Making proper allow- ances, therefore, for the way in which the transcriber of this imram has divided up his material, we see in the scenery of these three islands a parallel to the tree with birds who do -' lor servise" beside the Fountain Perilous in the Ivain. The beast-like herdsman guarding cattle, in § 23 of the Mailduin, suggests the giant herdsman of the Tvain. The third motive, that of the Perilous Passage, appears, as has been said, in the subaqueous door, in the revolving rampart, and, it may be added, in the brazen door of § 17, which, when struck, put Maelduin's men to sleep. It may be suggested that this danger, just at the entrance of the Other World, has been rationalized into the falling gates of the Ivain. It is clear from what has been said that we have in the imrama important materials for the study of the Other- World Journey. For convenience, the different motives just outlined will be taken up one by one. Perhaps that of the Giant Herdsman should be dis- cussed first, since it seems not to have been preserved except in the imrama. yo A. C. L. Brown. CHAPTER IV {Continued). ANCIENT CELTIC STORIES OF THE JOURNEY TO THE OTHER WORLD. IV. The Giant Herdsman Motive. It will be remembered that, in the Ivain^ Calogrenant, after part- ing from the Hospitable Host, came upon wild and savage bulls fighting with such fierceness in the forest that he was fain to draw back and avoid them. He encountered, however, a monstrous and hideous churl, who resembled a Moor, and was so ugly, in fact, that he could not be described. This creature sat on a stump, holding a great club in his hand. He had a head larger than that of a horse and mossy ears the size of an elephant's. He had the eyes of an owl, the nose of a cat, his mouth was cleft like that of a wolf, and his boar's teeth were sharp and red. He leaned on his club and did not speak to Calogrenant any more than a beast would do. His only movement, as Calogrenant approached, was to mount upon a tree trunk. Naturally Calogrenant's first words to this creature were to ask him what he was. He replied that he was a man and was guarding these beasts of the forest. Calogrenant expressed doubts about any man's being able to control such savage creatures. The monster replied that he could seize one of the bulls by the horns in such a way that all the others would tremble for fear and would gather round as if toinj^lore mercy; in this way he controlled the beasts. Calogrenant then asked the giant herdsman to direct him to some adventure. The herdsman obligingly described the adven- ture of the Founta,in Perilous and showed the path that led thither. This strange episode is plainly not the invention of Chretien." No one, however, has before pointed out exactly why it appears in 1 Ivain, vv. 278-409. 2 So Baist has expressed himself {Zt.f. rom. Phil., XXI, 402-405). He has, moreover, compared § 13 of the Mailduin, but he has not noticed the parallels in §§ 4) 5i 9i and 23, nor has he explained how this adventure came to find its way into the Ivain. I wain. 71 the Ivain. I believe it to have been a stock incident of the Other- World Journey. The object of the giant herdsman is to point out the way to the Other World, i.e. to Laudine's castle. Chretien has retained, almost without attempt at rationalization, one of the adven- tures of the type of Celtic story that we are studying. It is true that this theme does not occur in the Serglige, the norm for our com- parisons, but it has left so many traces in the Imram Mailduin that we may feel confident that it was a stock incident. The distinctive features of this adventure in the Ivain may be summed up thus : (i) a hideous beast-like giant, (2) who is perched upon a tree trunk, (3) is guarding a herd of animals. These (4) are not ordinary cattle, but savage beasts who fight each other arro- gantly ; yet (5) the monster herdsman is able to seize any one of them in a terrible way. (6) He points out to the traveller the road to a marvellous land. In § 23 of the Mailduin, there is an adventure which unites features i, 2, 3, and 5, and thus forms a striking parallel to the Ivain: "a beast, huge, awful, monstrous, in a tree, and a drove of herds and flocks round about the tree." " The beast stretched forth his neck out of the tree, and set his head into the back of the largest ox of the herd and dragged it into the tree and anon devoured it in the twinkling of an eye." -^ It is to be noted that this creature is seen in the Land beneath the Waves, that is, in the Other World. 1 Compare the description of the herdsman in the Ivain (vv. 288 ff.) : Un vilaih qui resanbloit mor, Grant et hideus a desmesure (Einsi tres leide creature, Qu'an ne porroit dire de boche), Vi je seoir sor une goche, Une grant mague an sa main. Je m'aprochai vers le vilain, Si vi qu'il ot grosse la teste Plus que roncins ne autre beste, Chevos meschiez et front pele, S'ot plus de deus espanz de le, Oroilles mossues et granz Auteus com a uns olifanz, Les sorciz granz et le vis plat, lauz de choete et nes de chat, *J2 A. C. L. Brow7i. To this incident of § 23 (in column IV) there is so striking a parallel in § 13 (column III) that we cannot doubt that they are variants of the same motive. In § 23 there are parallels to features I, 3, and 6 of the adventure in the Ivain, The herdsman is here described as " a huge man " guarding "great hornless oxen." He gives the travellers information about the way, just as the Giant Herdsman directs Calogrenant and Iwain. Here again the creature Boche fandue come los, Danz de sangler aguz et ros, Barbe noire, grenons tortiz, Et le manton aers au piz, Longue eschine, torte et bogue. . . . Et fu montez desor un tronc, S'ot bien dis et set piez de lone ; Si m'esgarda et mot ne dist Ne plus qu'une beste fe'i'st ; Et je cuidai que il n'eiist Reison ne parler ne seiist. That the herdsman was as much like a beast as a man is apparent, not only from this description, but from the reflections of Iwain (vv. 794 £f.): Si vit les tors et le vilain Qui la voie li anseigna ; Mes plus de gant foiz se seigna De la mervoille que il ot, Comant Nature feire sot Oevre si leide et si vilainne. The fact that the guardian of the herd is called a " beast " in the Mailduin does not therefore injure the parallel. It is not said in the Ivain that the creature could devour one of his cattle, but his description of his own powers is not unlike the words of the Mailduin (vv. 344 ff-): N'i a cell qui s'ost movoir Des qu'eles me voient venir. Car quant j'an puis une tenir, Si la destraing par les deus corz As poinz que j'ai et durs et forz, Que les autres de peor tranblent Et tot anviron moi s'asanblent Aussi con por merci cri'er ; Ne nus ne s'i porroit fier Fors moi, s'antr'eles s'estoit mis, Que maintenant ne fust ocis. Einsi sui de mes bestes sire. I wain. 72 seems to be in the Other World. He is beyond a river that burns anything dipped in it as if it were a stream of fire. Having thus found variants of this motive in two ^ of the columns (HI and IV) of our Maildiim table, we are perhaps justified in regarding the fighting beasts of columns I and II as indistinct sur- vivals or variants of the same theme. In §§ 4 and 5 (column I) are described monstrous beasts "like horses, having the legs of a hound with rough sharp nails." They are evidently ferocious, like the bulls in the Ivain,^ for " they long to devour the travellers and their boat." A closer parallel, however, to the fighting bulls of the Ivain is found in § 9 (column II), where the travellers see "many great animals like unto horses " which were fighting each other. " Each would take a piece out of another's side, and carry it away with its skin and its flesh, so that out of their sides streams of crimson blood were breaking." In this account and that in column I the animals are described as "horselike." Their actions, however, are not those of horses, and probably this adjective does not mark them off significantly from the cattle of §§ 13 and 23. The six distinguishing features of the Giant Herdsman motive in the Ivain are thus all found in the older Imram Mailduin. They do not 1 That this method of operation is justified will, I think, be admitted by any one who studies the case of what I have called the Other-World landscape motive. From the fact that singing birds appear in § 18 of the Mailduin, a marvellous tree in § 19, and a magic fountain in § 20, it was conjectured that these three features must (in the more primitive Other-World tales from which the Mailduin has been built up) have been united to form one landscape like that in the Serglige. This at first thought somewhat daring process turns out to be entirely justified, for in the Navigatio Brendani, which must go back to Celtic imrama, these three features, the birds, the tree, and the fountain, are found united in exactly the way assumed. ^ The description in the Ivain runs thus (vv. 280 if.) : Tors sauvages et espaarz Qui s'antrecombatoient tuit Et demenoient si grant bruit Et tel fiert^ et tel orguel, Se le voir center vos an vuel, Que de paor me tres arriere ; Que nule beste n'est plus fiere Ne plus orguelleuse de tor. 74 A. C. L. Brown. all, to be sure, occur united in one incident, but enough of them are found so joined to make the parallel hold good. Everything, there- fore, seems to indicate that this is a stock episode of the Celtic Other- World Journey,^ which has been preserved by Chrdtien in his Ivain, with but little change from its more primitive form. 1 An illustration of this character of the incident seems to be found in the Echtra Thaidg mheic Chein, an Irish Other-World tale preserved only in a fifteenth-century MS. I will summarize this tale, utilizing O'Grady's transla- tion, Silva Gadelica, II, 385-401 (text, I, 343-359) '■ Teigue and his companions came to an island where they found no signs of human habitation, but only flocks of sheep. " The size of these creatures was unutterable ; they were not less than horses of the largest [kind]." " One parlous great flock in particular they found there, of gigantic rams [of] which a single special one exceeded all : nine horns bedecked him, and on the heroes he charged violently butting." Teigue and his men had a battle with these rams. [It is possible, of course, that the likeness between these animals and those of the Mailduin is due to chance ; but, as these beasts are described as horselike and as fierce creatures engaged in fighting, it is likely that we have here traces of the motive found in the Mailduin and in the Ivain?\ After leaving this island, Teigae and his men came to a beautiful land where it was summer, though at that time it was winter in Ireland. "Extraordinary was the amenity of the spot to which they now attained, but they left it and happened on a wood. Great was the excellence of its scent. Round purple berries hung on it . . . Birds, beautiful, brilliant, feasted on these grapes. As they fed they warbled music and minstrelsy, that was melodious and superlative, to which patients of every kind and the repeatedly wounded would have fallen asleep." Going on from this spot, they found on the first hill " a white-bodied lady," "the fairest of the world's women"; on the second hill "a queen of gracious form draped in a vesture of golden fabric," and on the third hill a noble pair, a youth and a maid. It was Connla, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, and the maid was " the young woman of many charms " that brought him hither. Connla " held in his hand a fragrant apple having the color of gold ; a third part of it he would eat and still, for all he consumed, never a whit would it be diminished. This fruit it was that supported the pair of them, and when once they had par- taken of it neither age nor dimness could affect them." They now entered " a jocund house with a silver floor." " Gems of crystal and carbuncle were set in the wall in such wise that with flashing of these precious stones day and night alike were bright there." " Then three birds enter to them into the house and perch on the thickly-furnished, wide-spreading apple tree that was in the court of the house. The birds eat an apple apiece and warble melody and harmony such that the sick would sleep to it." At length Teigue spoke of returning Twain. 75 CHAPTER IV {Continued). ANCIENT CELTIC STORIES OF THE JOURNEY TO THE OTHER WORLD. V. The Perilous Passage. In the Serglige there was a perilous passage on the way to Labraid's isle. Fand declared to Loeg that he would not escape alive unless a woman protected him ; therefore, we are told, Liban put her hand on his shoulder. There are in the Mailduin many indications that a dangerous passage of some kind must have been a stock incident of the Other-World journey. When the voyagers came to the Island of the Chaste Maiden (§ 17), which is, as has been pointed out, a variant of an original Other-World episode, they found a bridge of glass and a bronze door. Whoever stepped upon the bridge of glass fell backward,'' and whoever struck the brazen door was put to sleep till the morrow by the sweet music that it made. After two days of vain attempt the travellers are escorted through this mysterious passage by a woman. ^ to his land. " These birds will go with you," said the lady. " They will give you guidance and make you symphony and minstrelsy, and till again ye reach Ire- land neither by land nor by sea shall sadness or grief afflict you." They thought they had been in the island but a day. They found that it had been a year. They set sail, and after some adventures returned to Ireland. 1 Cuchulinn on his way to Scathach's abode (Scathach, " the shadowy one," is evidently an Other- World creature) had to pass a bridge that was low at both ends, high in the middle, and so constructed that when a man stepped on the one end the other end would rise aloft, and he would be thrown down. See Rhys, Hib. Led., p. 451, quoting from the Tochmarc Emere, and Hall, Cuchullin Saga, p. 75. This is a variant of the well-known "Bridge of Dread " motive. '^ Rhys, Arthurian Legend, p. 303, has not noticed this parallel, but he has compared the passage in the Serglige with Peredur's entrance into a revolving castle in the Welsh Seint Greal (ed. Williams, pp. 325-326; translation, p. 649). Peredur is escorted into this castle by a damsel, who goes before him, carrying his shield and his spear, to warrant him. This same incident, of course, is found in the prose Perceval (ed. Potvin, I, 196), and may possibly be a survival of the 76 A. C. L. Browfi. The locked and apparently subaqueous door in Mailduin (§ 27) has been spoken of. It was seen just before the travellers reached the Isle of Maidens or the Happy Other World. When one recol- lects that in the Tale of Loegaire entrance to the Other World was effected by diving into the loch, and that Terror in Fled Brier end, who is a mere duplicate of Curoi, departed after the head-cutting contest into the loch, it seems likely that we have in this door a surviving trace of a perilous under-water passage.-' Obviously the revolving rampart of fire in Mailduin (§ 32), through a doorway in which, whenever it came opposite to them, the voyagers could see a land of marvellous splendor, is a variant, of the Perilous- Passage motive. The beauty of the inhabitants seen within, their adorned garments, their perpetual feasting from golden vessels, and their far-prevailing music make the Other- World character of the place unmistakable. The revolving castle of the Fled Bricrend, in which Curoi lived with his wife Blathnat, must also be regarded, as has been said, as an Other-World fortress. There are, then, in the most ancient Irish documents, two clear cases of the attribution of a revolving palisade to the Other World.'' motive appearing in Loeg's protection by Liban in the Serglige. The kind words of praise addressed by Bldthnat to Cuchulinn in the Fled Bricrend, after he has leaped into the revolving castle of her husband, should be remembered. In a modern tale, The Bare Stripping Hangman ( Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, III, 96-97), the hero, in distress at the castle of a giant, is rescued by the sister of the heroine, who takes him into the castle through an iron door in the wall and heals his wounds. (It will be remembered that Liban is sister to Fand.) 1 The incident of reaching a land beneath the waves is common enough (see, for example, a tale of modern Brittany, Rev. Celt., II, 308). An instance not before compared is in the Romance of Reinbroun (preserved in the Auchinleck MS., which dates from 1327), ed. Zupitza, E.E.T.S., sts. 80 ff. Reinbroun rides through a gate into a hill. The gate is shut and he rides half a mile in darkness. He comes to a palace surrounded by a broad water. He plunges, horse and all, into the water and goes to the bottom, thirty yards over helm, but reaches the palace at last. No one grows old there. 2 Of course this does not prove that the incident was an invention of the Celts. Compare Hugo's palace at Constantinople, which, according to the Journey of Charlemagne, revolved on its axis by the operation of the wind (Child, Ballads, I, 276). Cf. also Chaucer, Hous of Fame, iii, 1918 ff., where the house of DjEdalus is said to revolve. Iivaiti. J J There is a Welsh poem in the Book of Taliessin ^ called The Victims of the Other World which gives us reason to believe that this con- ception of a revolving barrier or a dangerous gateway at the entrance of the Other World was well known to the Welsh also. This poem, which is expressed in the obscure language of the early bards, tells of a voyage made by Arthur to Annwn for the purpose of rescuing the captive Gwair.= Like the Irish Other World, Annwn is regarded as an island lying beyond the sea : PREIDDEN ANNWN. s I will praise the sovereign, supreme king of the land. Who hath extended his dominion over the shore of the world. Complete was the prison of Gweir* in Caer Sidi,^ Through the spite of Pwyll and Pryderi. No one before him went into it. The heavy blue chain held the faithful youth, And before the spoils of Annwvn woefully he sings, And till doom shall continue a bard of prayer. Thrice enough to fill Prydwen we went into it ; Except seven none returned from Caer Sidi. 1 This MS. dates from the early part of the fourteenth century (Skene, Four Books, I, 3). As the poem bears no traces of the influence of French romance, it is fair to infer that it is based on early Welsh conceptions. 2 This explanation is given by Stephens, Zzy(?ra^«« of the Kymry, p. 273, where also a text and a translation of the poem maybe found (pp. 183-190). I have followed the later and more accurate translation in Skene. ^Quoted from Skene, Four Books, I, 264-266; for the text, see II, 1S1-182. * There is a triad {Myv. Arch., p. 80, 1. 30, quoted by Stephens, Lit. of the Kyviry, p. 190) that mentions the captivity of the family of Gair ap Geirion, lord of Geirionydd, as one of the three closest ever known. 5 Caer Sidi is mentioned also in another poem of the Book of Taliessin (No. xiv), part of which runs thus (Taliessin is the speaker) : Complete is my chair in Caer Sidi, No one will be afflicted with disease or old age that may be in it. It is known to Manawd and Pryderi. Three utterances, around the fire, will he sing before it. And around its borders are the streams of Ocean, And the fruitful fountain is above it. Is sweeter than white wine the liquor therein (Skene, I, 276 ; text, II, 154). 78 A. C. L. Browft. II. Am I not a candidate for fame, if a song is heard ? In Caer Pedryvan,* four its revolutions ; In the first word from the cauldron when spoken, From the breath of nine maidens it was gently warmed. Is it not the cauldron of the chief of Annwvn ? What is its intention ? A ridge about its edge of pearls. It will not boil the food of a coward, that has not been sworn, A sword bright gleaming to him was raised. And in the hand of Lleminawg it was left And before the door of the gate of Ufiern ^ the lamp was burning. And when we went with Arthur, a splendid labour. Except seven, none returned from Caer Vedwyd.^ III. Am I not a candidate for fame with the listened song? In Caer Pedryvan, in the isle of the strong door ? The twilight and pitchy darkness were mixed together. Bright wine their liquor before their retinue. Thrice enough to fill Prydwen we went on the sea, Except seven none returned from Caer Rigor.* ' IV. I shall not deserve much from the ruler of literature, Beyond Caer Wydyr they saw not the prowess of Arthur. Three score Canhwr stood on the wall. Difficult was a conversation with its sentinel. From a comparison of these lines it will be seen that Caer Sidi is a Land of Youth surrounded by the sea. It is connected with the Other-World power Manawyddan ( = Manawd), and with Pwyll and Pryderi. This is consistent with the Mabinogi, Pwyll Prince of Dyvet, which calls Pwyll "Prince of Annwn." Pryderi is his son and successor. Rhys, Arthurian Legend, p. 301, connects Sidi with the Welsh sidyll, "a spinning wheel," and translates Caer Sidi by " revolving castle." 1 " The quadrangular enclosure " : Stephens. 2 "Hell": Stephens. 8 " The enclosure of the perfect ones " : Stephens. " The Castle of Revelry ": Rhys, Arthurian Legend, p. 301. * " The enclosure of the royal party " : Stephens. Iwain. 79 Thrice enough to fill Prydwen^ there went with Arthur, Except seven none returned from Caer Golud. Although in this poem Annwn is once called Ufern ("hell"), yet it has in the main the well-known characteristics of the Celtic Happy Other World. It contains a magic cauldron that presumably fur- nishes inexhaustible food, and the inhabitants are described as " drinking the bright wine." It is also called " The Enclosure of the Perfect Ones." That it can be entered by a difficult gateway only, is evident. It is called "The Island of the Strong Door" and is said to be " four times revolving." It is perfectly clear, then, that a revolving barrier, or an active door of some kind,^ was a widespread motive of Celtic Other- World 1 The text of this refrain runs : " Tri Uoneit prytweri yd aeth gan arthur." I venture to suggest that this peculiar expression refers to a. magic quality of the ship Prytwenn, by virtue of which it could contain any number, however great. It is the ship in which Arthur journeys to the Other World. It is usual in Celtic tales for the ship that takes the hero to the Land beyond the Waves to be the gift of afh, and of a marvellous character, often having the property of folding up or expanding. See Harvard Studies and Notes, VII, 199, note i, where I have cited many references to boats of this sort. A typical example is in Curtin, Hero- Tales of Ireland, p. 249, where a staff thrown into the sea becomes a ship. It can be " put back into a staff again " and borne in the hand. It will be remembered that Arthur was finally carried off to Avalon in a mysterious ship. Prytwenn is probably the same sort of ship as the boat of glass that carried oft Connla, which apparently could accomplish any distance before night, and as the bronze boat that ferried Loeg over to Labraid's isle. Doubtless, like Arthur's sword Cali- burnus (Geoffrey, Historia, IX, 4), it was brought from Avalon. Layamon (vv. 22,736 ff.) ascribes to Arthur a magical table ; Geoffrey, I.e., ascribes to him not only the sword Calibumus, but a marvellous lance Ron and a shield Priwen ; while in Kulhwch and Olwen (Rhys and Evans, Jied Book of Hergest, I, 105) there is a considerable list of belongings, including Prytwenn, ascribed to Arthur. These objects all have names and are treated as very valuable. They are probably all magical. This at least is the conclusion to which analogy leads. See the list of magical things given by Manannan to Lugh (above, p. 42, note), among which is a sword very much resembling Calibumus. There is no ship in the list, but there is a horse that travels equally well by land and sea. Doubtless he fills the place of a ship as a means of reaching the Other World. 2 In Laistner, Das Rdtsel der Sphinx, Berlin, 1889, I, 263, there is mentioned, as an obstacle on the way to the Other World, a door that ever slams to and fro. This reference I owe to Professor Kittredge. 8o A. C. L. Brown. story. A priori, therefore, we have reason to believe that it must have been present in the material that Chretien used when he was writing his Ivain. What could he do with the motive, supposing he decided to keep it at all ? Would he not naturally rationalize it into the familiar portcullis, to be seen at every castle gate? This I believe to have been the origin of the sharp iron portcullis in the Ivain, that descended, " aussi con deables d'anfer" (v. 944), behind the hero and cut his steed in two.^ In view of the numerous 1 An interesting parallel that should be quoted at this point, because it appears to show this motive at an intermediate stage of development, is the story of La Mule sans Frein (Meon, Nouveau Recueil de Fabliaux, I, I ff.). This is a French poem and was written about the year 1 200, but its similarity to the kind of Other- World story that has been studied above is so great that its essential dependence on Celtic tradition can hardly be denied : A damsel, riding a mule without a bridle, came to Arthur's court and asked for the help of a knight to recover her bridle for her. Kay set out first, and his unsuccessful attempt is contrasted with the victorious exploit of the hero Gawain, in the same way that the failures of Loegaire and Conall are set off against the success of Cuchulinn in the Fled Bricrend. Gawain rode over a bridge consisting of a single narrow iron bar which spanned a terrible river, and found a narrow path leading to a castle. A broad water encircled the castle. The walls were decked with the heads of former adventurers, set upon spikes, and but one spike was empty. The castle was always turning like a mill-wheel or a top. Gawain spurred the mule, and made a rush for the gate as it came round. The mule got through with the loss of half her tail. There was a vilain in the castle, black as a. Moor, who played the beheading game with Gawain. When Gawain had come off successfully from this and other tests, he was entertained by a lady, sister to the Damsel of the Mule. She would fain have persuaded Gawain to remain with her and be her lord and lord of all her castles. But Gawain refused, took the bridle, and departed. If the revolving-castle motive, which we know to have been a part of Celtic stories of the Journey to the Other World, had reached a form like this before it came to the hands of Chretien, how easy it would have been for him to change the cutting in two of the mule's tail into the more thrilling incident of the horse and the portcullis ! The resemblance between La Mule sans Frein and the Fled Bricrend \s obvious. In both there is a turning castle, and in both an ugly black giant who proposes the head-cutting game. When the heroes first visited Curoi in the Fled Bricrend, it will be remembered that they fell into a magic mist that caused them to lose their way. A parallel to this incident occurs in a turning-castle episode in Wigalois (ed. Pfeiffer, Leipzig, 1847, cols. 173-181, vv. 6714-7053). The hero, in Twain. g j parallels to this development in modern Celtic stories quoted in the notes, this view appears highly probable, if not quite certain. overcoming the enchanter R6az (a parallel figure to Curoi), was obliged to pass through a treacherous magic mist. He then came to a marble gate, before which ran a water-wheel upon an iron track: Des ein rat von ere pflac : daz lief umbe vor dem tor uf tsentnen siulen enbor. ez treip ein wazzer daz was groz : durch daz fQle mos ez floz (vv. 6775 ff.). The wheel was set with sharp swords and clubs. Wigalois at last entered the tower and was obliged to fight with a monster, half man, half horse, called " Marrien," before the fiercer conflict against Roaz took place. On a pillar before the castle gate was a marvellous shining gem. There is a revolving castle which Gawain enters on horseback in Diu Kr6ne, by Heinrich von dem Turlin (ed. SchoU, vv. 12,951 ff.), and also a giant who changes semblance in an extraordinary manner. Revolving castles are rather common in modern Celtic Other-World tales. The modern tale of CualUn has been already cited (Cnrtin, Myths and Folk-Lorc of Irela?id, pp. 304-326). The tale of Young Conall is an interesting parallel (Curtin, Hero-Tales of Ireland, pp. 58-92, from County Kerry). When Conall arrived at the castle of the Yellow King, he saw three poles, of which two bore a skull apiece: "These are the heads of two kings' sons who came to win the Yellow King's daughter." Thought he, " I suppose mine will be the third." However, after a furious battle, Conall cut off the head of the Yellow King and married the daughter. He presently disregarded his mistress's injunction not to sleep in the open, and was punished by losing her. His adventures in recovering her were many, but she was at last found in a revolving prison-guarded castle. Similar tales containing the turning-castle incident are : Blaiman, Son of Apple (Curtin, Hero-Tales, pp. 373-406, from County Kerry), and Coldfeet and the Queen of Lonesome Island (Curtin, pp. 242-261, from County Kerry). There are also a number of modern Other-World tales which contain variants of what may be called the active-door type. In the tale of Morraha (Larminie, West Irish Folk-Tales, pp. 10-30, from County Mayo), the hero set out in,quest of the Sword of Light. His steed cleared three miles of fire at one leap, three miles of mountain at the next, and three miles of sea at the third. Morraha was well entertained by the young king and queen of the country in which he now found himself, and they directed him how to proceed. He took the best horse in the stable and went to the door of the giant Blue Niall. After having turned his horse's back to the door, he knocked and demanded the Sword of Light, at the same time putting spurs to his horse. But Blue Niall overtook him and, "as he was passing the gate,. cut his horse in two." The next day Morraha 82 A. C. L. Brown. CHAPTER IV {Continued). ANCIENT CELTIC STORIES OF THE JOURNEY TO THE OTHER WORLD. VI. The Other-World Landscape. The extraordinary features of the landscape at the Fountain Per- ilous in the Ivain may be briefly recalled : The fountain, which boils like hot water, though it is in fact colder than marble, is shaded by the most beautiful tree in the world. This tree never loses its had the same adventure, except that " as he was passing the gate" Blue Niall " cut the horse in two and half the saddle with him." On the third day, " as he was passing the gate," the giant "cut away the saddle and the clothes from his back." Morraha at last went at night and overcame the giant. In the tale of Art and Balor Beimenach (Curtin, Hero-Tales, pp. 327 ff., from County Kerry), the hero has a similar adventure, thrice repeated ; only in this case the giant cuts the horse in two as he is leaping the wall of the castle. " Art tumbled down from the wall with his life." Another Irish tale containing the incident of the severed horse at a giant's castle, is printed by O'Foharta, Zt.f. celt. Phil., I, 477 ff. In none of these tales, we should observe, is it said that the horse is cut in two by the gate, but only at the gate. However, the resemblance to the incident of the Falling Gates in the Ivain is certainly close. I suppose no one will maintain that these modern tales are a degradation of the Ivain. They certainly seem to corroborate the con- clusion drawn from La Mule sans Frein, that the theme of a horse severed at the gate of the Other World, with great peril to the rider, may have been a part of Celtic story before the time of Chretien. There are at least two modern Irish tales that represent the perilous gate to the Other World as more or less in the form of a portcullis. In the story called King^s Son and White Bearded Scolog (Curtin, Hero-Tales pp. 168-172, from Connemara), the gate of the giant's castle has " a pavement of sharp razors, edges upward." " Long needles set as thickly as bristles in a brush were fixed points downward under the lintel of the door and the door was low." The hero was obliged to make his horse leap into the castle over the razors and under the needles. Practically the same sort of gate to a giant's castle appears in The King of Erin and the Queen of Lonesome Island (Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore, PP-93-"3)- There is a curious tale obtained by David Fitzgerald at Askeaton in Ireland in 1879 {l^e'v- Celt., IV, 185-186). Lake Guirr, " all Munster knows, is enchanted ; but Twain. 83 leaves, winter or summer. It is a pine, and the tallest ^ that ever grew on earth. Its foliage must be very thick, for, however hard it rains, not a drop can pass its branches. Singing birds gather so thickly on this tree that they entirely conceal its branches and its leaves. Though each bird sings a different note, their voices together make the most delightful harmony imaginable. No one will ever hear aught so beautiful unless he go thither to listen to them. To sum up the chief features of the description, there is (i) a magnificent tree, (2) whose leaves do not fade summer or winter, and the spell passes off it once in every seven years. The lake then, to whoever has the luck to behold it, appears dry ; and the Tree may be partly seen at the bottom of it, covered with a Green Cloth. A certain bold fellow was at the spot one day at the very instant when the spell broke, and he rode his horse towards the tree and snatched away the Green Cloth (Brat 'Uaine) that covered it. As he turned his horse and fled for his life the Woman who sat on the watch, knitting under the cloth, at the foot of the tree, called out : Awake, awake, thou silent tide 1 From the Dead Women's Land a horseman rides, From my head the green cloth snatching. At the words the waters rose ; and so fiercely did they pursue him that as he gained the edge of the lake one half of his steed was swept away, and with it the [Green Cloth], which he was drawing after him. Had that been taken, the enchantment was ended for ever." I have quoted the story in full to show the confused form in which Fitzgerald obtained it. Apparently it must have been originally a fairy mistress tale. The tree would then be a part of the Other-World landscape, and the incident of the halving of the steed a survival of some active-door episode. Fitzgerald gives also a well-defined fairy mistress tale connected with this lake. It is curious to remember that " the fountain such that if touched, or even seen by a man, it forthwith deluged the whole province " described by Giraldus Cambrensis (i 146-1220) in his Top. Hib. (dist. ii, cap. 7, Rolls ed., V, 89), was in this same province, Munster. The fountain (fans), says Giraldus, would not stop deluging the province till a priest celebrated mass in an adjoining chapel. The only inference I wish to draw from these modern tales is that the Strong Door attributed to the Other World in ancient Celtic story becomes naturally rationalized into a falling portcullis, while the incident of a horse being cut in two at this gate is a common embellishment. 1 This translation is based on a variant ascribed by Foerster to MS. G. The reading that he adopts in his text (v. 414) is not " the tallest " but a repetition of what was said before, " the most beautiful." 84 A. C. L. Brown. (3) whose foliage is so dense that rain cannot pass through it, (4) stand- ing by a fountain. (5) The tree is full of birds, who sing not in unison, but in harmony, and (6) their song is really a divine service.^ This romantic landscape shows no signs of being a chance embel- lishment. It is described repeatedly, and one of Iwain's chief hopes, as he sets out on his journey, is that he may see the pine that overshadows the fountain. There is nothing, therefore, against an hypothesis that would explain this scene as a rationalization of an earlier Other- World landscape. On the contrary, no other adequate explanation has ever been suggested. With these facts in mind, we may turn to the study of the Other- World landscape in Celtic story. In the Serglige Conculaind, which is the oldest extant tale of the precise type now under discussion, and which we have therefore used as a norm for comparison, the landscape of the Other World is rather fully described. It is marked by splendid trees full of singing birds. These trees bear fruit, and three hundred men are nourished by the fruit of each tree. One notable tree stands at the door of the Other- World palace, and the harmonious song of the birds upon it is partic- ularly dwelt on. There is a noble well close at hand. In the Imram Brain, the great antiquity of which seems certain, the same general features are described. One "ancient tree" is mentioned " from which birds call at the canonical hours " (§§ 6, 7).^ 1 S'escoutai tant qu'il orent fet Lor servise trestot a tret (vv. 471-472). ^ This singing to the Hours is obviously a borrowing from Christian concep- tions of the Earthly Paradise. The birds are probably thought of as transformed souls (see Mailduin, § 19), awaiting the Day of Judgment, who chant the divine services at their appointed times. The fact that the influence of the Earthly Paradise has been at work at one point in this description naturally suggests that perhaps the notable tree may be a borrowing of the Christian Tree of Life (observe that its fruit feeds the Other-World people). At the same time, it must be remembered that the Serglige description (which bears no distinct marks of Christian influence), though it speaks of many trees, singles out one as of special prominence. A single tree with singing birds may well have been a part of pagan Celtic Other-World lore. The occurrence of an Other-World tree, perhaps due to Christian influence, in a document as ancient as the Imram Brain, has an important bearing on the vexed question of the origin of the ash Yggdrasill and the Scandinavian Other-World landscape in general. Christian influence may have operated through Ireland. I wain. 85 In another stanza (§ 43) " a wood without decay and without defect " is spoken of. This reminds one of the tree in the Iiiain, whose leaves did not fade winter or summer. The Celtic Other-World landscape, indeed, so far as it can be recovered from these two extremely early tales, closely resembles the scenery at the Fountain Perilous in the Ivain. In both there is (i) a remarkable tree, (2) whose leaves do not decay, (4) standing near a well, and (5) filled with singing birds, (6) who are perform- ing a religious service. It will be observed that, except for the single feature (3) of the tree's having branches so thick that no rain could penetrate them, the list of important marks of the description in the Ivain would apply equally well to that of the Other-World landscape in these Irish tales. Even, therefore, if we were unable to trace this motive any farther, the probability that the scene in the Jvain is at bottom a rationalization of a Celtic Other-World land- scape would be very great. On the basis thus given, as has been said, it is entirely justifiable to assume that the birds singing psalms on Island 18 of the Mail- diiin, the souls in bird shape on the trees of Island 19, and the mar- vellous fountain of Island 20 must originally have been united in one landscape. A comparison of the later imrama establishes the truth of this inference beyond the possibility of doubt. In the Imram Snedgusa ocus Mic Riagla, which is preserved in a fourteenth-century MS.,^ but which has been shown by Zimmer ^ to have originated about the end of the ninth century or during the tenth, one of the adventures is as follows ° : Thereafter the wind wafts them to an island wherein was a great tree with beautiful birds on its branches. [Here follows a distinctly ecclesias- tical account of " a great bird with head of gold and wings of silver " that told them tales out of the life of Christ (§ 17). The next section resumes ;] 1 The Yellow Book of Lecan tH. 2. 16. T. C. D.). 2 Haupt's Zt., XXXIII, 218 ff. ' Quoted from the translation of Whitley Stokes, published, with the Irish text, in Revue Celtique, IX, 14-25. A summary of this tale is given by Zimmer, I.e., pp. 211-216. 86 A. C. L. Brown. " Melodious was the music of those birds a-singing psalms and canticles praising the Lord. For they were the birds of the Plain of Heaven and neither trunk nor leaf of that tree decays " (§ i8). In this passage occur, united, features i, 2, 5, and 6 of the descrip- tion in the Ivain. Moreover, between the phrase last quoted and a part of the account of the tree in the Ivain there is an almost verbal resemblance ' : Snedgus, § 18. YvAiN, vv. 384-385. And neither trunk nor leaf of that An toz tans la fuelle li dure, tree decays. Qu'il ne la pert por nul iver. In the Latin Navigatio Sancti Brandani, — which, as Zimmer has shown, ^ is based in great part on the Irish imrama (especially the Imram Mailduin), and is preserved in several MSS. considerably older than the time of Chretien, — occur the fountain, the tree, and the birds united in a single landscape, forming a parallel to the Ivain that, as Kolbing has remarked, cannot be purely accidental. In the Navigatio^ the voyagers arrive at an island which, as they have been previously informed,* is called Paradysus Avium. They find the mouth of a river, and with the aid of a rope they tow their boat up the 1 This and several other parallels discussed in the next few pages were pointed out by the late Professor Kolbing in an article entitled Christian von Troyes Yvain und die Brandanuslegende, in Zt. f. vergleich. Litteraturgeschichte, XI, 442-448. Kolbing justly felt that these coincidences could not be due to chance, but it did not occur to him that they proved a definite connection between the whole story of the Ivain and the imrama. He feels obliged to admit that Chretien, in his description of the landscape at the Fountain Perilous, must have borrowed from various pieces of imram literature (he did not trace the theme back to fairy mis- tress stories like the Serglige) ; but he does not attempt to explain why Chretien should have copied this material into his narrative. It is useless to the action and is scarcely the sort of ornament that a rationalizer like Chretien would have gone out of his way to adopt. Why should it appear in the Ivain unless it was thrust upon him by the original story ? 2 Haupfs Zt, XXXIII, 298. Zimmer dated the Navigatio not earlier than 1050; but Steinweg, Rom. Forsch., VII, 1-48, cites a MS. of about 1000. Kolbing, I.e., p. 443, gives as date " the second half of the twelfth century," ' Sanct Brandan, ed. C. Schroder, p. 11, 11. 19 ff. 4 P. 10,1. 18. I wain. 87 stream "dum ad fontem venerant ejusdem fluminis. . . . Erat autem Buper illo [sc. fonte] arbor mire latitudinis in gyrum et non magna altitu- dinis, cooperta avibus candidissimis : in tantum cooperuerunt illam, ut folia et rami ejus vix viderentur." One of these birds addresses Brandan and tells him that they are really spirits in bird shape.^ " Hie presentiam Dei non possumus videre, set in tantum alienavit nos a consortio aliorum qui steterunt, quia vagamur per diversas partes aeris et firmament! et terrarum sicut alii spiritus qui mittun- tur, sed in Sanctis diebus atque dominicis accipimus corpora talia qualia tu nunc vides, ut commoremur hie laudemusque nostrum creatorem." ... It is added ^ : " Cum autem vespertina hora appropinquasset, ceperunt omnes aves qui in arbore erant quasi una voce cantare percutientes latera sua atque dicentes : ' Te decet ymnus, Deus in Syon, et tibi reddetur votum in Jherusalem.' Et semper reciprocabant predictum versiculum quasi per spacium unius hore, et videbatur viro Dei et illis qui cum eo erant ilia mbdulatio ex sonis alarum quasi carmen planctus pro suavitate." Thus the birds sang at the various canonical hours : " ad terciam vigi- liam noctis," " ad vesperum," " cum aurora refulsisset," " ad nonam." " Ita die ac nocte aves reddebant Deo laudem." There are, as Kolbing has indicated, two remarkable verbal resem- blances between this description in the Navigatio and that in the Ivain : Navigatio, pp. 11,1. 31 ; 12, 11. 26 ff. YvAiN, vv. 462, 465 ff. Ut folia et rami ejus vix viderentur. Qu'il n'i paroit branche ne fuelle. Ceperunt omnes aves que in arbore Et trestuit li oisel chantoient, erant, quasi una voce cantare. Si que trestuit s'antracordoient. It is, moreover, clear that in both cases the birds are engaged in a religious service, for this must be the meaning of the expression in the Ivain: S'escoutai tant qu'il orent fet Lor servise trestot a tret (vv. 471-472).^ 1 P. 12, U. 16 ff. = P. 12, U. 26 ff. 2 Chretien's words might possibly mean " until they had finished their office or duty " ; but Kolbing points out that the phrase " feire servise " is regularly applied to a religious office, and compares the corresponding passage in the Ivens Saga, ii, 37 : ")>ar til er l>eir luku scjng sinum ok tiSum [the canonical hours] er >eir sungu." Cf. Kolbing, Ivens Saga, Halle, 1898, pp. 16-17, footnote. 88 A. C. L. Brow7i. There is an Anglo-Norman version of the Brandan story which was composed by Benedeit about the year 1 1 2 1 . The corresponding incident in this is also strikingly like the description in the Ivain. The most important of these resemblances, which are occasionally even verbal, may be conveniently indicated by an arrangement in parallel columns : Brandan,! yy ^g^ fj Al chef del duit out une arbre Itant blanche cume marbre E les fuiles mult sunt ledes De ruge blanc taceledes De haltece par vedue Muntout le arbre sur la nue Des le sumet desque en terra La brancheie mult la serre E ledement s'estent par I'air Umbraiet luin e tolt I'eclair Tute asise de blancs oiseus Unches nul hom ne vit tant beus. YvAiN, vv. 38s if. La fontainne verras, qui bout, S'est ele plus froide que marbres. Onbre li fet li plus biaus arbres Qu'onques poist feire nature. An toz tans la fuelle li dure, Qu'il ne la pert per nul iver. YvAiN, vv. 413 ff. Bien sai de I'arbre, c'est la fins, Que ce estoit li plus biaus pins Qui onques sor terre creiist. Ne cuit qu'onques si fort pleiist Que d'iaue i passast une gote, Eingois coloit par desus tote. YvAiN, vv. 459 ff. Des que li tans fu trespassez, Vi sor le pin tant amassez Oisiaus (s'est qui croire m'an vuelle), Qu'il n'i paroit branche ne fuelle. Que tot ne fust covert d'oisiaus, S'an estoit li arbres plus biaus ; Et trestuit li oisel chantoient Si que trestuit s'antracordoient : Mes divers chanz chantoit chascuns. 1 Quoted from Suchier's text, Rom. Stud., I, 553-588. For convenience, abbre- viations are here resolved and words are separated, but no punctuation has been attempted. Cf. Auracher's text, vv. 438 ff., Zt. f. rom. Phil., II, 444 ff. On the date of Benedeit's Brandan (about 1121), see Suchier, p. 553. With this date Kolbing (I.e., p. 444) agrees and also G. Paris (Rom., XXIX, 590, note i). I wain. 89 All of the chief features of the landscape at the Fountain Perilous are to be found in this Anglo-Norman Voyage of Brandan, including even the dense foliage of the tree,^ so that the summary which I have given of the features of the incident in the Ivain would apply equally well to the Anglo-Norman poem. In comparing the two narratives, Kolbing has directed attention to the identical rhyme-words ^ occur- ring at about the same point in the two episodes; also to the fact that in both the tree is described as especially adapted by the form of its branches for casting a shadow,^ and to the extraordinary height of the tree in the Brandan . De haltece par vedue Muntout le arbre sur la nue (vv. 493-494), which is paralleled in the reading of one of the manuscripts * of the Ivain : Que ce estoit li plus hauz pins Qui onques sor terra creiist (vv. 414-415), and in the corresponding verse in Hartmann's Iwein : Si ist breit hdch und als6 die daz regen noch der sunnen blic niemer dar durch kumt (vv. 575 ff.). From a comparison of these voyage-stories with the description of the scenery at the Fountain Perilous, Kolbing has come to the con- clusion that Chretien must have borrowed " dieses ganze Motiv von dem mit Vogeln dicht besetzten Baume " from the Brandan legend. He thinks the French poet must have had at hand the Navigatio, and probably also the Norman-French Brajidan, and that he certainly must have known the incident in the Imram Snedgus. 1 " La brancheie mult la serre " (v. 496). 2 Brandan, vv. 489-490, arbre, marire ; Yvain, vv. 381-382, marbres, arbres. ' Brandan, v. 498, "umbraie luin "; Yvain, v. 382, " Onbre li fet li plus biaus arbres." * This reading is more attractive than that adopted in the text of Foerster's editions, "11 plus biaus pins," which merely repeats v. 382 : "li plus biaus arbres." Kolbing thinks it certain that some texts of the Navigatio must have made the tree high (the version that we have reads " non magne altitudinis "), for in a frag- ment of an Old Norse version of the Brandan story the tree is called " einkar hatt " (Unger, Heilagra Manna Sogur, I, 275). go A. C. L. Brown. A moment's reflection will show that this is a very difficult hypothesis to maintain. Why should Chretien have pieced together his description from various stories ? The situation is not what it would be if the landscape formed an important element in Chretien's plot. In that case one might possibly argue that Chre'tien had been at great pains to put together his description from various hints. As it is, the accessories of the fountain (the tree, the birds, etc.) being mere ornaments, tending rather to interrupt the progress of the story, such a useless activity on his part is almost unthinkable. A far more probable inference to draw from the fact that Chre'tien seems at one point to agree with the description in one story, while at another point he agrees with that in another,^ is that we have not the particular originals that Chretien used, but only stories contain- ing the same theme, — namely, descriptions of the conventional land- scape of the Celtic Other World, which had become identified with that of the Earthly Paradise. This will explain the presence in the Ivain of numerous apparently petty and purely decorative details, without our assuming that Chretien purposely gathered them together out of different voyage-stories. Kolbing, who does not attempt to explain how this extraordinary landscape made its way into the Ivain, recognizes distinctly its Other-World character. He compares the monkish Visio Tnugdali, which was composed between 1150 and 1160.^ When Tundalus reached Paradise he found a scene unmistakably the same as that which we have traced in the Celtic imrama, in the Navigatio, and in the Ivain : Et respiciens vidlt unam arborem maximam at latissimam, frondibus et floribus viridissimam omniumque frugum generibus fertilissimam. In cujus frondibus, aves multe- diversorum colorum et diversarum vocum cantantes et organizantes morabantur, sub cujus etiam ramis lilia et rose multe nimis et cunctarum herbarum specierumque odiferarum genera oriebantur. 1 Thus the Ivain agrees with the Snedgus in the unfading leaves ascribed to the tree (a feature not mentioned in the Navigatio), while it agrees with the Navigatio in the birds' gathering so thickly that they obscure the branches and the leaves (a feature not mentioned in the Snedgus). 2 Ed. A. Wagner, p. 50. Wagner discusses the date of the Visio on page xxv. Iivain. g I The extraordinary size of the tree in this scene, the numerous birds, and especially their singing in harmony, form, taken together, a parallel that cannot be due to chance. This passage, and others that might be cited, prove that the scene whose development is now under discussion must have been well understood in Chretien's time as the conventional landscape of the Other World or the Earthly Paradise. There is, therefore, no reasonable hypothesis that will account for Chretien's insertion of this theme ad extra into his Ivain. There are many things that show that he minimized the marvellous character of the incidents he was relating. It would be absurd, then, to hold that he went out of his way to drag in the landscape of the Other World. Its occurrence in the Ivain must be a survival from that Celtic story of a journey to the Other World which, as the cumulative evidence of many other incidents tends to show, lay at the basis of the tale of Iwain. Practically every Celtic tale of a fairy mistress contains a descrip- tion of the Other-World landscape. We have studied such descrip- tions in the Serglige, the Bran, the Mailduin, the Snedgus, and the Adventures of Teigue. Similar descriptions are to be found in less ancient tales, such as the Imram curraig Hui Corra^ the Baile an 1 The Voyage of the Htli Corra exists in the Book of Ferjnoy, a fifteenth-century MS. It has been edited and translated by Stokes, Rev. Celt., XIV, 22-70. Stokes puts the composition of the tale in the eleventh century. Zimmer (ffaupt's Zt, XXXIII, 198) thinks it "not earlier than the twelfth century." A passage in the early part of this imram runs thus : " Thereafter I perceived that I was borne away to gaze at Heaven, and I per- ceived the Lord himself on his throne, and a bird-flock of angels making music to him. Then I saw a bright bird and sweeter was his singing than every melody. Now this was Michael in the form of a bird in the presence of the Creator " (§ 14). Later the voyagers come to what seems to be the Earthly Paradise : " Thereafter they row on for a, long while, till another wonderful island was shewn to them, with a beautiful bright grove of fragrant apple trees therein. A very beautiful river flowed through the midst of the grove. Now when the wind would move the tree tops of the grove, sweeter was their song than any music. The Hiii Corra ate somewhat of the apples and drank somewhat of the river of wine, so that they were straightway satisfied, and perceived not wound or disease in them "(§47). 92 A. C. L. Brown. Sceal^ the Echtra Cormaic,^ and many others. If, then, the material that Chrdtien used in writing his Ivain was essentially a Celtic fairy tale, he must almost certainly have found in it an account of the Other- World landscape. The occurrence, therefore, of unmistakable 1 The Baile na Scailis, an Other-World Journey found in a fourteenth-century MS. It must, however, be at least as old as the eleventh century, for it was known to Flann of Monasterboice, who died in 1056 (O'Curry, MS. Materials, pp. 387-389, and Appendix, p. cxxviii). In it the Other-World tree is particularly dwelt on : " A kingly rath they saw with a beautiful tree at the door." 2 The Echtra Cormaic i Tir Tairnffiri exists in no MS. older than the four- teenth century. The text, according to Zimmer (Haupt's Zt., XXXIII, 268) is at least somewhat older than that. It has been edited and translated by Stokes, Irische Texte, III, i, 183-212: One day Cormac was alone in the plain near Tara when he saw a gray-haired warrior coming to him. He had in his hand a branch which when shaken put every one who heard it to sleep by the melody which it made. " Whence hast thou come?" said Cormac. "From a land," he replied, "where there is naught save truth and where there is neither old age nor decay nor gloom." Cormac asked for the music-making branch and received it after promising to give the warrior in return whatever three boons he should ask. A year later the stranger reappeared and asked for Cormac's daughter, whom he took away with him. Again he came and took Cormac's son, and last of all his wife. Cormac endured this not, but followed after the stranger. He soon found himself alone on a plain with a wall of bronze around it. " He sees in the garth a shining fountain, with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn a-drinking its water. Nine hazels of Buan . . . drop their nuts into the fountain. . . . Now the sound of the faUing of those streams is more melodious than any music that (men) sing." Cormac entered the palace and found a noble warrior with the loveliest of the world's women. He was entertained and bathed without the aid of any attendants. " The (heated) stones (of themselves went) into and (came) out (of the water)." The warrior now brought forth Cormac's family and bestowed on him many gifts, saying; "I am Manannan mac Lir. To see the Land of Promise have I brought thee hither.'' After a banquet, all went to rest. When Cormac awoke in the morning, he found himself on the plain of Tara, and beside him were his wife, his son, and his daughter, and also all the presents that Manannan had given him. It will be remembered that, when Teigue reached the Other World, he found Connla established ' there as a prince, having beside him "the damsel of many charms that brought him thither.'' Now in the Dinnshenchas of Sinend in the Book of Lsinster (p. 156, a, 6) we read of an Other-World fountain called " Connla's Well " : Iwain. 93 traces of an Other-World landscape in the Ivain cannot but add much weight to the cumulative evidence of other incidents, which tends to show that the Ivain is at bottom a Celtic Other-World tale. The Other-World landscape, as it appears in even the older Irish tales, is evidently in part, perhaps in very great part, a product of Christian influences. This fact in no way militates against the hypothesis that the episode reached Chre'tien through Celtic chan- nels.^ The elements of the description, though perhaps in great " Sinend, daughter of Lodan mac Lir, out of the Land of Promise, went to Connla's Well, which is under sea. That is the well at which are the hazels of wisdom, that is, the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit, their blossom, and their foliage break forth." (See Rev. Celt., XV, 457.) Although this description may have been influenced by the classic fountain of the Muses, it certainly seems to show that, as early as 11 50, a part of the Other- World landscape was definitely connected with Connla. Perhaps the Echtra Condla existed once in a more complete form, in which the Other-World landscape was described. It will also be remembered that in the Adventures of Teigue, the hero, when he returns, is told that the Other World birds will go with him : " They will give you guidance and make you symphony and minstrelsy, and till again ye reach Ireland neither sadness or grief shall afflict you." These birds seem to be a part of the Other-World landscape, even if their guiding the hero suggests the possibility that classical influence has been at work in this passage. A guiding falcon is found in the Mailduin, § 34 (cf. .^neid, VI, 190 ff.). The birds of Riannon, the Other- World wife of Pwyll, should be compared at this point. In Branwen, Daughter of Llyr (Loth, Les Mabinogion, I, 91-93) Bran directs his followers to go to Harddlech, "where they will remain seven years at table while the birds of Rhiannon sing to them." They do as he tells them, and " three birds came and sang more beautifully than any birds they had ever heard. The birds kept far out over the sea, but they saw them as distinctly as if they were close at hand." This lasted for seven years. The birds in the last two passages, though probably at bottom a part of the apparatus of the Celtic Other World, have perhaps been influenced a good deal by non-Celtic tradition. Professor Kittredge has called to my attention the birds to which the Monk Felix listened. Felix fell asleep at their music, and, when he awoke and returned to his monastery, he found that he had been absent two hun- dred years. For the text of this story and for references, see Waitz, Gottinger GeselUchaft. d. Wiss., Hist.-phil. Classe, Abhandl., VIII, 7 ff. ; cf. Zt. f d. Phil., XIV, 96; XXVIII, 35 ff. 1 The same remark is to be made in general about the incidents discussed in this chapter. They have all been found as parts of Celtic fairy mistress story 94 A. C. L. Brown. part Christian, did not take their peculiar development except on Celtic ground. It is only on Celtic ground that stories written before the time of Chre'tien can be pointed out that contain all of the important features of the landscape at the Fountain Perilous. Few things are, therefore, more certain than that the marvellous landscape of Chretien's Fountain is derived from Celtic sources. The long line of parallels to this incident, running back at least to the eighth century, is enough to establish this beyond a reasonable doubt. CHAPTER IV {Concluded). ANCIENT CELTIC STORIES OF THE JOURNEY TO THE OTHER WORLD. VII. Conclusion. The result of the investigations in this chapter seems to be the complete establishment of all the parallels between the Ivain and the SergUge tentatively put forth on p. 44 above. The Marvellous Landscape at the Fountain Perilous has been shown to be the same as that in Labraid's isle. The Combat Motive in the Ivain has been exactly paralleled in an ancient Irish tale of the type of the SergUge. The Falling Gates have been traced by natural transitions to the Perilous-Passage Motive. The other parallels between the Ivain and the SergUge — the tale of a previous adventurer, the part played by the heroine's confidante, the departure of the hero to his own land, his broken faith, followed by his loss of the heroine and his madness — need no study to confirm their significance. before the time of Chretien. This is all that it is necessary to prove for our present purpose. That some of them are perhaps not of Celtic invention, but may have been early Celtic borrowings from what one writer has called " the common stock of European folk-lore," is of no consequence in the present argument, which is concerned with the question of Chretien's immediate sources. I wain. Qc These coincidences between Chre'tien's Ivain and a single par- ticular type of ancient Irish and Welsh story cannot reasonably be regarded as due to chance. The Ivain must in origin be a Celtic story of a Journey to the Other World, of the type conveniently represented by the Serglige Conculaind. CHAPTER V. LATER CELTIC STORIES OF THE JOURNEY TO THE OTHER WORLD. In the great collection of tales called The Colloquy with the Men of Old (Acallamh na Setibrach), preserved in manuscripts of the fifteenth century/ there is a story of the Journey to the Other World which illustrates very well the partial rationalization which the older themes generally undergo when they pass through the hands of later redactors. In this tale the Other-World heroine is repre- sented as the daughter of the arch-ollave of Manannan mac Lir, and the hero is said to have eloped with her. These rather stupid attempts at rationalization^ do not, however, prevent the original fairy character of the lady from coming out distinctly. Though the story in the Acallamh is only an episode, it will be convenient to give it a title from the name of the hero : ^ The fragments occurring in the Book of Lismore (including this tale) are printed by O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 94-234 (translation, II, 101-265). The whole Acallamh has since been edited, from four MSS., by Stokes, Irische Texte, IV, i, 1-438, with a translation of such passages as are not found in the Book of Lismore. The story which here concerns us is considerably older than the fifteenth century. ^ The fact that the tale has suffered rationalization goes to show that its original form must be old. 96 A. C. L. Brown. THE STORY OF CIABA.N.1 Ciabdn put to sea with two strangers in a boat. Caught in a dreadful storm, the voyagers were like to perish when they saw a horseman on a dark green steed with a golden bridle, riding over the waves. He took the three travellers up on the back of his horse, while the boat floated along beside, and in this way they came to the Land of Promise (77>- Thairrn- gaire). There they dismounted and went to Manannd.n's cathair (stone fort), " in which an end had just been made of ordering a banqueting hall for them." ^ " All four were served there : their horns and their cups were raised : comely dark-eyed gillies went round with smooth polished horns : sweet-stringed timpans were played by them and most melodious dulcet- chorded harps, until the whole house was flooded with music." " Now in the Land of Promise, Mananndn possessed an arch-oUave that had three daughters. The three travellers eloped with these three daughters." Ciabdn carried off the one named Clidna and reached Ireland with her. Although in this tale the fairy character of the lady has been lost sight of, yet in some verses that are sung she is called "the queen of the distant gathering," an apparent survival of her primitive exalted position. The incident of meeting Manannan on the sea is found in the oldest tales. In the Serglige and the Bran, however, Manannan drives a chariot. Horseback riding is probably a later feature, though' not necessarily very late. Loegaire, according to the Book of Leinster, returned from the Other World on horseback. In Celtic story the Other World is reached either in a marvellous ship, which is presumably the earlier motive, or by means of a horse that travels on the sea as well as on the land.^ The tale of Ciaban is interesting as showing one motive as it were in process of trans- formation into the other. The travellers start in a boat,* but finish their journey on the back of a horse. 1 Summarized from O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, II, 198-201. For text, see Stokes, Irische Texte, IV, i, 106 ff. 2 I.e. the coming of the travellers is expected, as is always the case in the Other World. » For example, in the Fate of the Children of Tuirean, Lugh is said to have had Manannan's steed Enbarr, which travelled equally well by sea or by land. ^ A marvellous self-moving boat as a means of communication with the Other World appears in the fairy mistress story of Becuma (summarized by Todd, from Twain. c^^j There are numbers of later Irish Other- World stories belonging to the type exemplified in the older literature by the Serglige, the Loegaire, and the Welsh Pwyll and Arawn. In these stories, it will be remembered, the hero is in each case invited to the Other World by a fairy chieftain, who is oppressed by a mysterious enemy and needs the aid of a mortal hero to free him from his foe. As a reward, the hero in every case is promised and receives the hand of 2i.fie. The precise form in which the stories of this type have been handed down to us can only be explained, I think, by assuming that they have suffered more or less at the hands of rationalizers, who have modified the original relations of the supernatural actors to make them conform to ordinary human situations. All the Celtic fairy stories, with the exception of the Echtra Condla, show traces of having been influenced by a general tendency to represent the fairy folk as merely human beings living in a marvellous or distant land. Fairy relationships are interpreted after a strictly human pattern.^ Liban, the messenger of Fand, is made the wife of Labraid, a king of the Other World. "Yh&fee in the tale of Loegaire is repre- sented as the daughter of Fiachna, whom he bestows in marriage just as any earthly monarch would bestow his daughter. The Other World is often identified with the Isle of Man or the Hebrides or some other remote land. In the more modern stories this process has gone so far that the Other World is commonly represented as Greece, and the heroine, whose fairy character has been forgotten, the Book of Fermoy, a fifteenth-century MS., R.I.A., Irish MS. Series, I, 38 ff.). Manannan appears in this tale as a chieftain of the Tuatha de Danan. The tale of Finn and Bebend in the Acallamh na Sendrach should also be compared (Stokes, Irische Texte, IV, i, 164 ff. ; translation, O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, II, 238-242), where an Other-World personage escapes in a mysterious boat across the sea. Bebend (Behind), a lady of supernatural beauty, visits Finn. She declares that she has come from the Land of Maidens across the Western Sea. She is the daughter of the king of that land, "who has nine daughters and one hundred and forty maidens." " There are no men there except the king and his three sons." 1 It should be remembered that none of these story texts are much older, in their present form, than the tenth century. By that time the Irish had long been Christians, and doubtless already their conceptions of the fairies were becoming ■confused. 98 A. C. L. Brown. is called the daughter of the king of Athens. Sorcha ^ (Portugal) is another name applied to what must have been at first the Other World, while Tirfd Thuinn ^ is even explained as Holland. If we make allowances for this progressive euhemerization, a more primitive form of the type of story now under discussion may be reconstructed as follows : The fte was probably always represented as supreme. She falls in love with a mortal and sends one of her maidens to invite him to her land. Several adventurers thereupon set out, but the fke appoints one of her creatures to guard the passage. Naturally, no one overcomes this opposing warrior but the destined hero, who is rewarded by the possession of Xh&fke. But to the exalted character of the fte is joined a requirement of absolute obedience to her commands. Very often the hero offends in some way and is punished by instant dismissal. If he ever returns, it is only after many adventures. If this be not the primitive form of the type of story with which we are dealing, how can one explain the fact that Labraid does not send some one of his officers to invite Cuchulinn to his land, espe- cially after Cuchulinn has objected to going on the invitation of a woman ? The coming of a woman, Liban, is an evident survival from an older form of the story, in which the fte and her maidens were the only real actors. Again, if this be not the original form of stories of this type, how can one explain the fact that Arawn offers his wife to Pwyll ? " I will give thee the most beautiful woman thou hast ever seen to sleep with thee every night." This is a natural development if Arawn was at first only the creature of the fie, employed by her to lure the mortal on whom she had set her fancy to the Other World. The ruthless way, in the Tale of Curoi, in which Blathnat marries Cuchulinn after the death of her husband, may also be taken as an indication that the giant was originally only a creature of the fte. Of course, neither in the Tale of Curoi nor in any of the other tales just mentioned could the opposing warrior, in the most primi- tive form of the story, have been really slain. He was an Other- 1 See Douglas Hyde, The Lad of the Ferule, p. xiv, note. 2 " The Land beneath the Waves." See Hyde, p. 23, note. Twain. gg, World being, like the fee, and like her essentially immortal. This is clearly indicated in the case of Curoi, who, as we know from the F/ed Bricrend, was thrice beheaded, but each time returned the next day as strong as ever. All of these supernatural creatures of the fee, Manannan, Arawn, Curoi, are shape-shifters. The opposing warrior is only apparently slain by the hero, not really put out of the way. The combat was in origin only a test of valor. Its object was to give the hero a chance to prove that he was worthy of the love of a fee. When, however, the fairy nature of the Other- World people became more and more forgotten, the combat was regarded as a battle in earnest to get rid of a powerful opponent. The female fees were shorn of their absolute power, and men were introduced to play the leading parts, as on earth. Hence would naturally arise a situation like that in the SergUge, where the Other-World king is represented as oppressed by a foe and as sending for Cuchulinn to help him. The reward he promises is the hand of a fee, who is more or less rationalized and is represented as his sister-in-law. A slightly dif- ferent turn in the rationalization would give the situation in the Loegaire, where the fairy king presents his daughter to the 'mortal hero who comes to his aid. Another and very natural turn would represent the Other-World power employed by the fk to test the hero's valor, as her husband.' This would give the situation in Pwyll and Arawn, in the Tale of Curoi, and, I may add, in the story of Laudine and Esclados.-' ' The creature of the_/% may have been thought of in the earliest times as her paramour, not of course as her husband in any strict sense,^or the conventional relations of human marriage would not have been strictly applied to distinctly supernatural beings such as the primitive fairies undoubtedly were. Even if this supernatural being, really a god, were her paramour, she might have tired of him, as is hinted in the story of Fand and Manannan, and employed him to lure to her an earthly hero to take his place. In any case, it is easy to see how the creature of the/^if, presumably a giant, might be rationalized into her husband or her oppressor. '^ Important confirmation of the truth of this development is found in the curiously jumbled incident of La foie de la Cort in Chretien's Erec. The lady (represented as an enchantress), who is of course a rationalized /A', is said to have persuaded her lover to enter a garden surrounded by a mysterious wall of air, and lOO A. C. L. Brown. There are, then, in stories of the type represented by the Serglige and the Tale of Curoi but two original Other- World actors of any consequence : the fee and the shape-shifter. In the earlier form of tales of this type, the fee, we may assume, made use of the shape- shifter to guide the mortal hero on his way to the Other World and to test his valor before he was admitted there. In the form in which they have come down to us, the tendency to represent the fairy man as superior to the fk has asserted itself. The shape-shifter is dis- tressed by a powerful enemy, from whom he can be delivered only by a mortal hero. He therefore, of his own accord, seeks out and guides to the Other World the appropriate hero, and as a reward for his services bestows on him the/