The Three Days' Tournament: A Study in Romance and Folk-Lore / Being an Appendix to the Author's 'Legend of Sir Lancelot'

by Jessie L. Weston

THE FOLK-TALE

The Contes Lorrains of M. Cosquin[35] contains a story, Le Petit Berger, in which we shall find our tournament adventure in what we may term full fairy-tale form. A princess expresses a desire to own a flock of sheep; her father consents, and hires a lad to guard them, of whom the princess becomes secretly enamoured. On three successive days the shepherd penetrates into a forbidden wood, and on each occasion slays a terrible giant, clad in steel, silver, or golden armour. By the death of these giants the hero becomes master of three castles, of steel, silver, and gold, in each of which he finds a suit of armour and a steed to correspond. He keeps the feat a profound secret, and when later on the king proclaims a three days’ tournament, the prize of which is the hand of the princess, he appears each day in different armour, and mounted on the corresponding steed—steel, silver or golden—wins the tournament, and weds the lady.

Now this is merely the shortest and simplest form of a story, which is found practically all the world over. Let us look at some of the variants.

In the notes to Le Petit Berger M. Cosquin cites a Tyrolean variant, where instead of three giants the hero slays three dragons, thereby winning three castles. The armour corresponds to that of the previous tale; but the horses are black, red, and white, herein agreeing with the Ipomedon and the Prose Lancelot; the compiler refers to other versions from the same country given by Zingerle,[36] but cites no details. In an Italian variant the horses are of crystal, silver, and gold.

Now let us turn to another of M. Cosquin’s tales, Jean de l’Ours,[37] where the main theme of the story is the release of a princess from an Otherworld prison. Here we shall find a Greek tale given, the details of which are, as we shall see, specially important for our investigation. A prince delivers his sister and three stranger princesses from the prison of a drakos (translated by M. Cosquin as sorte d’ogre) on the summit of a high mountain. When about to descend himself, his brother cuts the cord and leaves him a prisoner on the mountain. In the ogre’s castle he sees three marvellous objects: a greyhound of velvet pursuing a hare also of velvet; a golden ewer which pours water of itself into a golden basin; a golden hen with her chickens. He also finds three winged horses, respectively white, red, and green, and sets them at liberty. In gratitude they transport him to the plain, and each gives him a hair from their tail, bidding him burn it when he needs their aid. The prince takes service with a goldsmith in his father’s city. The eldest brother desires to marry the eldest of the rescued princesses; she demands a velvet greyhound pursuing a velvet hare, such as she has seen in the ogre’s castle. The king offers a reward to any who can make such an object. The pretended goldsmith’s apprentice undertakes to do so, and sends the green horse to fetch the original. At the tournament in honour of the wedding he appears on the horse in a dress to correspond, carries off the honours of the day, and escapes unrecognised. His second brother marries the second princess. She demands the golden ewer—the red horse comes to his aid, and he wins the tournament in his red dress. When the third and youngest princess is to be wedded to the king’s brother he appears in white, on the white steed, slays the would-be bridegroom with a cast of his javelin, reveals his identity, and wins the bride. Here we have the three colours of the Lanzelet.

Again, in the variants of Le Prince et son Cheval, another tale of the same collection,[38] we find the Three Days’ Tournament allied to the rescue and escape from the Otherworld motif. In this latter story we have the well-known incident of escape from a giant, or a magician, by means of magical objects which, thrown behind the escaping pair, erect mysterious barriers between pursuer and pursued.

In his notes to Le Petit Berger, M. Cosquin quotes a remark of M. Mullenhoff, to the effect that in one variant of the story collected by him it is combined with ‘le conte bien connu où le héros gravit à cheval une montagne de verre, pour conquérir la main d’une belle princesse.’[39] Now the glass mountain is a well-recognised form of the Otherworld prison. Probably, too, we ought to connect with this some variants of the tale where the feat is to attain the summit of a high tower; a version of this is known among the Avares of the Caucasus; here the horses are blue, red, and black.

Thus we may note two well-marked classes of the tales, in one of which (a) the hero simply wins the hand of the princess at a tourney; in the second of which (b) he also rescues her from the Otherworld.

But there is a third variant of our story, in which the feat differs somewhat from b. The hero is again a rescuer, but this time he rescues the princess from death at the jaws of a monster, generally a dragon. This we may call class c. In the notes to Leopold,[40] M. Cosquin refers to a German variant where the combat lasts for three days, and horses and armour are black, red, and white. In this connection, as member of class c, Mr. Hartland has studied the story in his well-known Legend of Perseus,[41] and some of the variants he gives we shall find of interest to us.

In an Irish version, The Thirteenth Son of the King of Erin,[42] the hero, who has previously slain three giants, and taken possession of their castles and wealth, comprising three steeds, black, brown, and red, rescues the king’s daughter from a great monster, a serpent of the sea, ‘which must get a king’s daughter to devour every seven years.’ The combat lasts three days; but though the hero appears each day in a different dress, only on the first does it correspond with the colour of his horse. Here the tournament incident is lacking.