Unconscious in its art, the stream of verse carries us to the church, whence the young wife has gone to offer up thanks for the gift of children. She sees that the ancestral tomb has been opened, and a great dread is at her heart. She asks her mother-in-law who has died, and the old woman at last confesses that the Seigneur of Nann has just been buried.
That same night the young mother was interred beside her husband-lover. And the peasant folk say that from that tomb arose two saplings, the branches of which intertwined more closely as they grew.
A Goddess of Eld
In the depths of Lake Tegid in our own Wales dwelt Keridwen, a fertility goddess who possessed a magic cauldron—the sure symbol of a deity of abundance.[22] Like Demeter, she was strangely associated with the harmless necessary sow, badge of many earth-mothers, and itself typical of fertility. Like Keridwen, the Korrigan is associated with water, with the element which makes for vegetable growth. Christian belief would, of course, transform this discredited goddess into an evil being whose one function was the destruction of souls. May we see a relation of the Korrigan and Keridwen in Tridwan, or St Triduana, of Restalrig, 60 near Edinburgh, who presided over a certain well there, and at whose well-shrine offerings were made by sightless pilgrims for many centuries?
Many are the traditions which tell of human infants abducted by the Korrigan, who at times left an ugly changeling in place of the babe she had stolen. But it was more as an enchantress that she was dreaded. By a stroke of her magic wand she could transform the leafy fastnesses in which she dwelt into the semblance of a lordly hall, which the luckless traveller whom she lured thither would regard as a paradise after the dark thickets in which he had been wandering. This seeming castle or palace she furnished with everything that could delight the eye, and as the doomed wretch sat ravished by her beauty and that of her nine attendant maidens a fatal passion for her entered his heart, so that whatever he cherished most on earth—honour, wife, demoiselle, or affianced bride—became as naught to him, and he cast himself at the feet of this forest Circe in a frenzy of ardour. But with the first ray of daylight the charm was dissolved and the Korrigan became a hideous hag, as repulsive as before she had been lovely; the walls of her palace and the magnificence which had furnished it became once more tree and thicket, its carpets moss, its tapestries leaves, its silver cups wild roses, and its dazzling mirrors pools of stagnant water.
The Unbroken Vow[23]
Sir Roland of Brittany rides through gloomy Broceliande a league ahead of his troop, unattended by squire or by page. The red cross upon his shoulder is witness that 61 he is vowed to service in Palestine, and as he passes through the leafy avenues on his way to the rendezvous he fears that he will be late, most tardy of all the knights of Brittany who have sworn to drive the paynim from the Holy Land. Fearful of such disgrace, he spurs his jaded charger on through the haunted forest, and with anxious eye watches the sun sink and the gay white moon sail high above the tree-tops, pouring light through their branches upon the mossy ways below.
A high vow has Roland taken ere setting out upon the crusade—a vow that he will eschew the company of fair ladies, in which none had delighted more than he. No more must he mingle in the dance, no more must he press a maiden’s lips with his. He has become a soldier of the Cross. He may not touch a lady’s hand save with his mailed glove, he must not sit by her side. Also must he fast from dusk till dawn upon that night of his setting forth. “Small risk,” he laughs a little sadly, as he spurs his charger onward, “small risk that I be mansworn ere morning light.”
But the setting of the moon tells him that he must rest in the forest until dawn, as without her beams he can no longer pursue his way. So he dismounts from his steed, tethers it to a tree, and looks about for a bed of moss on which to repose. As he does so his wandering gaze fixes upon a beam of light piercing the gloom of the forest. Well aware of the traditions of his country, he thinks at first that it is only the glimmer of a will-o’-the-wisp or a light carried by a wandering elf. But no, on moving nearer the gleam he is surprised to behold a row of windows brilliantly lit as if for a festival.
“Now, by my vow,” says Roland, “methought I knew well every château in this land of Brittany, nor wist 62 I that seigneur or count held court in this forest of Broceliande.”