Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race Part 25

At nightfall they sighted a land like Ireland; and soon came to a small island, where they ran their prow ash.o.r.e. It was the island where dwelt the man who had slain Ailill.

They went up to the dun that was on the island, and heard men talking within it as they sat at meat. One man said:

It would be ill for us if we saw Maeldun now.

That Maeldun has been drowned, said another.

Maybe it is he who shall waken you from sleep to-night, said a third.

If he should come now, said a fourth, what should we do?

Not hard to answer that, said the chief of them. Great welcome should he have if he were to come, for he hath been a long s.p.a.ce in great tribulation.

Then Maeldun smote with the wooden clapper against the door. Who is there? asked the doorkeeper.

Maeldun is here, said he.

They entered the house in peace, and great welcome was made for them, and they were arrayed in new garments. And then they told the story of all the marvels that G.o.d had shown them, according to the words of the sacred poet, who said, _Haec olim meminisse juvabit._(203)

Then Maeldun went to his own home and kindred, and Diuran the Rhymer took with him the piece of silver that he had hewn from the net of the pillar, and laid it on the high altar of Armagh in triumph and exultation at the miracles that G.o.d had wrought for them. And they told again the story of all that had befallen them, and all the marvels they had seen by sea and land, and the perils they had endured.

The story ends with the following words:

Now Aed the Fair [Aed Finn(204)], chief sage of Ireland, arranged this story as it standeth here; and he did so for a delight to the mind, and for the folks of Ireland after him.

CHAPTER VIII: MYTHS AND TALES OF THE CYMRY

*Bardic Philosophy*

The absence in early Celtic literature of any world-myth, or any philosophic account of the origin and const.i.tution of things, was noticed at the opening of our third chapter. In Gaelic literature there is, as far as I know, nothing which even pretends to represent early Celtic thought on this subject. It is otherwise in Wales. Here there has existed for a considerable time a body of teaching purporting to contain a portion, at any rate, of that ancient Druidic thought which, as Caesar tells us, was communicated only to the initiated, and never written down. This teaching is princ.i.p.ally to be found in two volumes ent.i.tled Barddas, a compilation made from materials in his possession by a Welsh bard and scholar named Llewellyn Sion, of Glamorgan, towards the end of the sixteenth century, and edited, with a translation, by J.A. Williams ap Ithel for the Welsh MS. Society. Modern Celtic scholars pour contempt on the pretensions of works like this to enshrine any really antique thought.

Thus Mr. Ivor B. John: All idea of a bardic esoteric doctrine involving pre-Christian mythic philosophy must be utterly discarded. And again: The nonsense talked upon the subject is largely due to the uncritical invention of pseudo-antiquaries of the sixteenth to seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.(205) Still the bardic Order was certainly at one time in possession of such a doctrine. That Order had a fairly continuous existence in Wales. And though no critical thinker would build with any confidence a theory of pre-Christian doctrine on a doc.u.ment of the sixteenth century, it does not seem wise to scout altogether the possibility that some fragments of antique lore may have lingered even so late as that in bardic tradition.

At any rate, Barddas is a work of considerable philosophic interest, and even if it represents nothing but a certain current of Cymric thought in the sixteenth century it is not unworthy of attention by the student of things Celtic. Purely Druidic it does not even profess to be, for Christian personages and episodes from Christian history figure largely in it. But we come occasionally upon a strain of thought which, whatever else it may be, is certainly not Christian, and speaks of an independent philosophic system.

In this system two primary existences are contemplated, G.o.d and Cythrawl, who stand respectively for the principle of energy tending towards life, and the principle of destruction tending towards nothingness. Cythrawl is realised in Annwn,(206) which may be rendered, the Abyss, or Chaos. In the beginning there was nothing but G.o.d and Annwn. Organised life began by the WordG.o.d p.r.o.nounced His ineffable Name and the Manred was formed. The Manred was the primal substance of the universe. It was conceived as a mult.i.tude of minute indivisible particlesatoms, in facteach being a microcosm, for G.o.d is complete in each of them, while at the same time each is a part of G.o.d, the Whole. The totality of being as it now exists is represented by three concentric circles. The innermost of them, where life sprang from Annwn, is called Abred, and is the stage of struggle and evolutionthe contest of life with Cythrawl. The next is the circle of Gwynfyd, or Purity, in which life is manifested as a pure, rejoicing force, having attained its triumph over evil. The last and outermost circle is called Ceugant, or Infinity. Here all predicates fail us, and this circle, represented graphically not by a bounding line, but by divergent rays, is inhabited by G.o.d alone. The following extract from Barddas, in which the alleged bardic teaching is conveyed in catechism form, will serve to show the order of ideas in which the writers mind moved:

[The Circles of Being]

The Circles of Being

Q. Whence didst thou proceed?

A. I came from the Great World, having my beginning in Annwn.

Q. Where art thou now? and how camest thou to what thou art?

A. I am in the Little World, whither I came having traversed the circle of Abred, and now I am a Man, at its termination and extreme limits.

Q. What wert thou before thou didst become a man, in the circle of Abred?

A. I was in Annwn the least possible that was capable of life and the nearest possible to absolute death; and I came in every form and through every form capable of a body and life to the state of man along the circle of Abred, where my condition was severe and grievous during the age of ages, ever since I was parted in Annwn from the dead, by the gift of G.o.d, and His great generosity, and His unlimited and endless love.

Q. Through how many different forms didst thou come, and what happened unto thee?

A. Through every form capable of life, in water, in earth, in air. And there happened unto me every severity, every hards.h.i.+p, every evil, and every suffering, and but little was the goodness or Gwynfyd before I became a man.... Gwynfyd cannot be obtained without seeing and knowing everything, but it is not possible to see or to know everything without suffering everything.... And there can be no full and perfect love that does not produce those things which are necessary to lead to the knowledge that causes Gwynfyd.

Every being, we are told, shall attain to the circle of Gwynfyd at last.(207)

There is much here that reminds us of Gnostic or Oriental thought. It is certainly very unlike Christian orthodoxy of the sixteenth century. As a product of the Cymric mind of that period the reader may take it for what it is worth, without troubling himself either with antiquarian theories or with their refutations.

Let us now turn to the really ancient work, which is not philosophic, but creative and imaginative, produced by British bards and fabulists of the Middle Ages. But before we go on to set forth what we shall find in this literature we must delay a moment to discuss one thing which we shall not.

*The Arthurian Saga*

For the majority of modern readers who have not made any special study of the subject, the mention of early British legend will inevitably call up the glories of the Arthurian Sagathey will think of the fabled palace at Caerleon-on-Usk, the Knights of the Round Table riding forth on chivalrous adventure, the Quest of the Grail, the guilty love of Lancelot, flower of knighthood, for the queen, the last great battle by the northern sea, the voyage of Arthur, sorely wounded, but immortal, to the mystic valley of Avalon. But as a matter of fact they will find in the native literature of medival Wales little or nothing of all thisno Round Table, no Lancelot, no Grail-Quest, no Isle of Avalon, until the Welsh learned about them from abroad; and though there was indeed an Arthur in this literature, he is a wholly different being from the Arthur of what we now call the Arthurian Saga.

*Nennius*

The earliest extant mention of Arthur is to be found in the work of the British historian Nennius, who wrote his Historia Britonum about the year 800. He derives his authority from various sourcesancient monuments and writings of Britain and of Ireland (in connexion with the latter country he records the legend of Partholan), Roman annals, and chronicles of saints, especially St. Germa.n.u.s. He presents a fantastically Romanised and Christianised view of British history, deriving the Britons from a Trojan and Roman ancestry. His account of Arthur, however, is both sober and brief. Arthur, who, according to Nennius, lived in the sixth century, was not a king; his ancestry was less n.o.ble than that of many other British chiefs, who, nevertheless, for his great talents as a military _Imperator_, or _dux bellorum_, chose him for their leader against the Saxons, whom he defeated in twelve battles, the last being at Mount Badon.

Arthurs office was doubtless a relic of Roman military organisation, and there is no reason to doubt his historical existence, however impenetrable may be the veil which now obscures his valiant and often triumphant battlings for order and civilisation in that disastrous age.

*Geoffrey of Monmouth*

Next we have Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph, who wrote his Historia Regum Britani in South Wales in the early part of the twelfth century. This work is an audacious attempt to make sober history out of a ma.s.s of mythical or legendary matter mainly derived, if we are to believe the author, from an ancient book brought by his uncle Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, from Brittany. The mention of Brittany in this connexion is, as we shall see, very significant. Geoffrey wrote expressly to commemorate the exploits of Arthur, who now appears as a king, son of Uther Pendragon and of Igerna, wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, to whom Uther gained access in the shape of her husband through the magic arts of Merlin. He places the beginning of Arthurs reign in the year 505, recounts his wars against the Saxons, and says he ultimately conquered not only all Britain, but Ireland, Norway, Gaul, and Dacia, and successfully resisted a demand for tribute and homage from the Romans. He held his court at Caerleon-on-Usk. While he was away on the Continent carrying on his struggle with Rome his nephew Modred usurped his crown and wedded his wife Guanhumara. Arthur, on this, returned, and after defeating the traitor at Winchester slew him in a last battle in Cornwall, where Arthur himself was sorely wounded (A.D. 542). The queen retired to a convent at Caerleon.

Before his death Arthur conferred his kingdom on his kinsman Constantine, and was then carried off mysteriously to the isle of Avalon to be cured, and the rest is silence. Arthurs magic sword Caliburn (Welsh _Caladvwlch_; see p. 224, note) is mentioned by Geoffrey and described as having been made in Avalon, a word which seems to imply some kind of fairyland, a Land of the Dead, and may be related to the Norse _Valhall_.

It was not until later times that Avalon came to be identified with an actual site in Britain (Glas...o...b..ry). In Geoffreys narrative there is nothing about the Holy Grail, or Lancelot, or the Round Table, and except for the allusion to Avalon the mystical element of the Arthurian saga is absent. Like Nennius, Geoffrey finds a fantastic cla.s.sical origin for the Britons. His so-called history is perfectly worthless as a record of fact, but it has proved a veritable mine for poets and chroniclers, and has the distinction of having furnished the subject for the earliest English tragic drama, Gorboduc, as well as for Shakespeares King Lear; and its author may be described as the fatherat least on its quasi-historical sideof the Arthurian saga, which he made up partly out of records of the historical _dux bellorum_ of Nennius and partly out of poetical amplifications of these records made in Brittany by the descendants of exiles from Wales, many of whom fled there at the very time when Arthur was waging his wars against the heathen Saxons. Geoffreys book had a wonderful success. It was speedily translated into French by Wace, who wrote Li Romans de Brut about 1155, with added details from Breton sources, and translated from Waces French into Anglo-Saxon by Layamon, who thus antic.i.p.ated Malorys adaptations of late French prose romances.

Except a few scholars who protested unavailingly, no one doubted its strict historical truth, and it had the important effect of giving to early British history a new dignity in the estimation of Continental and of English princes. To sit upon the throne of Arthur was regarded as in itself a glory by Plantagenet monarchs who had not a trace of Arthurs or of any British blood.

*The Saga in Brittany: Marie de France*

The Breton sources must next be considered. Unfortunately, not a line of ancient Breton literature has come down to us, and for our knowledge of it we must rely on the appearances it makes in the work of French writers.

One of the earliest of these is the Anglo-Norman poetess who called herself Marie de France, and who wrote about 1150 and afterwards. She wrote, among other things, a number of Lais, or tales, which she explicitly and repeatedly tells us were translated or adapted from Breton sources. Sometimes she claims to have rendered a writers original exactly:

Les contes que jo sai verais Dunt li Bretun unt fait les lais Vos conterai a.s.sez briefment; Et cief [sauf] di cest coumencement Selunc la lettre lescriture.

Little is actually said about Arthur in these tales, but the events of them are placed in his time_en cel tems tint Artus la terre_and the allusions, which include a mention of the Round Table, evidently imply a general knowledge of the subject among those to whom these Breton Lais were addressed. Lancelot is not mentioned, but there is a Lai about one Lanval, who is beloved by Arthurs queen, but rejects her because he has a fairy mistress in the isle dAvalon. Gawain is mentioned, and an episode is told in the Lai de Chevrefoil about Tristan and Iseult, whose maid, Brangien, is referred to in a way which a.s.sumes that the audience knew the part she had played on Iseults bridal night. In short, we have evidence here of the existence in Brittany of a well-diffused and well-developed body of chivalric legend gathered about the personality of Arthur. The legends are so well known that mere allusions to characters and episodes in them are as well understood as references to Tennysons Idylls would be among us to-day. The Lais of Marie de France therefore point strongly to Brittany as the true cradle of the Arthurian saga, on its chivalrous and romantic side. They do not, however, mention the Grail.

*Chrestien de Troyes*

Lastly, and chiefly, we have the work of the French poet Chrestien de Troyes, who began in 1165 to translate Breton Lais, like Marie de France, and who practically brought the Arthurian saga into the poetic literature of Europe, and gave it its main outline and character. He wrote a Tristan (now lost). He (if not Walter Map) introduced Lancelot of the Lake into the story; he wrote a _Conte del Graal_, in which the Grail legend and Perceval make their first appearance, though he left the story unfinished, and does not tell us what the Grail really was.(208) He also wrote a long _conte daventure_ ent.i.tled Erec, containing the story of Geraint and Enid. These are the earliest poems we possess in which the Arthur of chivalric legend comes prominently forward. What were the sources of Chrestien? No doubt they were largely Breton. Troyes is in Champagne, which had been united to Blois in 1019 by Eudes, Count of Blois, and reunited again after a period of dispossession by Count Theobald de Blois in 1128. Marie, Countess of Champagne, was Chrestiens patroness. And there were close connexions between the ruling princes of Blois and of Brittany. Alain II., a Duke of Brittany, had in the tenth century married a sister of the Count de Blois, and in the first quarter of the thirteenth century Jean I. of Brittany married Blanche de Champagne, while their daughter Alix married Jean de Chastillon, Count of Blois, in 1254. It is highly probable, therefore, that through minstrels who attended their Breton lords at the court of Blois, from the middle of the tenth century onward, a great many Breton Lais and legends found their way into French literature during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. But it is also certain that the Breton legends themselves had been strongly affected by French influences, and that to the _Matire de France_, as it was called by medival writers(209)_i.e._, the legends of Charlemagne and his Paladinswe owe the Table Round and the chivalric inst.i.tutions ascribed to Arthurs court at Caerleon-on-Usk.

*Bleheris*