Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail Part 13

After two days' wandering they met Manannan Mac Lir. They continued their journey until they came to an island dwelt in solely by women; their queen it was who had sent for Bran. He stayed with her a while, and then came back to Ireland.

But the most famous of the visits to the Brug of Manannan is that of Cormac Mac Art, whom the Irish legendary annals place in the third century of our era, and bring into connection with Fionn. The story, though only known to us from later MSS., can be traced back to the tenth century at least, as the t.i.tle of it figures in a list preserved in the Book of Leinster, and as it is apparently alluded to by the eleventh century annalist, Tighernach.[114] The following summary is from a version, with English translation by Mr. Standish Hayes O'Grady, in the third volume of the Ossianic Society's publications.

Of a time that Cormac was in Liathdruim he saw a youth having in his hand a glittering fairy branch, with nine apples of red gold upon it.[115] And this was the manner of that branch, that when any one shook it, men wounded and women with child would be lulled to sleep by the sound of the very sweet fairy music which those apples uttered, and no one on earth would bear in mind any want, woe, or weariness of soul when that branch was shaken for him. Cormac exchanged for this branch his wife and son and daughter, overcoming their grief by shaking the branch. But after a year, Cormac went in search of them. And he chanced upon a land where many marvels were wrought before his eyes, and he understood them not. At length he came to a house wherein was a very tall couple, clothed in clothes of many colours, and they bade him stay. And the man of the house brought a log and a wild boar, and if a quarter of the boar was put under a quarter of the log, and a true story was told, the meat would be cooked.

At Cormac's request the host told the first story, how that he had seven swine with which he could feed the world, for if the swine were slain, and their bones put in the sty, on the morrow they would be whole again; and the hostess the second, how that the milk of her seven white kine would satisfy the men of the world. Cormac knew them for Manannan and his wife, and then told his story how he had lost and was seeking for wife and children. Manannan brought in the latter, and told Cormac it was he who gave him the branch, that he might bring him to that house. Then they sat down to meat, and the table-cloth was such that no food, however delicate, might be demanded of it, but it should be had without doubt; and the drinking cup was such that if a false story was told before it, it went in four pieces, and if a true one, it came whole again, and therewith was the faith of Cormac's wife made evident. And Manannan gave branch and cloth and goblet to Cormac, and thereafter they went to slumber and sweet sleep.

Where they rose upon the morrow was in the pleasant Liathdruim.

The foregoing examples have been akin to the incident of the Maiden Castle. We have seen the race of immortals caring for the sons of men, signalling out and alluring to themselves the brave and wise hero. In the tales we are now about to examine the benefit conferred by the visitor upon the inmates of the Magic Castle is insisted upon. But we must first notice a tale which presents many of the incidents of the Grail romances, without actually belonging to the same story group as they. In Campbell's No. Lx.x.xVI, the Daughter of King Under the Waves, Diarmaid, the fairest and bravest of the Fenian heroes, weds a fay who, as her description indicates, belongs to the same order of beings as the damsels who lure away Connla and Bran, the son of Febal. She comes to him in loathly guise, and the other heroes shrink from her; but Diarmaid, courteous as he is brave, gives her the shelter of tent and bed and has his reward. She builds for him such a castle as the fay mistress of the Knight of the Black Tomb (_supra_, p. 17) builds for her lover. But she warns him that after a threefold reproach as to how he found her she would have to leave him. Through the cunning of Fionn he is led to break the taboo and "it was in a mosshole he awoke on the morrow. There was no castle, or a stone left of it on another." Diarmaid sets forth to seek his wife, he finds her ailing to death, and to be cured she must have three draughts from the cup of the King of the Plain of Wonder. Helped by a little russet man, he gets the talisman, as was prophesied of him; but, advised by the little russet man, he gives the maiden to drink out of a certain well, which changes their love into aversion, and he returns to the light of day.

This last feature should be noted as characteristic. The mortal lover always tires sooner than the fay mistress. Oisin cannot stay in Tir-na n-Og. Perceval gives but one night to the Lady of the Chessboard.

We now come to the "unspelling" stories, and I will cite in the first place one which is the most striking testimony I know of to the influence of this formula upon Celtic mythic lore. There is a widely spread folk-tale of a hero robbed of three magic gifts and getting them back thus; by chance he eats some fruit or herb which changes him into an a.s.s, causes his nose to grow, sets horns upon his head, or produces some equally unpleasant result. Another herb he finds heals him. Armed with specimens of either, he wins back his talismans. In Grimm it is No. 122, Der Krautesel, and in Vol. III., p. 201, variants are given. In one the hero is one of three soldiers, and he receives the gifts from a little grey man. But neither here nor in the variants given by Dr. R. Kohler (Orient und Occident, II., p. 124) is the opening the same as in Campbell's No. X.--The Three Soldiers.

The three come to a house in the wilderness dwelt in by three girls who keep them company at night, but disappear during the day. In the house is a table, overnight they eat off it, and when they rise the board is covered, and it would not be known that a bit had ever come off it. At the first night's close one soldier gets a purse never empty; at the second, the next one a cloth always filled with meat; and the third, the youngest (the hero), a transporting whistle. But as they leave he must needs ask them who they are, and they burst out crying, "They were under charms till they could find three lads who would spend three nights with them without putting a question--had he refrained they were free."

In one variant the time of probation lasts a year, and the talismans are: a cup that empties not, and a lamp of light, the table-cloth of meat, and a bed for rest. In another the damsels are swanmaids,[116] and the visitors are bidden "not to think nor order one of us to be with you in lying down or rising up."[117]

There can, I think, be little doubt that this last variant represents the oldest form of the story, and that the swanmaid damsels belong to the otherworld, as do the daughter of King Under the Waves and the maiden who fetches Connla. There is nothing surprising in swanmaids being the object of a taboo, this is so invariably the case in myth and folk-lore that it is needless to acc.u.mulate instances; what is unique to my knowledge, I speak under correction, is the fact of these damsels being in possession of the talismans, one of which is so obviously connected with the Grail.

It may be noted that the obligation laid upon the hero is the direct opposite of that in the Grail romances, in the one case a question must not be asked, in the other it must. In this respect Campbell's tale of course falls into line with all the widely spread and varying versions of the Melusine legend. The supernatural wife always forbids her husband some special act which, as is perhaps natural, he can never refrain from doing.

The next form of the Bespelled Castle legend is one which has attained far greater celebrity than any other on account of its traditional a.s.sociation with historical personages. It pictures the inmate of the castle as a King, with his warriors around him, sunk into magic sleep, and awaiting a signal to come forth and free his folk. To many English readers this legend will be more familiar in connection with Frederick Barbarossa[118]

or with Holger the Dane than with any Celtic worthy. Yet the oldest historic instance is that of Arthur.[119] I have quoted (_supra_, p. 122) Gerald's words relating to the mountain seat of Arthur. A more definite tradition, and one closely resembling the episode in the Grail romances, is the one noted by Gervasius of Tilbury[120] (c. 1211 A.D.). A groom of the Bishop of Catania, following a runaway horse even to the summit of Mount Etna, found himself in a far reaching plain, full of all things delightful. A marvellous castle rose before him, wherein lay Arthur on a royal bed, suffering from the wound inflicted upon him by Modred his nephew, and Childeric the Saxon, and this wound broke out afresh each year. The King caused the horse to be given to the groom, and made him many rich presents.[121]

This tradition of Arthur in Sicily raises some very interesting questions.

For one thing it is a fresh example of the tremendous and immediate popularity of the Arthurian legend. It also shows with what rapidity a tradition, however remote in its origin from a particular spot, may a.s.sociate itself with that. Of more immediate interest to us is the question whether this tradition has any direct connection with the Grail romances, whether it has shaped or been shaped by them. Martin refers the Maimed King of the romances to the same myth-root as the wounded Arthur waiting in Etna or in Avalon till his wound be healed and he come forth.

It seems to me more likely that in so far as the wound is concerned there is a coincidence merely between the two stories, and that the Wounded King belongs properly to the feud quest. I do not, however, deny that the fact of the Lord of the Bespelled Castle, of the otherworld, being sometimes pictured as suffering from an incurable wound, may have aided that fusion of the two strains of legend which we find in the romances.

It is not my purpose to examine here in detail the innumerable versions of this widely-spread tradition[122], the more so as I have been able to trace no exact parallel to that presentment of the story found in Heinrich von dem Turlin and in the Didot-Perceval. No other version of this form of the legend, to my knowledge, pictures the Bespelled King as awaiting the deliverance of death at the hands of his visitor. Before endeavouring to find a reason for the singularity of Heinrich's account, I will first quote one variant of the common form of the legend which has not been printed before save by myself in the Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. I., p.

193.[123] King Arthur sleeps bespelled in the ruins of (Richmond) Castle.

Many have tried to find him but failed. One man only, Potter Thompson by name, wandering one night among the ruins chanced upon the hall wherein sat the King and his men around a table upon which lay a horn and a sword.

Terrified, he turned and fled, and as he did so a voice sounded in his ears--

"Potter Thompson, Potter Thompson, Had'st thou blown the horn, Thou had'st been the greatest man That ever was born."

for then he would have freed Arthur from his magic sleep. Never again could he reach that hall.

This version, besides being practically inedited has the merit of exemplifying that a.s.sociation of the sword with the Lord of the Bespelled Castle to which I have already alluded.

The instances of the visit to the otherworld which have thus far been collected from Celtic mythic literature, and which have been used as parallels to the unspelling quest of the romances, are more closely akin to one example of this incident, Perceval's visit to the Castle of Maidens, than to that found in Heinrich and the Didot-Perceval. None, indeed, throw any light upon that death-in-life which is the special feature in these two works. All are of one kind in so far as the disposition of the inmates towards the visitor is concerned; he is received with courtesy when he is not actually allured into the castle, and the trials to which he is subjected are neither painful nor humiliating. But it will not have escaped attention that the Conte du Graal contains another form of the visit, one which I have hitherto left unnoticed, in Gawain's visit to the Magic Castle. A new conception is here introduced: the Lord of the Castle[124] is an evil being, who holds captive fair dames and damsels; they it is, and not he, whom the hero must deliver, and the act of deliverance subjects him to trial and peril (_supra_, p. 14, Chr. Inc. 17). Let us see if this form affords any explanation of the mysterious features of Heinrich's version. This incident may, it is easily conceivable, be treated in two ways; the hero may be a worthy knight and succeed, or a caitiff and fail. A story of this latter kind may throw some light upon Gawain's adventures at the Magic Castle. The story in question (The Son of Bad Counsel) is ascribed by Kennedy, Legendary Fictions, pp. 132, _et seq._, to an author of the early eighteenth century, Brian Dhu O'Reilly, and traced back to an older Ossianic legend--Conan's delusions in Ceash, of which Kennedy prints a version, pp. 232, _et seq._ The hero of the story comes to the Castle of a Gruagach, named the Giant of the Unfrequented Land, and his wife, daughter to the King of the Lonesome Land. The name of the castle is the Uncertain Castle. Very fair is their daughter, and she is proffered to the hero for his promised aid against other fairy chieftains. After playing at backgammon with the Gruagach, the hero lays himself to bed. He is a.s.sailed, as he fancies, by great dangers from which he hastens to flee, and, waking, finds himself in a ridiculous plight with his lady-love, and the other folk of the castle laughing at him. In the morning he awakes, "and his bed was the dry gra.s.s of a moat."

The names of the personages in the story at once recall those of the romances--the Waste Land or Forest, the Castle Perillous, and the like--and one of the trials, the being shot at with fairy darts, is the same as that to which Gawain is exposed in the Conte du Graal. But it is interesting chiefly as being a version of a wide-spread tale of how G.o.ds or heroes penetrating to the other world are made mock of by its inmates.

In Scandinavian mythology the story is well-known as Thor's visit to Utgarth Loki. It is equally well-known in the Fionn saga, and, considering the many points of contact we have hitherto found between Fionn and the Grail hero, the Fenian form claims our notice. The oldest preserved form of the story, that in the Book of Leinster, has been printed with translation by Mr. Whitley Stokes, Revue Celt., Vol. VII., pp. 289, _et seq._--Fionn comes at nightfall with Cailte and Oisin to a house he had never heard of in that glen, knowing though he was. A grey giant greets them; within are a hag with three heads on her thin neck, and a headless man with one eye protruding from his breast. Nine bodies rise out of a recess, and the hideous crew sing a strain to the guests; "not melodious was that concert." The giant slays their horses; raw meat is offered them, which they refuse; the inmates of the house attack them; they had been dead had it not been for Fionn alone. They struggle until the sun lights up the house, then a mist falls into every one's head, so that he was dead upon the spot. The champions rise up whole, and the house is hidden from them, and every one of the household is hidden.--In the later Fenian saga (later that is as far as the form in which it has come down to us is concerned) the story closely resembles Thor's visit. Kennedy (Bardic Stories, pp. 132, _et seq._) has a good version.[125]--Fionn and his comrades follow a giant, on his shoulders an iron fork with a pig screeching between the p.r.o.ngs, behind him a damsel scourging him. They follow them to a house wherein is an aged h.o.a.ry-headed man and a beautiful maid, a rough giant cooking the hog, and an old man having twelve eyes in his head, a white-haired ram, and a hag clad in dark ash coloured garment.

Two fountains are before the house: Fionn drinks of one which at first tastes sweet, but afterwards bitter to death; from the other, and though he never suffered as much as while drinking, when he puts the vessel from his lips he is as whole as ever he was. The hog is then shared; the ram left out of count revenges itself by carrying out the guest's share, and smite it with their swords as they may, they cannot hurt it. The hag then throws her mantle over the guests, and they become four withered drooping-headed old men; on the mantle being removed they resume their first shape. These wonders are explained. The giant is _sloth_, urged on by _energy_; the twelve-eyed old man is the _world_; and the ram the _guilt of man_; the wells are _truth_ and _falsehood_; the hag _old age_.

The warriors sleep and in the morning find themselves on the summit of Cairn Feargaill with their hounds and their arms by them.

This tale betrays its semi-literary origin at once; and, though there is no reason to doubt that the Irish Celts had a counterpart to Thor's journey to Giantland, I am inclined to look upon the version just summarised as influenced by the Norse saga. Certain it is that the popular version of Fionn's visit to Giantland is much more like the eleventh century poem, preserved in the Book of Leinster, than it is like the mediaeval, "How Fionn fared in the House of Cuana." I have already alluded (_supra_, p. 186) to one feature of the tale of Fionn's enchantment, but the whole tale is of interest to us.--As Fionn and his men are sitting round the fire boasting of their prowess in comes a slender brown hare and tosses up the ashes, and out she goes. They follow her, a dozen, to the house of the Yellow Face, a giant that lived upon the flesh of men. A woman greets them, and bids them begone before the Face returns, but Fionn will not flee. In comes the Face and smells out the strangers. Six of the Fenians he strikes with a magic rod, "and they are pillars of stone to stop the sleety wind." He then cooks and devours a boar, and the bones he throws to the Fenians. They play at ball with a golden apple, and the Face puts an end to Fionn's other comrades. Hereafter he wrestles with Fionn, and the griddle is put on the fire till it is red hot, and they all get about Fionn and set him on the griddle till his legs are burnt to the hips ('twas then he said, "a man is no man alone"), and stick a flesh-stake through both his hams, so that he could neither rise nor sit, and cast him into a corner. But he manages to crawl out and sound his horn, and Diarmaid hears it and comes to his aid, and does to the Face as the Face did to Fionn, and with the cup of balsam which he wins from him makes Fionn whole.--It is not necessary to dwell on the parallel between Diarmaid healing his uncle Fionn, wounded with a stake through the two thighs, by winning the cup of balsam, and Perceval healing his uncle (mehaignie des II cuisses) by the question as to the Grail. This, alone, would be sufficient to show us what _role_ the Grail played in the oldest form of the feud quest before the latter was influenced by the visit to the Bespelled Castle.

If we look at the stories we have just summarised, we shall easily understand the meaning of the Magic Castle vanis.h.i.+ng at dawn. As sleep is brother to death, so are night and its realm akin to the otherworld; many phantoms haunt them and seem quick and strive with and often terribly oppress the mortal wanderer through this domain, but with the first gleam of sunlight they vanish, leaving no trace behind them, and the awakening hero find himself in his own place. The conditions of the visit to the otherworld are thus partly determined by man's nightly experience in that dreamland which he figures to himself as akin to, if not an actual portion of the land of shades. This visit, as we have seen, is conceived of in several ways. Its object is almost invariably to win precious talismans; all we have comes to us from our forefathers, and it is natural to suppose that in the world whence they came, and whither they go back, is to be found all that man seeks here, only in a form as more wonderful than earthly objects as the dwellers in the otherworld are mightier and cleverer than man. At times the talismans are held by beneficent beings, who either gladly yield them to the mortal visitor, or from whom they may be won by the exhibition of valour and magnanimity; at times by evil monsters with whom the mortal must strive. In either case the visitor arrives at nightfall and in the morning awakes to the life of this earth.

The secondary or Gawain form of the myth, as found in the Conte de Graal, may help us to understand Heinrich's version. It is to free imprisoned damsels that Gauvain undergoes the trials of the Magic Castle. Now the effect of his visit in the German poem is to free the sister of Gansguoter, who, with her maidens, remains when the other inmates of the castle, released by the question, have utterly vanished.[126] But what means the death-in-life condition of the King and his men? Is it merely an expedient to account for their sudden vanis.h.i.+ng at daylight? I rather see here the influence of another form of the unspelling myth, one that mixed with Christian elements has powerfully impressed the popular imagination, and is in many European countries the only one in which this old myth still lives on.[127]

The inmates of the Magic Castle or house are in this form figured as men doomed for some evil deed to haunt that particular spot, until some mortal is bold enough to win their secret and bring them rest. One would think that under the circ.u.mstances they would be as amiable as possible to any visitor. But the older form of the story persists, and they have not terrors or trials enough for the man who is to be their deliverer. I will only quote one version, from Irish sources.[128]

A youth engages to sleep in a haunted castle. If he is alive in the morning he will get ten guineas and the farmer's daughter to wife. At nightfall he goes thither, and presently three men in old-fas.h.i.+oned dress come down in pieces through a hole in the ceiling, put themselves together, and begin playing at football. Jack joins them, and towards daybreak he judges they wish him to speak, so he asks them how he can give them rest if rest they want. "Them is the wisest words you ever spoke," is answered to him. They had ground the poor and heaped up wealth evilly.

They show him their treasure, and tell him how to make rest.i.tution. As they finish, "Jack could see the wall through their body, and when he winked to clear his sight the kitchen was as empty as a noggin turned upside down." Of course Jack does as he is told, and has the daughter to wife, and they live comfortably in the old castle.[129]

We have here, it seems to me, the last echo of such a story as one of those which enter into the Grail romances. In Heinrich's version, as elsewhere in these romances, different story types can be distinguished, different conceptions are harmonised. Many, indeed, are both the early conceptions and the varying shapes in which they embodied themselves, to be traced in the complex ma.s.s of the romances. That a kinsman is bound to avenge a blood feud, and that until he does so his kin may suffer from ailment or enchantment and their land be under a curse; that the otherworld is a land of feasting and joyousness and all fair things; that it contains magic treasures which he who is bold may win; that it is peopled with beings whom he may free by his courage; that it is fas.h.i.+oned like dreamland--all these ideas find expression.

If the foregoing exposition be accepted we have a valuable criterion for the age of the immediate originals of the romances. That famous version of the legend which pictured the dwellers in the otherworld as Kings, spell bound, awaiting the releasing word to come forth and aid their folk, to which special circ.u.mstances gave such wide popularity in the later middle ages, causing it to supplant older tales of G.o.ds dwelling in the hollow hills, this version has left no trace upon the romances. These must, therefore, be older than the full-blown Arthurian legend. One or two minor points may be briefly noticed. The s.h.i.+p in which is found the magic sword which wounds all bold enough to handle it save the destined Knight may be thought to have taken the place of an older island. The loathly Grail messenger shows the influence of the two formulas: as coming from the Bespelled Castle,[130] type of the otherworld, she should be radiantly fair; as the kinswoman of the destined avenger, under spells until the vengeance be accomplished, she is hideous in the last degree.

But before we take leave of this incident we must examine two features upon which, as yet, no light has been thrown, the meaning of the epithet the _Fisher_ King, and the hero's silence upon his first visit to the Castle of Talismans.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Fisher King in the Conte du Graal, in the Queste, and in Borron and the Grand St. Graal--The accounts of latter complete each other--The Fish is the Salmon of Wisdom--Parallel with the Fionn Saga--The nature of the Unspelling Quest--The Mabinogi of Taliesin and its mythological affinities--Brons, Bran, Cernunnos--Perceval's silence: Conte du Graal explanation late; explanation from the Fionn Saga--Comparison of incident with _geasa_; nature of latter; references to it in Celtic folk-tales and in old Irish literature, Book of Rights, Diarmaid, Cuchulainn--_Geasa_ and _taboo_.

The Conte du Graal, as we have seen, offers no satisfactory explanation of the Fisher King. By Chrestien he is represented on Perceval's first meeting with him as angling from a boat steered by his companion (v.

4,187); he directs Perceval to his castle. Perceval is afterwards informed that, being wounded and consequently unable to mount on horseback, fis.h.i.+ng is his only solace, whence the name applied to him (vv. 4,681, _et seq._).

This is practically all the Conte du Graal has to say about him, as the continuators, whilst repeating the epithet, add no fresh details. Indeed in none of the after-visits of Perceval is the King represented as fis.h.i.+ng, or is there the slightest reference to, let alone insistence upon, this favourite occupation of his. It is another proof of the inadequacy of Birch-Hirschfeld's theory of the development of the legend, that it represents Chrestien, who, _ex hypothesi_, divested Borron's poem of its religious character, as retaining this feature due wholly to religious symbolism, whilst the continuators with their obvious fondness for such symbolism entirely neglected it. The Queste, which in so far as the quest portion is concerned is formally connected with the Conte du Graal, says nothing about the Fisher, nor does that section of the Grand St. Graal which presents the same Early History as the Queste. In Borron's poem, on the other hand, and in that later section of the Grand St. Graal which agrees with it, an explanation is given of the epithet.

According to Borron, Brons catches a fish at Joseph's bidding; Joseph, having placed the vessel on the table and covered it with a towel, takes the fish and lays it opposite the vessel; the people are then called together, and it is possible to distinguish the sinners from the righteous (vv. 2,500-2,600). Joseph is afterwards told by an angel, that, as Brons was a good man, it was the Lord's will he should catch the fish (vv.

3,310, _et seq._), and he is to be called the Rich Fisher (v. 3,348). In the Grand St. Graal (Vol. II., pp. 248, _et seq._) not Brons but his son Alain is bidden by Joseph to fish, and this with a view to providing food for the sinners of the company whom the Holy Vessel leaves unsatisfied.

Alain fishes from a boat with a net. He catches but one fish, and there are at first murmurs, but Joseph, by virtue of Alain's prayers, multiplies the fish so that it feeds the host, and thus Alain wins the name of Rich Fisher.

These accounts complete each other. Chrestien dwells upon the continued act of fis.h.i.+ng which, for aught to the contrary we learn from him or his continuators, is always fruitless. Borron and the Grand St. Graal dwell upon the one successful haul, and especially upon the miraculous properties of the one fish caught. Reading the two accounts together, we find that the Fisher King pa.s.ses his life seeking for a fish which, when caught, confers upon him the power of distinguis.h.i.+ng good from evil, or enables him to furnish an inexhaustible meal to his men.

The Conte du Graal has been shown to derive more of its substance from the feud quest--the Didot-Perceval from the unspelling quest. Borron's poem, as far as its primitive Celtic elements are concerned, is probably to be ranged with the Didot-Perceval, to which many links unite it. We may, therefore, turn to Celtic stories belonging to either of these formulas for parallel features. The inexhaustible nature of the fish at once recalls the pigs of Manannan Mac Lir (_supra_, p. 194); they, too, can feed a mult.i.tude. But it is in stories formally connected with the feud quest that we find what I venture to suggest is an adequate explanation of the nature of the Fisher King and of the fish. The latter is, I think, the Salmon of Wisdom,[131] which appears so often and so prominently in Irish mythic lore; and the former is that being who pa.s.ses his life in vain endeavours to catch the wonderful fish, and who, in the moment of success, is robbed of the fruit of all his long toils and watchings. I am prepared to admit that the incident as found in Borron's poem has been recast in the mould of mediaeval Christian symbolism, but I think the older myth can still be clearly discerned and is wholly responsible for the incident as found in the Conte du Graal.[132]

Let us first look at the Irish story. This is found in an account, to which allusion has already been made, of the Boyish Exploits of Finn Mac c.u.mhail.[133] It is there told how Finn seeks his namesake, Finn-eges, to learn poetry from him, as until then he durst not stay in Ireland for fear of his foes. Now Finn-eges had remained seven years by the Boyne, watching the salmon of Linn-Feic, which it had been foretold Finn (himself as he thought) should catch and know all things afterwards. Finn, who conceals his name, takes service with him and the salmon is caught. Finn is set to watch it while it roasts, but warned not to eat of it. Inadvertently he touches it with his thumb, which he burns, and carries to his mouth to cool. Immediately he becomes possessed of all knowledge, and thereafter he had only to chew his thumb to obtain wisdom. Finn-eges recognises that the prophecy has been fulfilled, and hails his pupil as Finn.

It is needless to dwell upon the archaic features of this tale, which represents the hero seeking service of a powerful magician, from whom he hopes to learn the spells and charms that may guard him against his foes.

Here, as in many other portions of the Ossianic saga, Fionn is strikingly like a Red Indian medicine man, or the corresponding wizard among other savage tribes. It is more to our purpose to note that this tale contains the fullest presentment of Fionn as hero of the Expulsion and Return Formula, and that a similar incident is to be found in the lives of other heroes of the formula (notably Siegfried: the Adventure with Mimir.) Now, as we have already seen that Peredur-Perceval is a formula hero, there is nothing remarkable in finding an a.n.a.logous incident in his _sage_. A formal connection is thus at once made out. But we must look into the matter a little closer, as the incident found in the romances is but a faint echo, and that in part distorted by alien conceptions, of the original story.

The unspelling quest in one form resolves itself ultimately into the hero's search for riches, power, or knowledge, in prosecution of which he penetrates to the otherworld. This is figured in the Grail romances both by Brons' or Alain's (who here answers to Fionn) catching the wonderful fish, and by Peredur-Perceval coming to the house of Brons, the Fisher King (who here answers to Finn-eges), winning from him the mysterious vessel of increase, and learning the secret words which put an end to the enchantments of Britain. In the Grail romances the idea of wisdom is not a.s.sociated with the Grail, the vessel, at all; it is either bound up with the fish, as in the Irish tale, or is the possession of the Fisher King as the wonder-working spells are the possession of Finn-eges.

But in the Welsh tradition which corresponds to that of Fionn and the salmon, it is the vessel, the cauldron, or rather the drink which it holds, which communicates the gift of wisdom and knowledge. I allude, of course, to the story of Gwion, set by Ceridwen to watch the cauldron of inspiration, inadvertently tasting its contents, becoming thereby filled with knowledge, pursued by Ceridwen, who swallows him, and in whom he re-incarnates himself as Taliesin, the Allwise Bard. Campbell had already (Vol. IV., p. 299) drawn attention to the similarity of the two stories, and equated Fionn, father of Oisin, with Gwion, father of Taliesin; and, as Professor Rhys has now (Hibbert Lectures, p. 551) given the equation his sanction, it may be accepted as philologically sound.

I have hitherto refrained in the course of these studies from making any use of the Mabinogi of Taliesin, or of references to the cauldron of Ceridwen of a like nature with those contained in that tale; but it will, I think, be admitted now that the Welsh Mabinogi, however late in form, and however overlaid it may be with pseudo-archaic bardic rubbish, does go back to a primitive stratum of Celtic mythology.

In connection with this myth the name Brons is of high import. This catcher of the fish, this lord of the Grail, at once suggests Bran, who is also a guardian of the magic cauldron. Professor Rhys (pp. 85-95) shows reason for looking upon Bran (as he is presented in the Mabinogi of Branwen) as the representative of an old Celtic G.o.d, Cernunnos, that Celtic Dis from whom, as Caesar reports, the Gauls claimed descent, and who, as G.o.d of the otherworld and the shades was also G.o.d of knowledge and riches. We are thus brought back again to the fundamental conception of the Grail quest.

It is to this tale that I would turn for one of the possible explanations of Perceval's silence at the Court of the Fisher King. That the romance writers did not understand this incident is evident from the explanation they give.

Gonemans' moral advice to his nephew on the evil of curiosity may have its foundation in a possible feature of the original, about which I shall speak presently; or it may simply be an expedient of Chrestien's or of his immediate model. In either case its present form is obviously neither old nor genuine. The silence of Perceval may, perhaps, be referred to the same myth-root as Fionn's concealment of his name whilst in the service of Finn-eges.[134] This prohibition might extend not only to the disclosing of his name by the mortal visitor to the realm of the shades, but to the utterance of any words at all. As he might not eat or drink in the underworld, so he might not speak lest he lose the power to return to the land of the living. One tale we have seen (_supra_, p. 195) does contain this very injunction to say no word whilst in company of the dwellers in the Bespelled Castle. In this case we should have to a.s.sume that two varying redactions of the theme have been maladroitly fused into one in the romances--that, namely, which bids the visitor to the otherworld abstain from a certain act, and that which, on the contrary, bids him perform a certain act, failure of compliance with the injunction being punished in either case. The positive injunction of one form of the story is used as an explanation of the hero's failure in another.

An alternative hypothesis is that whilst the hero's unreadiness of speech, the cause of his want of success at his first visit, comes wholly from the unspelling quest, the motive by which the romances seek to account for that unreadiness comes from the feud quest. The latter, as has been shown, is closely akin to many task-stories; and it is a frequent feature in such stories, especially in the Celtic ones, that the hero has to accomplish his quest in spite of all sorts of odd restrictions which are laid upon him by an enemy, generally by a step-mother or some other evil-disposed relative. In the language of Irish mythic tradition Perceval would be under _geasa_ to ask no questions, and Gonemans' advice would be the last faint echo of such an incident. The form which such prohibitions take in Celtic folk-tales is very curious. The _gess_ is generally embodied in a magical formula, the language of which is very old and frequently unintelligible to the narrators themselves. As a rule, the hero, by advice of a friendly supernatural being, lays a counterspell upon his enemy.