The Going of Lanval to Avalon
The fairy romances which were recorded during the mediaeval period in continental Europe report a surprisingly large number of heroes who, like Cuchulainn and Ossian, fell under the power of fairy women or fées, and followed one of them to the Apple-Land or Avalon. Besides Arthur, they include Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawayne, Ogier, Guingemor and Lanval (see pp. [325-6]). The story of Lanval is told by Marie de France in one of her Lais, and is so famous a one that we shall briefly outline it:—
Lanval was a mediaeval knight who lived during the time of King Arthur in Brittany. He was young and very beautiful, so that one of the fairy damsels fell in love with him; and in the true Irish fashion—himself and his fairy sweetheart mounted on the same fairy horse—the two went riding off to Fairyland:—
On the horse behind her
With full rush Lanval jumped.
With her he goes away into Avalon,
According to what the Briton tells us,
Into an isle, which is very beautiful.[341]
The Voyage of Teigue, Son of Cian
There is another type of imram in which through adventure rather than through invitation from one of the fairy beings, men enter the Otherworld; as illustrated by the Voyage of Mael-Duin,[342] and by the still more beautiful Voyage of Teigue, Son of Cian. This last old Irish story summarizes many of the Otherworld elements we have so far considered, and (though it shows Christian influences) gives us a very clear picture of the Land of Youth amid the Western Ocean—a land such as Ponce De Leon and so many brave navigators sought in America:—
Teigue, son of Cian, and heir to the kingship of West Munster, with his followers set out from Ireland to recover his wife and brethren who had been stolen by Cathmann and his band of sea-rovers from Fresen, a land near Spain. It was the time of the spring tide, when the sea was rough, and storms coming on the voyagers they lost their way. After about nine weeks they came to a land fairer than any land they had ever beheld—it was the Happy Otherworld. In it were many ‘red-laden apple-trees, with leafy oaks too in it, and hazels yellow with nuts in their clusters’; and ‘a wide smooth plain clad in flowering clover all bedewed with honey’. In the midst of this plain Teigue and his companions descried three hills, and on each of them an impregnable place of strength. At the first stronghold, which had a rampart of white marble, Teigue was welcomed by ‘a white-bodied lady, fairest of the whole world’s women’; and she told him that the stronghold is the abode ‘of Ireland’s kings: from Heremon son of Milesius to Conn of the Hundred Battles, who was the last to pass into it’. Teigue with his people moved on till they gained the middle dún, the dún with a rampart of gold. There also ‘they found a queen of gracious form, and she draped in vesture of a golden fabric’, who tells them that they are in the Earth’s fourth paradise.
At the third dún, the dún with a silver rampart, Teigue and his party met Connla, the son of Conn of the Hundred Battles. ‘In his hand he held a fragrant apple having the hue of gold; a third part of it he would eat, and still, for all he consumed, never a whit would it be diminished.’ And at his side sat a young woman of many charms, who spake thus to Teigue:—‘I had bestowed on him (i. e. felt for him) true affection’s love, and therefore wrought to have him come to me in this land; where our delight, both of us, is to continue in looking at and in perpetual contemplation of one another: above and beyond which we pass not, to commit impurity or fleshly sin whatsoever.’ Both Connla and his friend were clad in vestments of green—like the fairy-folk; and their step was so light that hardly did the beautiful clover-heads bend beneath it. And the apple ‘it was that supported the pair of them and, when once they had partaken of it, nor age nor dimness could affect them’. When Teigue asked who occupied the dún with the silver rampart the maiden with Connla made this reply:—‘In that one there is not any one. For behoof of the righteous kings that after acceptance of the Faith shall rule Ireland it is that yonder dún stands ready; and we are they who, until such those virtuous princes shall enter into it, keep the same: in the which, Teigue my soul, thou too shalt have an appointed place.’ ‘Obliquely across the most capacious palace Teigue looked away’ (as he was observing the beauty of the yet uninhabited dún), ‘and marked a thickly furnished wide-spreading apple-tree that bare blossoms and ripe fruit both. “What is that apple-tree beyond?” he asked [of the maiden], and she made answer:—“That apple-tree’s fruit it is that for meat shall serve the congregation which is to be in this mansion, and a single apple of the same it was that brought (coaxed away) Connla to me.”’
Then the party rested, and there came towards them a whole array of feminine beauty, among which was a lovely damsel of refined form who foretold to Teigue the manner and time of his death, and as a token she gave him ‘a fair cup of emerald hue, in which are inherent many virtues: for [among other things] though it were but water poured into it, incontinently it would be wine’. And this was her farewell message to Teigue:—‘From that (the cup), let not thine hand part; but have it for a token: when it shall escape from thee, then in a short time after shalt thou die; and where thou shalt meet thy death is in the glen that is on Boyne’s side: there the earth shall grow into a great hill, and the name that it shall bear will be croidhe eisse; there too (when thou shalt first have been wounded by a roving wild hart, after which Allmarachs will slay thee) I will bury thy body; but thy soul shall come with me hither, where till the Judgement’s Day thou shalt assume a body light and ethereal.’
As the party led by Teigue were going down to the seashore to depart, the girl who had been escorting them asked ‘how long they had been in the country’. ‘In our estimation,’ they replied, ‘we are in it but one single day.’ She, however, said: ‘For an entire twelvemonth ye are in it; during which time ye have had neither meat nor drink, nor, how long soever ye should be here, would cold or thirst or hunger assail you.’ And when Teigue and his party had entered their currach they looked astern, but ‘they saw not the land from which they came, for incontinently an obscuring magic veil was drawn over it’.[343]