ARTHURIAN ROMANCES (continued 2)

The king was much astonished, and called to his companions to come swiftly. "See here, my lords," he said, "what think ye of this marvel? See how this beast entreats mercy of me; he hath the sense of a man! Drive off the dogs, for I will not have him injured. Turn we homewards, I take this beast in my peace, and will hunt no more in this forest lest by chance he be slain."

With that they turned their bridles and rode homewards; but the wolf followed behind, and would not be driven back, even when they came to the royal castle. The king was greatly pleased, for he thought the matter strange and marvellous; no such tale had he ever heard before; and since he had taken a great liking for the beast he bade his knights not merely to do the wolf no harm, but to treat him with all care and kindness, on pain of losing the royal favour. So all day the wolf roamed the court, free among the knights, and at night he slept in the king's own chamber. Wherever the king went, there he would have his wolf go too, and all the courtiers made much of the beast, seeing that it pleased their lord, and finding that he did no harm to any man among them.

Now when a long time had passed the king had occasion to hold a solemn court; he summoned all his barons from far and near, and among them came the knight who had betrayed the were-wolf, and wedded his lady; he had little thought that his rival was yet in life, still less that he was so near at hand. But as soon as the wolf beheld him he sprang upon him savagely, tearing him with his teeth, and would have slain him if the king had not called him off, and even then twice again he would have seized him.

Every one in the castle was astonished at the rage shown by the beast, which had always been so tame and gentle, and a whisper went round that surely there must be something which no one knew against the knight, for the wolf would scarce have attacked him without cause. All the time the court lasted the wolf had to be kept in close guard. When at length it broke up the knight who had been attacked was one of the first to leave—and small marvel it he were. But when the knight had gone the wolf was once more as tame and friendly as he had been from the first, and all the courtiers made a pet of him as they had done aforetime, and forgot, as time went on, that he had ever shown himself so savage.

At length the king bethought him that he would make a progress through his kingdom, and at the same time hunt for a while in the forest where he had found the wolf. As his custom was he took the beast with him.

Now the lady, the were-wolf's treacherous wife, hearing that the king would abide some time in that part of the country, prayed for an audience that she might win the royal favour by presenting rich gifts, for she knew well that the king loved not her second husband as he had loved the first.

The king appointed a day and hour for the audience, but when the lady entered the presence chamber suddenly the wolf flew upon her, and before any could hinder had bitten the nose from off her face. The courtiers drew out their weapons and would have slain the beast, when a wise man, one of the king's councillors, stayed them. "Sire," he said, "hearken to me—this wolf has been long with us, there is not one of us here who has not been near to him, and caressed him, over and over again; yet not a man of us has he ever touched, or even shown ill-will to any. But two has he ever attacked, this lady here and the lord, her husband. Now, sire, bethink thee well—this lady was the wife of the knight thou didst hold dear aforetime, and who was lost long since, no man knowing what came to him. Take my counsel, put this lady in guard, and question her closely as to whether she can give any reason why the wolf should hate her. Many a marvel hath come to pass in Brittany, and methinks there is something stranger than we wot of here."

The king thought the old lord's counsel good; he caused the lady and her husband to be put in prison apart, and questioned separately with threats if they kept silence; till at length the lady, terrified, confessed how she had betrayed her first husband, by causing his garments to be stolen from him when he was in a wolf's shape. Since that time he had disappeared; she knew not whether he were alive or dead, but she thought that perchance this wolf was he. When the king heard this he commanded them to fetch the garments belonging to the lost knight, whether it were pleasing to the lady or no; and when they were brought he laid them before the wolf and waited to see what would chance.

But the wolf made as if he saw them not, and the wise councillor said, "Sire, if this beast be indeed a were-wolf he will not change shapes while there are any to behold him; since it is only with great pain and difficulty he can do so. Bid them take wolf and garments into thine own chamber, and fasten the doors upon him; then leave him for a while, and we shall see if he become man."

The king thought this counsel good, and he himself took the beast into his chamber and made the doors fast.

Then they waited for a space that seemed long enough to the king, and when the old lord told him he might well do so, he took two nobles with him, and unlocked the doors, and entered, and lo, on the king's couch lay the long lost knight in a deep slumber!

The king ran to him and embraced him warmly; and when the first wonder had somewhat passed, he bade him take back all the lands of which he had been robbed, and over and above he bestowed upon him many rich gifts.

The treacherous wife and her second husband were banished from the country; many years they lived in a strange land, and had children and grand-children—but all their descendants might be known by this, that the maidens were born without noses, so that they won the surname of énasées.

And the old books say that this adventure was verily true, and that it was in order that the memory of it should be preserved to all time that the Bretons put it in verse, and called it "The Lai of the Were-Wolf."

GUINGAMOR.

This charming lay was first published by M. Gaston Paris (Romania VIII.) from the same MS. collection as the Lay of Tyolet. The author is unnamed, but the general consensus of critical opinion has attributed it to Marie de France, the famous Anglo-Norman poetess. Certainly both in manner and matter it is a remarkably favourable specimen of the Breton lay.

The story of Guingamor evidently represents a very favourite class of tales; setting aside the numerous parallels cited by Dr. Schofield in his study of the lay (The Lay of Guingamor, "Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature," vol. v.), we have among the French translations of Breton lays which have descended to us no fewer than three which closely correspond in subject and treatment, the lays of Guingamor, Graalent, and Lanval. In each of these the hero is tempted by a queen; rejects her proffered love; wins a fairy bride, and departs to dwell with her in her own land. Guingamor and Graalent agree in the circumstances under which the knight meets the fairy maiden (a feature in which Dr. Schofield sees the influence of the Wayland story—cf. The Lays of Graalent and Lanval, and the Story of Wayland, W. H. Schofield); while Lanval and Graalent agree in the subsequent development of the story.

Of the three, Guingamor is distinctly the most tragic. The knight who after two days spent in the delights of love and the festivities of the wondrous palace returns on the third day to his own land to find that kinsmen and friends have passed away, and his own name and fate but a folk-tale centuries old, is a really pathetic figure. We need not wonder that the story was a popular one; not only does Chrétien de Troyes in the quotation prefixed to my translation mention it, but it is again referred to as a well-known tale by Gautier de Doulens, one of the continuators of Chrétien's unfinished Conte del Graal. The knight who is coupled with Guingamor in our extract, Graislemiers de Fine Posterne, is by Prof. Foerster and other scholars identified with Graalent mor, and it seems probable that it was the close resemblance between their stories, noted above, which led the French poet to represent them as brothers.

Page 6.—He knew how to promise and how to give. "Bien sot promestre et bien doner." This should be compared with Wace's description of Gawain, "plus volt faire que il ne dist, Et plus doner qu'il ne promist." It is impossible not to feel that Arthur's gallant nephew, who had a fairy for his love, and who according to Chaucer found his final home in fairy-land, stands in very close connection with these heroes of the earlier stratum of Arthurian legend.

Page 18.—Taking her robes set them high in the fork of a great oak. This apparently unknightly proceeding on the part of the hero was doubtless originally connected with the supernatural character of the lady, and seems to have taken its rise in a confusion between a fay and a swan-maiden. As we know from Northern tradition (Brynhild's Hell-reid and the Wieland-saga) to steal the "swan-shift" of such a maiden was the recognised means of effecting her capture. This has been well discussed by Dr. Schofield in the study quoted above.

Page 22.—I charge thee—that thou neither eat nor drink.

This is evidently a somewhat confused introduction of the well-known feature that partaking of food in any land brings the eater under the operation of the laws of that land, but we generally find the incident of reverse application, as in the case of Persephone, who having tasted of the pomegranate seeds must needs continue an inhabitant of the other world. Guingamor having already eaten of the food of faëry, would, one would think, be incapable of returning to the other world. Such a fate as befalls him is, however, often brought about by coming in contact with the earth; thus in the Voyage of Bran, when the hero and his companions return from the Magic Isles, they are warned not to set foot on the shore of Ireland; one of the company disobeys the injunction and immediately falls to ashes, as one many years dead. Mr. Hartland, in his work on The Science of Fairy-tales, gives other instances of this belief. From the references made to the story by later writers, however, it is quite clear that Guingamor was supposed to have regained his youth on his return to Fairyland, and to enjoy practical immortality as the lord of its queen.

SIR LAUNFAL.

This is a translation of the Lai de Lanval, by Marie de France, the original source being, as in the case of all the other stories, a Breton lai which the Anglo-Norman poetess translated into French.

The English poem of the same name, by Thomas of Chester, is not, strictly speaking, a translation of Marie's lai, but an adaptation, into which features borrowed from other sources have been worked. Thus the author evidently knew the lay of Graalent, which, as I have stated in the note to Guingamor, recites precisely the same story as Lanval, only with certain variations in the incidents. Dr. Schofield, in the study to which I have previously referred, decides that the original hero is Lanval.

The Graalent version contains a weirdly pathetic feature which was either unknown to Marie or disregarded by her. The hero rides off, not on the lady's steed, but on his own; crossing the river he is swept from the saddle, and only saved from drowning by his mistress, who takes him up behind her on her palfrey. The knight's charger, reaching the shore, vainly seeks for his master, and the Bretons tell how yearly, on the anniversary of Graalent's disappearance, the horse may be heard neighing loudly for the vanished knight. Thomas of Chester refers to this story evidently, but appears to think that the steed had rejoined its master, as after telling how "every yer, upon a certayn day, Men may here Launfale's stede nay," he goes on to tell how any who desires a joust to keep his arms from rusting "may fynde justes anow wyth Syr Launfal the knyght."

TYOLET.

This lay is the translation of one published by M. Gaston Paris (Romania VIII. 1879) from a MS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and previously unknown. It will be seen that it really consists of two distinct stories: (a) Tyolet's Enfances; (b) his achieving of the adventure of the white-footed stag. Whether these two stories originally related to the same hero is doubtful, but both are of considerable importance for the criticism of the Arthurian legend.

(a) Tyolet's Enfances.—This story certainly bears a strong resemblance to the "Perceval" story as related by Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach; but while in some points it seems to have preserved more archaic features, in others it is distinctly more modern. Thus the lad's confusion of the knight with a beast seems a primitive trait, as does also his fairy gift of attracting beasts by whistling, and the curious transformation of the stag, while his behaviour on arriving at court, on the other hand, is far more civilised than that of Perceval. One naturally asks where had he learnt of tourneys and joustings and the knightly duty of "largesse"? The probability is that we have here a revised, and independent, version of the popular folk-tale which under the hands of certain twelfth-century poets developed into the Perceval romance.

(b) Le cerf au pied blanc. This story is also found in the vast compilation of Arthurian romance known as the Dutch Lancelot. There the adventure is attributed to Lancelot, but with certain variants—e.g., Kay, and not Lodoer, is the first to attempt the adventure, and to fail through cowardice (a trait entirely in accord with the rôle played by Kay in the later Arthurian story); Lancelot slays the lions before cutting off the foot of the stag; and he does not marry the lady, who in this version has not herself visited Arthur's court but has sent a messenger. This at once points to a later redaction of the story; the hero certainly ought to marry the maiden at whose instigation he undertakes the adventure.

The part played by the traitor knight did not, I venture to think, originally belong to the story; it is part of a very widely spread Aryan folk-tale, generally relating to the slaying of a dragon or similar monster. Mr. Hartland has given a long list of the variants of this in The Legend of Perseus, vol. iii. A very fine specimen is contained in the early Tristan poems, notably that of Gottfried von Strassburg, and another version, that contained in the poem of Morien ascribes the adventure to Lancelot. It may be remarked that in both the "Lancelot" versions, as in this lai of Tyolet, it is Gawain who seeks the hero, and chivalrously defends his claim against that of the traitor. The story certainly must have become connected with the Arthurian legend at a time when Gawain was still the beau-ideal of knightly courtesy.

The original tale at the root of the Cerf au pied blanc was, I believe, a transformation tale; the stag was the enchanted relative of the lady who instigated the adventure, and the spell could only be broken by smiting off the animal's foot (as in many instances it is necessary to cut off the head of the victim of magic spells); this seems to me the only explanation of what is here a pointless act of cruelty. Probably the connecting link with the tale of Tyolet is the mysterious stag-knight of the first part, not the fairy gift of whistling as M. Gaston Paris suggested. I believe the story to be the origin of the white stag guarded by six lions in the Prose Lancelot, which in the "Queste" changes with its four attendant lions into Our Lord and the Four Evangelists. The real meaning of the story has here been preserved. This solution is also indicated by the fact that one of the shapes assumed by Merlin in his numerous transformations is that of a stag with one white foot (cf. "Merlin," Sommer's edition, xxiii. p. 302).

In connection with this it may be noted that a story published in the Scottish Celtic Review, vol. i., "Macphie's Black Dog," contains a striking parallel to Tyolet. The hero goes forth to shoot and sees a royal stag, but whenever he raises his gun to fire the animal changes into a woman. I think it is clear that in Tyolet we have the Perceval Enfances plus a transformation tale.

THE WERE-WOLF.

The source of this is the Lai du Bisclavaret, by Marie de France. She was evidently relating a popular tradition, and there can be little doubt that it is the story referred to by Malory in the passage quoted at the heading of the tale. In Marie's Lai none of the characters are named.

The same story appears to be at the root of a Celtic folk-tale, Morraha, published by Mr. Jacobs in his collection entitled, "More Celtic Fairy Tales," here, however, being only subsidiary, a story within a story. Elsewhere I have found no trace of it, but the reference in Malory appeared to justify its inclusion among Arthurian tales.

Since writing this note Mr. Nutt has drawn my attention to a tale published in the Scottish Celtic Review, referred to above, "How the Great Tuairisgeul was put to Death." This tale strongly resembles Morraha, only the transformation is brought about by the spells of a witch employed by the stepmother, and is not the deed of the wife. Morraha seems to occupy a position between our tale and this. It may be suggested that there is a certain resemblance between the name Morraha, and that given by Malory for the hero of the story Marrok. It is worth noting that in both these tales the sympathy of the reader is invited for the wolf. As a rule a were-wolf is an object of dread and abhorrence.

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