Part 26 (1/2)

It must not be forgotten that (as Miss Jessie L. Weston has emphasised in her invaluable studies on the Arthurian saga) Gautier de Denain, the earliest of the continuators or re-workers of Chrestien de Troyes, mentions as his authority for stories of Gawain one Bleheris, a poet born and bred in Wales. This forgotten bard is believed to be identical with _famosus ille fabulator, Bledhericus,_ mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis, and with the Brris quoted by Thomas of Brittany as an authority for the Tristan story.

*Conclusion as to the Origin of the Arthurian Saga*

In the absence, however, of any information as to when, or exactly what, Bleheris wrote, the opinion must, I think, hold the field that the Arthurian saga, as we have it now, is not of Welsh, nor even of pure Breton origin. The Welsh exiles who colonised part of Brittany about the sixth century must have brought with them many stories of the historical Arthur. They must also have brought legends of the Celtic deity Artaius, a G.o.d to whom altars have been found in France. These personages ultimately blended into one, even as in Ireland the Christian St. Brigit blended with the pagan G.o.ddess Brigindo.(210) We thus get a mythical figure combining something of the exaltation of a G.o.d with a definite habitation on earth and a place in history. An Arthur saga thus arose, which in its Breton (though not its Welsh) form was greatly enriched by material drawn in from the legends of Charlemagne and his peers, while both in Brittany and in Wales it became a centre round which cl.u.s.tered a ma.s.s of floating legendary matter relating to various Celtic personages, human and divine.

Chrestien de Troyes, working on Breton material, ultimately gave it the form in which it conquered the world, and in which it became in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries what the Faust legend was in later times, the accepted vehicle for the ideals and aspirations of an epoch.

*The Saga in Wales*

From the Continent, and especially from Brittany, the story of Arthur came back into Wales transformed and glorified. The late Dr. Heinrich Zimmer, in one of his luminous studies of the subject, remarks that In Welsh literature we have definite evidence that the South-Welsh prince, Rhys ap Tewdwr, who had been in Brittany, brought from thence in the year 1070 the knowledge of Arthurs Round Table to Wales, where of course it had been hitherto unknown.(211) And many Breton lords are known to have followed the banner of William the Conqueror into England.(212) The introducers of the saga into Wales found, however, a considerable body of Arthurian matter of a very different character already in existence there. Besides the traditions of the historical Arthur, the _dux bellorum_ of Nennius, there was the Celtic deity, Artaius. It is probably a reminiscence of this deity whom we meet with under the name of Arthur in the only genuine Welsh Arthurian story we possess, the story of Kilhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogion. Much of the Arthurian saga derived from Chrestien and other Continental writers was translated and adapted in Wales as in other European countries, but as a matter of fact it made a later and a lesser impression in Wales than almost anywhere else. It conflicted with existing Welsh traditions, both historical and mythological; it was full of matter entirely foreign to the Welsh spirit, and it remained always in Wales something alien and una.s.similated. Into Ireland it never entered at all.

These few introductory remarks do not, of course, profess to contain a discussion of the Arthurian sagaa vast subject with myriad ramifications, historical, mythological, mystical, and what notbut are merely intended to indicate the relation of that saga to genuine Celtic literature and to explain why we shall hear so little of it in the following accounts of Cymric myths and legends. It was a great spiritual myth which, arising from the composite source above described, overran all the Continent, as its hero was supposed to have done in armed conquest, but it cannot be regarded as a special possession of the Celtic race, nor is it at present extant, except in the form of translation or adaptation, in any Celtic tongue.

*Gaelic and Cymric Legend Compared*

The myths and legends of the Celtic race which have come down to us in the Welsh language are in some respects of a different character from those which we possess in Gaelic. The Welsh material is nothing like as full as the Gaelic, nor so early. The tales of the Mabinogion are mainly drawn from the fourteenth-century ma.n.u.script ent.i.tled The Red Book of Hergest.

One of them, the romance of Taliesin, came from another source, a ma.n.u.script of the seventeenth century. The four oldest tales in the Mabinogion are supposed by scholars to have taken their present shape in the tenth or eleventh century, while several Irish tales, like the story of Etain and Midir or the Death of Conary, go back to the seventh or eighth. It will be remembered that the story of the invasion of Partholan was known to Nennius, who wrote about the year 800. As one might therefore expect, the mythological elements in the Welsh romances are usually much more confused and harder to decipher than in the earlier of the Irish tales. The mythic interest has grown less, the story interest greater; the object of the bard is less to hand down a sacred text than to entertain a princes court. We must remember also that the influence of the Continental romances of chivalry is clearly perceptible in the Welsh tales; and, in fact, comes eventually to govern them completely.

*Gaelic and Continental Romance*

In many respects the Irish Celt antic.i.p.ated the ideas of these romances.

The lofty courtesy shown to each other by enemies,(213) the fantastic pride which forbade a warrior to take advantage of a wounded adversary,(214) the extreme punctilio with which the duties or observances proper to each mans caste or station were observed(215)all this tone of thought and feeling which would seem so strange to us if we met an instance of it in cla.s.sical literature would seem quite familiar and natural in Continental romances of the twelfth and later centuries.

Centuries earlier than that it was a marked feature in Gaelic literature.

Yet in the Irish romances, whether Ultonian or Ossianic, the element which has since been considered the most essential motive in a romantic tale is almost entirely lacking. This is the element of love, or rather of woman-wors.h.i.+p. The Continental fabulist felt that he could do nothing without this motive of action. But the lady-love of the English, French, or German knight, whose favour he wore, for whose grace he endured infinite hards.h.i.+p and peril, does not meet us in Gaelic literature. It would have seemed absurd to the Irish Celt to make the plot of a serious story hinge on the kind of pa.s.sion with which the mediaeval Dulcinea inspired her faithful knight. In the two most famous and popular of Gaelic love-tales, the tale of Deirdre and The Pursuit of Dermot and Grania, the women are the wooers, and the men are most reluctant to commit what they know to be the folly of yielding to them. Now this romantic, chivalric kind of love, which idealised woman into a G.o.ddess, and made the service of his lady a sacred duty to the knight, though it never reached in Wales the height which it did in Continental and English romances, is yet clearly discernible there. We can trace it in Kilhwch and Olwen, which is comparatively an ancient tale. It is well developed in later stories like Peredur and The Lady of the Fountain. It is a symptom of the extent to which, in comparison with the Irish, Welsh literature had lost its pure Celtic strain and become affectedI do not, of course, say to its lossby foreign influences.

*Gaelic and Cymric Mythology: Nudd*

The oldest of the Welsh tales, those called The Four Branches of the Mabinogi,(216) are the richest in mythological elements, but these occur in more or less recognisable form throughout nearly all the mediaeval tales, and even, after many trans.m.u.tations, in Malory. We can clearly discern certain mythological figures common to all Celtica. We meet, for instance, a personage called Nudd or Lludd, evidently a solar deity. A temple dating from Roman times, and dedicated to him under the name of Nodens, has been discovered at Lydney, by the Severn. On a bronze plaque found near the spot is a representation of the G.o.d. He is encircled by a halo and accompanied by flying spirits and by Tritons. We are reminded of the Danaan deities and their close connexion with the sea; and when we find that in Welsh legend an epithet is attached to Nudd, meaning of the Silver Hand (though no extant Welsh legend tells the meaning of the epithet), we have no difficulty in identifying this Nudd with Nuada of the Silver Hand, who led the Danaans in the battle of Moytura.(217) Under his name Lludd he is said to have had a temple on the site of St. Pauls in London, the entrance to which, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, was called in the British tongue _Parth Lludd_, which the Saxons translated _Ludes Geat_, our present Ludgate.

G.o.dS OF THE HOUSE OF DON

Manogan Mathonwy

+---------+------+

Beli-------+------Don Math (Death,

(Mother-G.o.ddess, (wealth, Irish Bil)

Irish Dana) increase)

+----------------+------+--+--------+-------+--------+--------+------+

Gwydion-----+----Arianrod

Amaethon

Nudd

Nynniaw (Science and

(”Silver-

(agriculture)

or Ludd

and Peibaw light; slayer

circle,” Dawn-

(Sky-G.o.d)

of Pryderi)

G.o.ddess)

Gilvaethwy Govannan

Penardun

(smith-craft,

(_m_. Llyr)

Irish Goban)

+--------+---+---------+

Gwyn Nwyvre Llew Dylan (Warder of (atmosphere, Llaw (Sea-G.o.d) Hades, called s.p.a.ce) Gyffes ”Avalon” in (Sun-G.o.d, Somerset) the Irish Lugh)

G.o.dS OF THE HOUSE OF LLYR

Iweriad --+-- Llyr --+-- Penardun --+-- Euroswydd (=Ireland--_i.e.,_

(Irish

(dau. of

western land

Lir)

Don)

of Hades)

+---------+---------+

+--------+----------+

Branwen--+--Matholwch

Nissyen Evnissyen

(Love-