Besides the already quoted instances in which the sword of light accompanies the vessel of balsam as one of the treasures which reward the hero’s quest, but in which it does not otherwise affect the march of the story, we find others in which the sword is either that weapon which causes the woe, the subject of the story, or else is the one means of testing the hero’s fitness for his quest. In either case it is parallel to the sword of the Grail romances. Apart from these special instances there are general references in the oldest Irish literature to the quasi-supernatural nature attributed to the sword. Thus the Leabhar Gabhala, or Book of Invasions, the tenth and eleventh century tract in which Irish mythology was euphemerised into an historical relation of the pre-Christian invasion of Ireland, has a passage relating to the sword of Tethra, King of the Fomori,[98] which spake, and, adds the Christian scribe, the ancient Irish adored swords.[99] This is borne out by a passage in the Seirglige Conculainn, a story belonging to the Ultonian cycle, which Mr. Whitley Stokes has translated (Rev. Celt. I., 260). The men of Ulster, when showing their trophies, had their swords upon their thighs, “for their swords used to turn against them where they made a false trophy.”
The Christian transcriber notes that it was reasonable for the pagan Irish to trust their swords “because demons used to speak from out them.” To return to the sword of Tethra. The most famous battle of Irish mystic history is that of Mag-Tured, in which the Tuatha de Danann, the gods of light and life, overcome their enemies the Fomori. Ogma, the champion of the Tuatha de Danann, wins the sword of Tethra, and as he cleans it it tells him the many and great feats it had wrought.
It is, however, in the second of the great heroic cycles of the ancient Irish, the Fenian or Ossianic, that we find the sword put to a use which strongly recalls that of the romances. Not until the hero is able to wield the weapon so that it break not in his hand, or to weld it together so that no flaw appears,[100] is he fit to set forth on the quest. In Campbell’s LXXVII., “How the Een was set up,” Fionn applies for his sword to Ullamh Lamhfhada[101] (Ullamh the Longhanded), who gives him the most likely sword and the best he found. The hero takes it, shakes it, casts it out of the wooden handle and discards it. Thrice is this repeated, and when the right weapon is in Fionn’s hand, he quells utterly all he sees.[102] Now how had Fionn obtained this sword originally? By slaying black Arcan, his father’s slayer. It may, I think, be looked upon as certain that in an earlier form of the story, the weapon in question would turn out to be the one with which the treacherous deed was done, and Fionn, a counterpart of Peredur in his bringing up, would also be his counterpart in this incident.[103] For the sword with which Partinal slew Goon Desert is treasured up for the use of Perceval, but only after a repeated essay is he held worthy of it.[104]
The sword incident reappears in a tale of Campbell’s, Manus (Vol. III.), which presents some very remarkable analogies with the romances. Manus is driven into various adventures by his aunt; an armourer of his grandfather offers to get him a sword; but all given to him he breaks save the armourer’s old sword, and it beat him to break that. The armourer then gives him a cloth, “When thou spreadest it to seek food or drink, thou wilt get as thou usest.” Subsequently, helped by a lion, he achieves many feats. He comes to the help of the White Gruagach by fetching the blood of a venemous horned creature belonging to the King over the Great World, by which alone the White Gruagach could be restored to life when the magic trout with which his life was bound up had been slain. Afterwards he accompanies him against his enemy the Red Gruagach, who is slain, and his head stuck on a stake. This Red Gruagach is apparently the father of the aunt who so persecutes Manus.[105]
This examination of the sword incident shows that the Mabinogi has preserved the original form of the story, and links afresh this portion of the Conte du Graal with the other Celtic stories belonging to the Expulsion and Return formula group, with which it has so much else in common. In all the formula-stories, except those of the Conte du Graal and the Proto-Mabinogi, the hero has to avenge his father, not his uncle; and it is highly suggestive that at least one version of the Perceval cycle (the Thornton romance) follows suit. With this remark we may take leave of the feud quest.
Many and interesting as have been the parallels from the older Celtic literature to the feud quest, they are far outweighed by those which that literature affords to the second formula—the visit to the Bespelled Castle—which we have noted in the romances.
From the recapitulation (supra, [pp. 173], et. seq.) we may learn several things. The castle lies, as a rule, on the other side of a river; the visitor to it is under a definite obligation; he must either do a certain thing, as, e.g., in Perceval’s visit to the Castle of Maidens, strike on the table three blows with the hammer, or he must put a certain question, or again he must abstain from certain acts, as that of falling asleep (Perceval and Gawain) or drinking[106] (Gawain, in Heinrich von dem Türlin). Disregard of the obligation is punished in various ways. In the case of the Castle of Maidens the craven visitor is allowed to fare forth unheeded without beholding the marvels of the castle; but, as a rule, the hero of the adventure finds himself on the morrow far away from the castle, which has vanished completely. The inmates of this castle fall into two classes—they are supernatural beings like the maidens, who have apparently no object to gain from their mortal visitor, but who love heroism for its own sake, and are as kindly disposed towards the mortal hero in the folk-lore and mythology of the Celts as gods, and especially goddesses, are in the mythic lore of all other races; or they suffer from an over-lengthened life, from which the hero alone can release them. This latter feature, seen to perfection only in Heinrich von dem Türlin, is apparent in the Didot-Perceval, and has, in the Conte du Graal, supplied the figure of the old man, father to the Fisher King, nourished by the Grail.
These features sufficiently indicate that the Magic Castle is the realm of the other world. The dividing water is that across which lies Tír-na n-Og, the Irish Avalon, or that Engelland dwelt in by the shades which the inhabitants of the Belgian coast figured in the west.[107] In Celtic lore the earliest trace of this realm is found, as is the earliest trace of Grail and sword, in connection with the Tuatha de Danann, that race of dispossessed immortals which lives on in the hollow hill sides, and is ever ready to aid and cherish the Irish mythic heroes. The most famous embodiment of this conception in Irish myth is the Brug na Boine, the dwelling place of Oengus,[108] son of the Dagda, and the earliest account of it is that contained in the Book of Leinster, the second of the two great Irish vellums written down in the twelfth century. It is a land of Cockayne; in it are fruit trees ever loaded with fruit, on the board a pig ready roasted which may not be eaten up, vessels of beer which may not be emptied, and therein no man dies.[109] But Oengus is not the only one of the Tuatha de Danann who has such a fairy palace. The dwelling place of Lug is of the same kind, and in the story of the Conception of Cuchulainn,[110] which tells how the god carried off Dechtire, sister of Conchobor, and re-incarnated himself in her as the great Ulster hero, we learn that when Conchobor and his men go in search of Dechtire and her fifty maidens, they first come to a small house wherein are a man and woman; the house suddenly becomes a splendid mansion,[111] therein are the vanished maidens in the shape of birds (and all sorts of goods, and dishes of divers sorts, known and unknown; never did they have a better night, in the morning they found themselves houseless, birdless in the east of the land, and they went back to Emain Macha).[112] Although no prohibition is mentioned the similarity in parts of this story, which, it must be repeated, is older than the introduction of Christianity in Ireland, to the romances is evident. Another famous Brug of the Tuatha de Danann is that of Manannan Mac Lir. Among the visitors was Bran, the son of Febal, whose story may be found in the Leabhar na h’ Uidhre, the oldest of the great Irish vellums.[113] One day as he was alone in his palace there came to him soft, sweet music, and he fell asleep. When he awoke a silver branch, covered with flowers, was at his side. A short while after, as he was in the midst of his kinsfolk, his chiefs, and his nobles, an unknown damsel appeared, and bid him to her in the land of Sidhe, and then vanished, and with her the branch. Bran set sail, and with him thirty men. After two days’ wandering they met Manannan Mac Lir. They continued their journey until they came to an island dwelt in solely by women; their queen it was who had sent for Bran. He stayed with her a while, and then came back to Ireland.
But the most famous of the visits to the Brug of Manannan is that of Cormac Mac Art, whom the Irish legendary annals place in the third century of our era, and bring into connection with Fionn. The story, though only known to us from later MSS., can be traced back to the tenth century at least, as the title of it figures in a list preserved in the Book of Leinster, and as it is apparently alluded to by the eleventh century annalist, Tighernach.[114] The following summary is from a version, with English translation by Mr. Standish Hayes O’Grady, in the third volume of the Ossianic Society’s publications.
Of a time that Cormac was in Liathdruim he saw a youth having in his hand a glittering fairy branch, with nine apples of red gold upon it.[115] And this was the manner of that branch, that when any one shook it, men wounded and women with child would be lulled to sleep by the sound of the very sweet fairy music which those apples uttered, and no one on earth would bear in mind any want, woe, or weariness of soul when that branch was shaken for him. Cormac exchanged for this branch his wife and son and daughter, overcoming their grief by shaking the branch. But after a year, Cormac went in search of them. And he chanced upon a land where many marvels were wrought before his eyes, and he understood them not. At length he came to a house wherein was a very tall couple, clothed in clothes of many colours, and they bade him stay. And the man of the house brought a log and a wild boar, and if a quarter of the boar was put under a quarter of the log, and a true story was told, the meat would be cooked. At Cormac’s request the host told the first story, how that he had seven swine with which he could feed the world, for if the swine were slain, and their bones put in the sty, on the morrow they would be whole again; and the hostess the second, how that the milk of her seven white kine would satisfy the men of the world. Cormac knew them for Manannan and his wife, and then told his story how he had lost and was seeking for wife and children. Manannan brought in the latter, and told Cormac it was he who gave him the branch, that he might bring him to that house. Then they sat down to meat, and the table-cloth was such that no food, however delicate, might be demanded of it, but it should be had without doubt; and the drinking cup was such that if a false story was told before it, it went in four pieces, and if a true one, it came whole again, and therewith was the faith of Cormac’s wife made evident. And Manannan gave branch and cloth and goblet to Cormac, and thereafter they went to slumber and sweet sleep. Where they rose upon the morrow was in the pleasant Liathdruim.