Resolved to view the château at still closer quarters, he draws near it. A great court fronts him where neither groom nor porter keeps guard, and within he can see a fair hall. This he enters, and immediately his ears are ravished by music which wanders through the chamber like a sighing zephyr. The murmur of rich viols and the call of flutes soft as distant bird-song speak to his very soul. Yet through the ecstasy comes, like a serpent gliding among flowers, the discord of evil thoughts. Grasping his rosary, he is about to retire when the doors at the end of the hall fly open, and he beholds a rapturous vision. Upon a couch of velvet sits a lady of such dazzling beauty that all other women compared with her would seem as kitchen-wenches. A mantle of rich golden hair falls about her, her eyes shine with the brightness of stars, her smile seems heavenly. Round her are grouped nine maidens only less beautiful than herself.
As the moon moving among attendant stars, so the lady comes toward Roland, accompanied by her maidens. She welcomes him, and would remove his gauntlet, but he tells her of the vow he has made to wear it in lady’s bower, and she is silent. Next she asks him to seat himself beside her on the couch, but he will not. In some confusion she orders a repast to be brought. A table is spread with fragrant viands, but as the knight will partake of none of them, in chagrin the lady takes a lute, which she touches with exquisite skill. He listens unmoved, till, casting away her instrument, she dances to him, circling round and round about him, flitting about his chair like a butterfly, until at length she sinks 63 down near him and lays her head upon his mailed bosom. Upward she turns her face to him, all passion-flushed, her eyes brimming with love. Sir Roland falters. Fascinated by her unearthly beauty, he is about to stoop down to press his lips to hers. But as he bends his head she shrinks from him, for she sees the tender flush of morning above the eastern tree-tops. The living stars faint and fail, and the music of awakening life which accompanies the rising of the young sun falls upon the ear. Slowly the château undergoes transformation. The glittering roof merges into the blue vault of heaven, the tapestried walls become the ivied screens of great forest trees, the princely furnishings are transformed into mossy banks and mounds, and the rugs and carpets beneath Roland’s mailed feet are now merged in the forest ways.
But the lady? Sir Roland, glancing down, beholds a hag hideous as sin, whose malicious and distorted countenance betrays baffled hate and rage. At the sound of a bugle she hurries away with a discordant shriek. Into the glade ride Roland’s men, to see their lord clasping his rosary and kneeling in thanksgiving for his deliverance from the evils which beset him. He had been saved from breaking his vow!
The nine attendant maidens of the Korrigan bring to mind a passage in Pomponius Mela[24]: “Sena [the Ile de Sein, not far from Brest], in the British Sea, opposite the Ofismician coast, is remarkable for an oracle of the Gallic god. Its priestesses, holy in perpetual virginity, are said to be nine in number. They are called Gallicenæ, and are thought to be endowed with singular powers. By their charms they are able to raise the 64 winds and seas, to turn themselves into what animals they will, to cure wounds and diseases incurable by others, to know and predict the future. But this they do only for navigators, who go thither purposely to consult them.”
Like the sylphs and salamanders so humorously described by the Abbé de Villars in Le Comte de Gabalis,[25] the Korrigans desired union with humanity in order that they might thus gain immortality. Such, at least, is the current peasant belief in Brittany. “For this end they violate all the laws of modesty.” This belief is common to all lands, and is typical of the fay, the Lorelei, countless well and water sprites, and that enchantress who rode off with Thomas the Rhymer:
For if you dare to kiss my lips
Sure of your bodie I shall be.
Unlike the colder Sir Roland, ‘True Thomas’ dared, and was wafted to a realm wondrously described by the old balladeer in the vivid phrase that marks the poetry of vision.
Merlin and Vivien
It was in this same verdant Broceliande that Vivien, another fairy, that crafty dame of the enchanted lake, the instructress of Lancelot, bound wise Merlin so that he might no more go to Camelot with oracular lips to counsel British Arthur.