[139] Kynddelw’s triad does not really refer to the “blessed” families at all, but to the “faithful” or “loyal” families. Stephen’s mistake arose from the fact of the name Madawc occurring in two sets of triads, one relating to the “lordly” families of Britain in which the family of Llyr Llediath also figures, and one to the faithful families. In both triads the name is probably a mistake for Mabon. (Note communicated by Professor Rhys.)
I let the statement in the text stand, to exhort myself and others to that fear of trusting authorities which in scholarship is the beginning of wisdom.
[140] Professor Rhys tells me this passage can only mean “Blessed Bran’s head.”
[141] Mr. Ward endorses Zarncke’s contention. According to him there is no trace of any connection between Joseph and the evangelisation of Britain which can be said to be older than the romances. The statements of the “De ant. eccl. Glast.” are, he thinks, no guide to the knowledge or opinions of William of Malmesbury.
[142] I may here notice a theory to which my attention has only just been called. It is found cited in a work of great research, Die Fronica, by Professor Karl Pearson, Strassburg, 1887. The author quotes an opinion of Mr. Jenner, of the British Museum, that the head in the platter of the Mabinogi may be derived from a Veronica portrait. Professor Pearson expresses doubt, because such a procession of the Veronica portrait and the Passion Instruments as the scene in the Mabinogi would, ex hypothesi, imply is not known to him before the fourteenth century, whereas the Mabinogi must be attributed, at latest, to the middle of the thirteenth century. Mr. H. L. D. Ward informs me that the suggestion was his. Noting the connection of the Veronica and Grail legends, testified to by Borron, it occurred to him that the whole scene at the Wounded King’s might be derived from the former legends. The Wounded King, healed by the Grail, would thus be a counterpart of the leprous Vespasian healed by the Veronica portrait, which some wandering “jongleur” turned boldly into an actual head. But it must be noted that in Borron, our authority for the connection of the two legends, there is no Wounded King at all; in the Conte du Graal the Maimed King is not healed by any special talisman, but by the death of his enemy, the visible sign of which is that enemy’s head, whilst in the “procession” (which Mr. Ward thinks to have been intended as a vision), the Grail is certainly a vessel, and has no connection whatever with any head or portrait. The theory thus requires that the version which gives the oldest form of the hypothetical remodelled Veronica legend omitted the very feature which was its sole raison d’être.
[143] Mr. Ward thinks the localisation a late one, and that practically there is no authority for it of an older date than the romances. He points out in especial that Geoffrey’s Vita Merlini, which has so much to say about the “insula pomorum” in no way connects it with Glastonbury. There is considerable doubt as the etymology of Glastonbury, but there is substantial unanimity of opinion among Celtic scholars of the present day in referring it to a Celtic rather than to a Saxon source. Be this as it may, the fact remains that at sometime in the course of the twelfth century the old Christian site of Glastonbury took, as it were, the place of the Celtic paradise, and it seems far more likely that the transformation was effected in virtue of some local tradition than wholly through the medium of foreign romances.
[144] The pre-Christian Irish annals, which are for the most part euhemerised mythology, contain also a certain amount of race history; thus the struggle between the powers of light and darkness typified by the antagonism between Tuatha de Danann and Fomori, is doubled by that between the fair invading Celts and the short dark aborigines. But the latter has only left the barest trace of its existence in the national sagas. Not until we come to that secondary stage of the Fenian saga, which must have been shaped in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and which represents the Fenians as warring against the harrying Northmen, does the foreign element reappear in Irish tradition.
[145] The Tochmarc Emer, or the Wooing of Emer by Cuchullain, has been translated by Professor Kuno Meyer in the Archæological Review, Nos. 1-4 (London, 1888). The original text is found partly in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, partly in later MSS.
[146] The fate of the Sons of Usnech is known to us in two main redactions, one found in the Book of Leinster (compiled in the middle of the twelfth century from older MS.) printed by Windisch, Irische Texte (first series) pp. 67-82, and translated by M. Poinsignon, Revue des Traditions Populaires, III, pp. 201-207. A text printed and translated by J. O’Flanagan (Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, 1808, pp. 146-177), agrees substantially with this. The second redaction has only been found in later MSS. Mr. Whitley Stokes has given text and translation from a fifteenth century MS. (Irische Texte, II. 2, pp. 109-178), and O’Flanagan has edited a very similar version (loc. cit. pp. 16-135). This second version is fuller and more romantic; in it alone is to be found Deirdre’s lament on leaving Scotland, one of the earliest instances in post-classic literature of personal sympathy with Nature.
But the earlier version, though it bear like so much else in the oldest Irish MS. obvious traces of abridgment and euhemerism, is also full of the most delicate romantic touches. Part of Deirdre’s lament over the slain Noisi may be paraphrased thus:—“Fair one, loved one, flower of beauty; beloved, upright and strong; beloved, noble and modest warrior. When we wandered through the woods of Ireland, sweet with thee was the night’s sleep! Fair one, blue-eyed, beloved of thy wife, lovely to me at the trysting place came thy clear voice through the woods. I cannot sleep; half the night my spirit wanders far among throngs of men. I cannot eat or smile. Break not to-day my heart; soon enough shall I lie within my grave. Strong are the waves of the sea, but stronger is sorrow, Conchobor.”