Popular romances of the middle ages

Front matter

*&»EKfiS{KESJ*M

PBEEACE.

The genius of a great poet has in our own time shed a new lustre on the story of Arthur ; but with this exception the romances which delighted Englishmen of the Middle Ages are known to their descendants, generally, little more than in name. Yet these stories must possess an interest for all who welcome any evidence which throws light on the growth of the human mind, if only from the mere fact that for generations these tales carried with them an irresistible charm ; but even to this day the heroes whose names they bear still exercise over us in some faint measure the power of old associations. The wisdom of Merlin, the bravery of Bevis and Gruy, have almost passed into proverbs : and to not a few, probably, the name of Olger will bring up the image of the mighty Dane, wrapped in the charmed slumber in which he lifts his mace once only in seven years. But a more potent spell is linked with the thought of Eoland the brave and true, the peerless Paladin who fell on Roncesvalles.

Contents

The story of Arthur ....

Alleged historical character of King Arthur Supposed historical residuum in the myth of Arthur Victories of Arthur and Herakles Origin of the Arthur romance Limits of the inquiry Growth of popular tradition The source of human fancy Myths of savage tribes Etymological explanations of myths Parallelisms in the incidents of mythical tales Illustrations from myths in which the names do not translate each other .......

Classifications of popular stories ....

Chapter I. — The crowning of Arthur „ II. — The story of Balin and Balan

, III. — The wedding of Arthur and Guenevere

, IV. — The treason of Morgan le Fay

, V. — The crowning of Arthur at Rome .

, VI. — The exploits of Sri' Lancelot du Lake

VII.— The story of Sir Gareth of Orkney

VIIL— The history of Sir Tristram

13.5

, IX. — The madness of Sir Tristram

, X. — The treasons of King Mark and Palamides

XL — The birth of the good knight Galahad

, XII. — The finding of Lancelot

. XIII. — The shriving of Sir Lancelot

, XIV. — The temptation of Sir Percivale

. 182

, XV. — The vision of Sir Lancelot

XVI.— The trial of Sir Bors

1^88

, XVII. — The achieving of the Sangreal

, XVILL— The story of the Maid of Astolat .

, XIX. — The judgment of Queen Guenevere . .

. 209

„ XX. — The siege of Joyous Gard .

. 215

, XXI. — The last days of Arthur, Guenevere, and Lancelot

. 234

. 245

. 268

. 297

. 320

. 348

. 369

BEOWULF" ... . .

. 382

1NDI

:x

. 399

Errata.

Page 2, line '22. for Kykloples read Kyklopes.

Page 76, lines 6 and 7 of note, /or declaration read declamation.

POPULAR ROMANCES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

BY /

GEORGE W. COX, M.A.

AUTHOR OP 'THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS' ETC.

and

EUSTACE HINTON JONES.

LONDON :

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

All rights reserved.

POPULAR ROMANCES.

LONDON: PBINTED BY

8POTTISWOODB AND CO., NEW-BTREET SQt'AEE

AND PABLIAMENT 8TUEKT

POPULAR EOMANCES

OF THE

MIDDLE AGES.

Introduction

The proposition that King Arthur either is or is not an historical personage will be disputed by none. Happily the answer to this question, whether it be given The st of in the affirmative or the negative, has really ^kur. nothing to do with the origin of the world-renowned story as told by Jeffrey of Monmouth, or by Sir Thomas Malory. Whatever may have been the deeds of the real Arthur, if Arthur ever really lived, they exhibit scarcely a single feature in common with the fortunes and exploits of the lord of the Round Table, and the illustrious knights who went in search of the Holy Grail. The historical character of the legend of King Arthur must, even by those who accept it, be taken with a qualification. If Lappenberg, in his chivalrous ^eg^^. defence of the story, myth, or fiction (which- 2Stor«f ever it be), can argue that the rapid spread of KtngArthur. Jeffrey's work over great part of Europe proves that the belief in the hero of it was deeply rooted, 1 it may be

1 England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (translated by Benjamin Thorpe), i. 102.

B answered that the same profound faith alone explains the wide circulation of the stories of Valentine and Orson or Jack the Griant-killer. If the same historian can even infer the historical existence of Arthur from the many local memorials which, throughout the whole of the Christian part of Europe, are made to bear his name, it may be urged that the same method will prove the existence of Aineias, or Odysseus, or Achilleus, whose relics or sepulchres are thickly strewn along the shores of the Mediterranean ; and that the story of Aineias, in particular, was attested beyond all possibility of dispute, even in the days of Cato, by the relics of the marvellous sow kept in pickle at Lavinium. 1 If, again, Lappenberg lays stress on the more measured veneration of the Welsh poets, who esteem his general Greraint more highly than the king himself, and even relate that the latter, far from being always victorious, surrendered Hampshire and Somersetshire to the Saxons, this plea for the existence of the great Celtic hero has as much and as little value as the argument which would infer the historical character of the Odyssey from the defeats or injuries sustained by Odysseus at the hands of Kykloples or Laistrygonians, of Skylla or Charybdis, and from the more straightforward and honest bearing of Telemachos or Eumaios, who certainly do not fight with poisoned arrows, or boast of stabbing men behind their back. If Lappenberg seeks to impart a faint historical hue to the expedition of Arthur against the Koman emperor, on the ground that a real expedition was undertaken in the year 468 on the demand of Anthemius by the British general, Eiothamus, the device is neither better nor worse than that of the historian who should claim as fact the expedition of Herakles against the Eastern tyranny of Ilion, on the ground that there was at a later time a real victory of the Greeks over the Eastern tyranny of Persia.

1 Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, i. 334.

If Lappenberg can insist that the discovery of Arthur's long-concealed grave is mentioned by credible contemporaries, and excited at the time no suspicion of any religions or political deception, it may be answered not only that the discoveries of relics rarely rouse such suspicions, but that the discovery of forgotten or unknown sepulchres is too common an incident to carry much weight either in favour of a story or against it. The final argument that Henry II., if he wished merely through an artifice to convince the Welsh of the death of their national hero, ' would hardly himself have acted so conspicuous a part on the occasion,' may be dismissed partly with the reply that we are perhaps scarcely competent to pronounce on his motives, and in part with the retort that some portions of the story even of Henry II. pass into the cloudland of mythology, and that the maze of Woodstock bears too suspicious a likeness to the labyrinth of Daidalos to allow any but the most credulous to receive without misgiving the tale of Queen Eleanor's vengeance against Fair Eosamond. In all this ingenious or desperate pleading Lappenberg is in truth defending a breach which was long ago surrendered as untenable by William of Malmesbury. If we choose to say with him that ' poem and tradition bear witness to the spirit, and his ashes and the gravestone to the life and name of Arthur,' how much more may it be said that the discovery of the books written by the sacred hands of Numa bear witness to the existence of the great Eoman representative of Drakon, or Zaleukos, or Lykourgos ? There is, indeed, but one way of escape out of this vicious circle, and this rather apparent than real. When we have a story in which gods and goddesses mingle visibly among men, in which the great heroes are invulnerable except in one part of their bodies, in which the leaders are sons of the Heaven, or the Dawn, or the Morning, it may seem possible to get at the historical evidence by cutting away all the mar-

B 2 vellous features, and accepting the remaining incidents as fact. It is the old cheat which Euemeros practised on himself, and which his followers have diligently applied in all ages ; and, like Milton, Lappenberg qnietly surrenders himself to the delusion. ' Faith in the existence of this Christian, Celtic Hector,' he asserts, ' cannot be shaken by short-sighted doubt; though much must be yet done for British story, to render the sense latent in the poems of inspired bards, which have in many cases reached us only in spiritless paraphrases, into the sober language of historical criticism.' In other words, it will be no easy task to achieve for the great Celtic legend that which Thucydides, much to his own satisfaction, accomplished for the story of the Trojan war. But the meagre skeleton to which Thucydides reduces the myth of Ilion is not the story as told by the poets of the Iliad or the Odyssey, or by the lyric and tragic poets of Hellas, most of whom lived nearer to the times in which the incidents are supposed to have taken place than the great historian. From his narrative, which is unquestionably conveyed in the 6 sober language of historical criticism,' all the old familiar features of the legend have vanished utterly away. We see neither Helen with her griefs and woes, nor Memnon, nor Sarpedon ; neither Eos, nor Zeus, nor Athene, nor Aphrodite. We have but a ghastly caput mortuum of bare incidents, of which, in Mr. Grrote's words, we can but say that as the possibility of such events cannot be denied, so neither can the reality be affirmed.

No other judgment can be given of any historical residuum extracted from any of the versions into which supposed the story of Arthur has passed. No other judg-

liistorical ' . ,, , , ,

residuum in mem: was given practically seven hundred years SSSir. °" ago by William of Malmesbury, when he speaks of the many fables told about him by the Britons, even in his own day. William, it is true, mentions Arthur as a man who deserved to be celebrated, not by idle fiction, but by genuine history ; but be has no other mode of constructing or reconstructing this history than that which had been applied by Euemeros before him or Dr. Lappenberg after him. If he hesitates to believe other parts of the narrative, he can readily believe that c at the siege of Mount Badon, Arthur, trusting in an image of the Virgin, engaged nine hundred of the enemy, single handed, and turned them to flight with fearful slaughter.' The Virgin's image, it may be safely said, rendered this incident credible to William, who would have rejected with contempt the notion that Grettir, in the Icelandic Saga which bears his name, should, without aid from any other, slay eighty men who attack him while he is asleep. In striking contrast with the special pleading of Lappenberg is the testimony of Lingard, who has no hesitation in asserting that, ' if we divest his memory of the fictitious glory which has been thrown round it by the imagination of the bards and minstrels, he will sink into equal obscurity with his fellows. We know neither the period when he lived, nor the district over which he reigned. He is said to have fought and to have gained twelve battles. In most of these, from the names of the places, he seems to have been opposed to the Angles in Lincolnshire, — from the last, at Mount Badon, to the Saxons under Cerdic or Cynric. This, whether it was fought under Arthur or not, was a splendid and useful victory, which for forty years checked the advances of the strangers. Perhaps, when the reader has been told that Arthur was a British chieftain, that he fought many battles, that he was murdered by his nephew, and was buried at Grlastonbury, where his remains were discovered in the reign of Henry II., he will have learned all that can be ascertained at the present day of that celebrated warrior.' 1

1 History of England, i. 72. Ed. 4. Mr. Freeman, having insisted on the totally different character of the story of the English conquest as told by

He can scarcely be said to know so much. In the case of a chieftain, with whose life mythology, by universal convictories of sent, has been busy, the twelve victories which HeraMes. he wins provoke comparison with the twelve labours which Herakles brought to a successful end, while the chronology which marks the result of the battle of Mount Badon is as little to be trusted as any other part of the legend. The annals of the iEscingas of Kent are constructed on an eight times recurring cycle of eight years ; and Lappenberg, who upholds the historical character of King Arthur, traces this number through every stage in the career of the English conquerors. 1 The remaining incidents, which Dr. Lingard is content that the reader should believe, if he likes to do so, are, of course, perfectly possible ; but if our knowledge of them be derived solely from the legendary narratives of his exploits, it is worth neither more nor less than the chronology of the events which took place in the House that Jack built. We may learn the truth of these facts, if they be facts, from other sources, as we learn from Eginhard, that Hruodland (Eoland), the prefect of the British march, fell at Eoncesvalles. From the legend we learn nothing.

The ground is at once in a great measure cleared before

the English Chronicles and by Jeffrey of Monmouth, has not thought it worth while to take any notice of the Arthur legend.

1 The battle of C.rayford is fought eight years after the landing of the Teutonic invaders ; eight years later Hengest won the battle of Wippedesfieot. The next eighth year is marked by another -victory. Twice eight years after this battle, or in the fortieth year after his arrival, Hengest dies. His successor, Eric, reigns three times eight years ; and so onwards to iEthelberht, who reigns six times eight years, and his successors Eadbald and Earconberht, who each reign three times eight years. — Lappenberg, England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, i. 75.

The artificial chronology of the early Eoman kings is far more elaborated. That of the Assyrians ranges over a wider field, and is more cumbrous and less ingenious. See the Edinburgh Review, January 1867, No. 255, fol. 128-130.

us. The question of the historical residuum contained in the stories at the head of which may be placed origin of the

Arthur ro-

the myth of Arthur loses all importance and all mance. interest. The question even of the times in which they have taken shape becomes comparatively insignificant. But the stories themselves still remain ; and we are driven to ask — What are they, and whence come the materials which have been wrought into these shapes? and the question must be asked till it receives an answer. If, then, in these stories we find incidents which seem to be the same — if they occur in the same or nearly the same sequence — if they are astonishing or improbable in character, or even impossible — if again, we find incidents or sequences precisely similar in the popular stories or the epical literature of other ages and countries — is it possible to avoid entering on the task of comparison, in the hope of reaching a definite source for narratives which, amidst so many variations, still exhibit so much likeness ? This course is justified, apart from all considerations of comparative philology. In identity or resemblance of names we have unquestionably the strongest evidence for the identity or affinity of legends which profess to relate different events, or to belong to different countries ; but it is obvious that, if we have half-a-dozen tales which repeat the same set of extraordinary incidents in the same order, we must regard them all as versions of a single story, even though two or three may possess no names in common, or though the difference extend to all. The original story thus reached may, of course, have an historical foundation; but probably long before we have reached this stage of the inquiry, we shall see on all sides evidence which will drive us more and more to the conclusion that the history is that of Cloudland.

My present task, therefore, is confined wholly to the matter of the stories contained in this volume. That some of the men who are named in them may have lived, or that

8 Popular Romcmces of the Middle Ages.

some of the events which are related in them may have happened, I do not in any way deny. The Persian Cyrus Limits of the * s unquestionably historical; the whole story inquiry. f ^is "b^th and childhood is unquestionably unhistorical. But when we find that this story is repeated in the history of Eomulus and Kemus, of Oidipous, Perseus, and Telephos, of Chandragupta and many more, the conclusion follows that, so far as these stories are concerned, they are all the same ; and while I leave altogether on one side the possible historical reality of any or all of these personages, I am bound to ask again, how this story came into being.

To a certain extent I have answered this question already ; and an examination of the mediaeval romances of Growth of Europe will, I think, tend greatly to strengthen dition? 1 " the position which I have felt no hesitation in laying down, that together with the whole genuine epical literature of the Aryan race, that is, with all the poems which are strictly of popular growth, they relate a story which has its origin in the phenomena of the natural world and the course of the day and the year. 1 I welcome with pleasure the vast amount of evidence, extending beyond the bounds of the Aryan race, over the whole area of human life, which has been gathered by Mr. Tylor in his learned and valuable work on Primitive Culture, and which, I venture to think, renders it impossible to maintain any other conclusion than that which I had reached already.

In speaking of the Hellenic mythology, Mr. Gladstone asserted that man may embellish, but that he can not Tnesourceof create, the inference being that as the Hellenic fancy. tribes had not created their mythology, it must

have its roots in an original revelation from which it was a degradation and a depravation. The reasons which

1 Mythology of the Aryan Nations, i. vi.

render such a theory untenable have been already given. 1 Mr. Tylor, fully sharing Mr. Gladstone's scepticism with regard to the inventive power of the mind of man, and holding that ' among those opinions which are produced by a little knowledge, to be dispelled by a little more, is the belief in an almost boundless creative power of the human imagination,' asserts that ' the superficial student, mazed in a crowd of seemingly wild and lawless fancies, which he thinks to have no reason in nature nor pattern in this material world, at first concludes them to be new births from the imagination of the poet, the tale-teller and the seer. But little by little, in what seemed the most spontaneous fiction, a more comprehensive study of the sources of poetry and romance begins to disclose a cause for each fancy, an education that has led up to each train of thought, a store of inherited materials from out of which each province of the poet's land has been shaped and built over and peopled. Backward from our own times, the course of mental history may be traced through the changes wrought by modern schools of thought and fancy, upon an intellectual inheritance handed down to them from earlier generations. And through remote periods, as we recede more nearly toward primitive conditions of our race, the threads which connect new thought with old do not always vanish from our sight. It is in large measure possible to follow them as clues leading back to that actual experience of nature and life, which is the ultimate source of human fancy.' 2

Mr. Tylor has, accordingly, brought together a vast number of myths from existing savage tribes, whose ' clear and fresh mythic conceptions may serve as a Myths of basis in studying the nature-myths of the world tribes. at large ; ' 3 and his classification of these myths is based distinctly on a judgment of 'the characteristics of the

1 Aryan Mythology, Book I. cli. i. 2 Primitive Culture, i. 248.

io Popular Romances of the Middle Ages.

episodes themselves as to the ideas which suggested them.' 11 His conclusion is that the evidence so gathered countenances ' a strong opinion as to the historical development of legends which describe in personal shape the life of nature.' 2

In the road to which we are thus brought, we have to a certain extent the sure guidance of etymology. All is Btymoiooi. c l ear so l° n g as we deal w ^ n legends such as tfon e s X of lana " ^ na ^ °f Endymion, whose name denotes simply myths. thg plunging sun, and which represents him as the

child of Protogeneia, the early dawn, and of Aethlios, the sun who struggles through the clouds or against the darkness, and as the husband of Selene, the moon, or of Asterodia, who wanders among the stars with her fifty children whose forms are seen in the star-lit heavens. There is no room for doubt, while we have before us such a myth as that of Prokris, whose name carries us to the Sanscrit root which furnished a name for the dew — whose mother Herse is dew even to the Greek, and who is unwittingly smitten by the spear of Kephalos, the head of the sun, as the solar rays kill or drink up the dew drops. We can have no misgivings lest we be on the wrong path, as we read how Sarpedon, the light which creeps along the sky, came from Lykia, the land of light, with his friend Grlaukos the shining one ; how he was slain far away in the West, and how Thanatos and Hypnos, Sleep and Death, bore him homewards through the silent hours of night, and laid him on his threshold by the banks of Xanthos, the golden river, as the first streak of dawn shot along the blue fields of heaven. We can move with confidence, as we hear how Persephone, the daughter of the Earth-Mother or the Dawn-mother, was stolen away by Hades Polydegmon, the King of the unseen land which swallows all living things; how Helios, the Sun, saw her borne away, and Hekate, the Moon, heard her cry ; how while she lay in 1 Primitive Culture, i. 309. * lb. i. 331.

the dark land beneath the earth, the flowers refused to

bloom, the grass would not grow, and the trees would not

put forth leaves or fruits ; and how the heavens were glad

and the earth laughed when the fair maiden was brought

back by Hermes, the lord of the moving air, to the

Mourning Mother at Eleusis, the trysting-place.

Why should we move with less confidence, or be less sure

of our ground when we come to the myth of the Teutonic

Iduna, of whom the same story is told, how Parallelisms

Wuotan and all the iEsir mourn when she is jn the incidents of my-

stolen away; how the trees shed frozen tears, thical tales - and the sun withdraws his face, until Loki brings her back in the form of a quail ? * Why should we feel any misgiving when we have to handle stories in which all things are held in a dreamless sleep, while a beautiful maiden slumbers either within a fortress of ice, or walls of flame, or an impenetrable hedge of briars ? When Iduna and Persephone are brought back, the whole world rejoices. When Dornroschen awakes from her slumber at the kiss of the brave knight who has found his way to her chamber, the scullion boy receives the blow which the cook had raised his hand to inflict a hundred years ago, and the maid goes on with the process of basting the meat, in which she had been interrupted when the thorn pierced the hand of the Eose Maiden. It is but the familiar form which the myth is sure to receive at the hands of the common folk ; but the transformation makes our task a simpler one for thousands of popular tales,

1 Bunsen asserts naturally, that this myth is an exact counterpart of the earliest myth of Herakles, who falls into the sleep of winter, and lies stiff and stark till Iolaos wakes him by holding a quail to his nose." — God in History, ii. 488. — In Hellenic mythology, Delos, the brilliant birthplace of Phoibos, is also Ortygia, the land of the quail, the bird of morning. Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, Second Series, 506. — The German wachtel may mean, as some hold, the quacking bird ; but it is not impossible that the equivocation between quacking and waking may have determined the choice of this bird in the German myth.

and we see at once that we have only Persephone or Idnna in another form when, in the story of the Dwarfs, the maiden, having eaten a golden apple, 1 sinks a hundred fathoms in the earth, where the prince (the same, of course, who rescues Dornroschen) finds her with the nineheaded dragon resting on her lap ; or, again, as we read of the House in the Wood in which lies a princess seemingly dead, and how, when presently the sides crack and the beams groan as if riven from their fastenings, the stairs fall down, and the whole roof gives way, she awakens from her death-like trance to find herself in a splendid palace, and in floods of dazzling sunlight. What have we here but the sudden overthrow of the wintry powers, when the maiden finds herself on the green couch of the life-giving mother? We may trace the same idea through the story of the Nix of the Mill Pond, 2 of Jungfrau Maleen, 3 of the Ill-tempered Princess in the Spanish Patrafia, in the Hindu tale of Surya Bai, the Sun-maiden, 4 of Holda and of Frau Berchta, as well as, again, in the myth of Demeter and Iasion, and of the Latin Ceres and Saturnus. 5

In some of these stories we have the guidance of etymology ; perhaps we may be said to have them in illustrations manv ? if names which tell their own tale are to inTu^hthe ^ e t a ken into account. But from this point of tea^sfate 110 * v * ew an etymological character may possibly be each other, traced between the greater number of the tales which form the vast mythical inheritance of the nations. There remain many, however, between which no such links can be found. There is no etymological

1 This golden apple or pomegranate, which is eaten or tasted by Persephone just before she leaves Hades, answers to the narkissos, or stupifying plant, which the Maiden (Kore) takes before she is stolen away. For the signification of the pomegranate, see Aryan Mythology, ii. 298.

2 Grimm, Household Stories. 8 lb.

4 Frere, Deccan Tales. 6 Aryan Mythology, ii. 306-8.

connexion between the Hindu story of Punchkin l and the Teutonic tale of the Giant who had no heart in his body ; 2 yet it is impossible not to see that the death of the one, both in the mode of its infliction and in the whole train of incidents which led to it, is the precise counterpart of the catastrophe which overtakes the other. 3 The names Sisyphos and Ixion may explain themselves, although in the case of the latter this has been disputed ; but apart from this can it be questioned that wealth and wisdom and a terrible punishment are the characteristics of Sisyphos, Ixion, and Tantalos, and that the stone which Sisyphos heaves to the summit of the hill, only to see it roll down again, is but the blazing four-spoked wheel on which the body of Ixion is stretched as on a rack at noonday ? Can it be doubted ' that the presumption which marks these three mythical beings brings on Tantalos a penalty precisely similar in character, though not in outward form ? Could the effects of drought be more vividly described than by the myth of the Sun, who scorches the fruits which he has quickened into life, as he puts his face down close to the earth, or makes the water flee away as he stoops to quench his thirst ? We may take the Ottawa tale of Iosco, which Mr. Tylor regards as ' evidently founded on a myth of Day and Night.' 6 Iosco seems to be Ioskeha, the White One, whose contest with his brother Tawiscara, the Dark One, is an early and most genuine Huron nature-myth of Day and Night.' 4 It is scarcely necessary to say that the story would suffice to determine their character, even if the names did not, as they seem to do, explain themselves. But how abundant a spring is here touched by the comparative mythologist ! The counterparts of these Ottawa deities are found in the Vedic Asvins, or twin horses or horsemen ; sometimes brothers, sometimes sisters, sometimes friends or enemies,