It was chiefly during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the Arthurian Legend as a thing of literature began to take definite shape. The old romances of the Brythons were cultivated and revised, and written down by men and women of literary genius. Chrétien de Troyes, who recorded a large number of legendary stories in verse, Marie de France, famous for her Lais, Thomas, the author of the chief version of the Tristan legend,[304] Béroul, who recorded a less important version of this legend,[305] and Robert de Boron, who did much to develop the legend of the Holy Grail, were among the greatest workers in the French Celtic Revival of this time.
Professor Brown has shown that ‘almost every incident in Chrétien’s Iwain was suggested by an ancient Celtic tale, dealing with the familiar theme of a journey to win a fairy mistress in the Otherworld.’[306] The fay whom Iwain marries is called Laudine; and, like one of the fairies who live in sacred waters, she has her favourite fountain which the knight guards, as though he were the Black Knight in the old Welsh tale of The Lady of the Fountain. Both Gaston Paris and Alfred Nutt have also recognized the tale of Iwain as a fairy romance.[307] Professor Loth observes that, ‘It is not impossible that Chrétien had known, among fairy legends, Armorican legends, concerning the fairies of waters, whose rôle is identical with that of the Welsh Tylwyth Teg.’[308]
In Lanval, one of the Lais[309] by Marie de France, written during the twelfth century, probably while its author was living in England, we have direct proof that there was then flourishing in Brittany—well known to Marie de France, who was French by birth and training—a popular belief in fairy women who lived in the Otherworld, and who could take mortals on whom their love fell. It is probable that the older lay, to which Marie de France refers in the beginning of her Lanval, may have been the anonymous one of Graelent, sometimes improperly attributed to her. Zimmer and Foerster place the origin of Graelent in Brittany[310]; and the similarity of the heroes in the two poems seems to be due to a very ancient Brythonic Fairy-Faith. Dr. Schofield sees in Graelent an older form of the more polished Lanval; and remarks that the chief difference in the two lais is found in the way the hero meets the fairy women. In the case of Lanval, when he leaves the court, he goes to rest beside a river where two beautiful maidens come to him; Graelent is alone in the woods when he sees a hind whiter than snow, and following it comes to a place where fairy damsels are bathing in a fountain. There seems to be no doubt that in both poems the maidens and damsels are fairies quite like the Tuatha De Danann, with power to cast their spell over beautiful young men whom they wish to have for husbands. In Guingemor, another of the old Breton lays, ascribed by Gaston Paris to Marie de France, we find again fairy-romance episodes similar to those in Lanval and Graelent.[311] The Lais of Marie de France had many imitators in England. Chaucer, too, has made it clear that he knew a good deal about the old Breton lais and their subjects or ‘matter’, for in the Prologue to the Frankeleyn’s Tale he writes:—
Thise olde gentil Britons in hir dayes
Of diverse aventures maden layes,
Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge.
We may now briefly examine, in a general way, some of the most noteworthy of the more obscure, but for us important Old French fairy-romances of a kindred Brythonic or Arthurian character, called Romans d’Aventure and Romans Bretons, wherein fées appear or are mentioned: i. e. Le Bel Inconnu, Blancadin, Brun de la Montaigne, Claris et Laris, Dolopathos, Escanor, Floriant et Florete, Partonopeus, La Vengeance Raguidel, Joufrois, and Amada et Ydoine.[312] In these romances, fairies commonly appear as most beautiful supernormal women who love mortal heroes. They are seen chiefly at night, frequenting forests and fountains, and like all fairies disappear at or before cock-crow. They are skilled in magic and astrology; like the Greek Fates, some of them spin and weave and have great influence over the lives of mankind. They are represented as relatively immortal, so long is their span of life compared to ours; but, ultimately, they seem to be subject to a change such as we call death. This indeed is never specifically mentioned, only implied by the statements that they enjoy childhood and then womanhood, being thus created and not eternal beings. Some are very prominent figures, like Morgain la Fée, Arthur’s sister. In most cases they are beneficent, and frequently act as guardian spirits for their special hero, just as the Lake Lady for Arthur and the Morrigu for Cuchulainn. So strong is the faith in these fées that a man meeting unusual success is often described as féed—that is endowed with fairy power or under fairy protection, as Perceval’s adversary, the Knight of the Dragon, states.[313] In Joufrois, too, the power of the fairies, or else the special protection of God, is considered the cause of success in arms.[314] In Brun de la Montaigne, Morgain la Fée is represented as the cousin of Arthur; and Butor, the father of Brun, mentions several localities in different lands, which, like the Forest of Brocéliande in Brittany, the chief theatre of this romance, are fairy haunts; and he names them as being under the dominion of Arthur, who is described as a great fairy king.[315]
Such fairy romances as the above (and they are but a few examples selected from among a vast number) often localized in Brittany, raise the perplexing and far-reaching problem concerning the origin of the ‘Matter of Britain’. The most reasonable position to take with respect to this problem would seem to be that Celtic traditions flourished wherever there were Gaels and Brythons, that there was much interchange of these traditions between one Celtic country and another—especially between Wales and Ireland and across the channel between Brittany and South England, including Cornwall and Wales, both before and after the Christian era. Further, the Arthurian fairy-romances, based upon such interchanged Celtic traditions, grew up with a Brythonic background, chiefly after the Norman Conquest, both in Armorica and in Britain, and became in the later Middle Ages one of the chief glories of English and of European literature.
In concluding this slight examination of Brythonic fairy-romances, we may very briefly suggest by means of a few selected examples what fairies are like in the Mabinogion stories and in the Four Ancient Books of Wales. Kulhwch and Olwen, the chief literary treasure-house of ancient magical and mystical Otherworld and fairy traditions of the Brythons, which we have already considered in relation to Arthur, ‘appears to be built upon Arthurian and other legends of native growth.’[316] Unmistakable Welsh parallels to the Irish fairy-belief appear in the Mabinogi of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, where the two chief incidents are Pwyll’s journey to the Otherworld after he and Arawn its ruler have exchanged shapes and kingdoms for a year, and the marriage of Pwyll to a fairy damsel; in the Mabinogi of Manawyddan, which contains much magic and shape-shifting, and the description of a fairy castle belonging to Llwyd; and in the Mabinogi of Branwen, the Daughter of Llyr, where there is the episode of the seven-year feast at Harlech over the Head of Bran, during which the Birds of Rhiannon’s realm sing so sweetly that time passes abnormally fast. The subject-matter of the four true Mabinogion (composed before the eleventh century) is, as Sir John Rhŷs has pointed out, the fortunes of three clans of superhuman beings comparable to the Irish Tuatha De Danann: (1) the Children of Llyr, (2) the Children of Don, (3) and the Family of Pwyll.[317] Herein, then, the ancient Gaelic and Brythonic Fairy-Faiths coincide, and show the unity of the Celtic race which evolved them.
In the Four Ancient Books of Wales, which are poetical compositions, whereas the Mabinogion tales are prose with extremely little verse, there are certain interesting passages to illustrate the ancient Fairy-Faith of the Brythons from some of its purest sources. The first selected example comes from the Black Book of Caermarthen. It is a poem, sometimes called the Avallenau, from among the poems relating to the Battle of Arderydd; and it represents Myrddin or Merlin, the famous magician of Arthur, quite at the mercy of sprites. The passage is an interesting one as showing that in the region where Merlin is supposed to be under the enchantment of the fairy woman Vivian he was regarded as no longer able to exercise his wonted control over spirits like fairies. As in ancient non-Celtic belief, where the loss of chastity in a magician, that is to say in one able to command certain orders of invisible beings, always leads to his falling under their lawless power, so was it with Merlin when overcome by Vivian. And this is Merlin’s lamentation:—
Ten years and forty, as the toy of lawless ones,
Have I been wandering in gloom among sprites.
After wealth in abundance and entertaining minstrels,
I have been [here so long that] it is useless for gloom and sprites to lead me astray.[318]
In a dialogue between Myrddin and his sister Gwenddydd, contained in the Red Book of Hergest I,[319] there is a curious reference to ghosts of the mountain who, just like fairies that live in the mountains, steal away men’s reason when they strike them,—in death which may appear natural, in sickness, or in accident. And after his death—after he has been taken by these ghosts of the mountain—Myrddin returns as a ghost and speaks from the grave a prophecy which ‘the ghost of the mountain in Aber Carav’[320] told him. Not only do these passages prove the Celtic belief in ghosts like fairies to have existed anciently in Wales; but they show also that the recorded Fairy-Faith of the Brythons, like that of the Gaels of Ireland and Scotland, directly attests and confirms our Psychological Theory. Like a record from the official proceedings of the Psychical Research Society itself, they form one of the strongest proofs that fairies, ghosts, and shades were confused, all alike, in the mind of the Welsh poet, mingling together in that realm where mortals see with a new vision, and exist with a body invisible to us.