The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac. Weston Jessie Laidlay

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      The process in vogue appears to have consisted of two stages: in the first, the king at whose court the events took place (himself generally anonymous) was identified with Arthur; in the second stage, the original hero was replaced by one of Arthur's knights. Among the specimens which have been preserved we have examples of all the stages: lais entirely independent of Arthur; lais, the scene of which is laid at Arthur's court; lais in which the hero is one of Arthur's knights; but one and all are in the same metre, that of Chrétien's poems. Of an intermediate French form we have no trace.

      The lai of Tyolet, to which we have previously referred, is an excellent example of this gradual 'Arthurisation.' As we have it, the court at which the events take place is that of Arthur, the loyal friend of the hero is Gawain, but nowhere else do we meet with Tyolet as one of Arthur's knights: the inference is that we have here a lai in the first stage of assimilation. The lai consists of two parts; the latter half, the stag adventure, is found in a separate form, but here the hero is one of Arthur's most famous knights, Lancelot—the process of assimilation is complete.

      The first part of the lai has many features which recall the more famous 'Perceval' Enfances. That Tyolet is anterior to the evolution of the Lancelot story we have shown above63; the probability is that it is also anterior to the great popularity of the Perceval story. When Perceval was once universally recognised as the son of the widowed lady of the forest, there would be little probability of the tale being told of a hero practically unknown to Arthurian story. His adventures taken over by more famous knights, Tyolet disappeared from the roll of heroes.

      Again, among the lais we have an important group dealing with the main idea of a knight beloved by the wife of his lord, rejecting her advances, incurring her displeasure, and finally departing to fairyland with a fairy bride. Of this story we have three important variants, agreeing in their main features but differing in detail: the lais of Graalent, Guingamor, and Lanval. Of these three, the scene of the two first is laid at the court of an anonymous king; the action of the third, translated by a contemporary of Chrétien, passes at the court of Arthur. But, though the lai of Guingamor has only reached us in its earlier and independent form, Chrétien himself refers to it in an Arthurised version. He brings Guingamor to Arthur's court, and says of him,

      'de l'Isle d'Avalon fu sire.

      De cestui avons oï dire

      Qu'il fu amis Morgain la fee,

      Et ce fu veritez provee.'—Erec, ll. 1955-8.

      M. Ferd. Lot64 suggests that the identification is probably due to Chrétien himself, but if we examine the passage closely I do not think we shall find it to be so. It occurs in a list of knights who visit Arthur's court for the marriage of Erec. The passage immediately preceding deals with a certain Maheloas of l'Ile de Voirre.65 He then names two brothers, Graislemier de Fine Posterne and Guingamor. The first named is generally identified as Graalent-Mor, the hero of the lai to which I have referred above.

      The fact that Chrétien makes the two knights brothers clearly indicates that he knew the close kinship existing between their stories; but why, if dealing with a free hand, he should have made Guingamor, and not Graalent, the lord of Avalon it is difficult to say. If free to choose we should have expected the latter; the lai of Graalent stands in far closer connection with that of Lanval (being a variant of the same story) than with that of Guingamor; and Lanval weds the mistress of Avalon. Or, since both were brothers, both might have been represented as dwelling in that mystic island which had not one queen alone as its denizen but nine. The real explanation alike of the connection and the separation of the two knights appears to me to be that Chrétien knew the one lai, and not the other, in an Arthurised form.

      Certainly it seems more probable that the gradual assimilation by the lais of an Arthurian character would, so far as the Continent is concerned, take place on Breton rather than on French grounds. They are originally Breton lais; Arthur is a Breton,66 not a French, hero; where would Breton folk-lore and Breton traditionary romance be more likely to coalesce than in the home of both? I do not myself believe that such coalition was the work either of Marie de France or Chrétien de Troyes.

      In any case it is beyond the shadow of a doubt that when Chrétien wrote his first Arthurian poem there was already afloat a vast body of popular folk-lore connected with the Arthurian legend, and existing under the form of short poems in rhymed, eight-syllabic verse, the same metre, in fact, as that adopted by Chrétien himself. It is also certain that he knew these lais; highly probable that he knew some of them, as his contemporary Marie de France did, in their Arthurised form. As we shall see presently, there is strong ground for the presumption that for the main incident of his most famous poem, Yvain, he was indebted to such a lai.

      Now, without accepting the mechanical theory of Herr Brugger,67 which would make the first Arthurian romances consist of continental lais automatically strung together, I certainly think that the lais played a more important part in the evolution of these romances than we generally realise. In a previous chapter68 I have indicated what would probably be the method of procedure. The original lai would be expanded by the introduction of isolated adventures; other lais, which through demerit of style or music had failed to win popularity, would be drawn upon for incident, or incorporated bodily; one or more popular lais would be added, and the whole worked over and polished up into a complete and finished romance. At first the parts would hang but loosely together, and there would be a good deal of re-selection and discarding of incident before the work crystallised into shape, though the form of the original tale, which was the kernel of the subsequent romance, would not be likely to vary much.

      The Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven is, as I suggested above, an example of a romance arrested in development: the kernel of the whole can be detected, but the parts fit badly, and it has never been really worked up into shape. But, unless I am much mistaken, we have in the Welsh tale of The Lady of the Fountain a specimen of the same process at work, of capital importance for critical purposes, since we also possess the completed work, i.e. the Mabinogi has preserved Chrétien's Yvain in process of making. The adventures are practically identical, sequence and incident agree in the main, but in the Welsh version they are much more loosely connected, and there are significant breaks which seem to show where the successive redactions ended. If we follow the indications of the version we shall conclude that as first told the story ended with Yvain's achievement of the 'spring' adventure and his marriage with the lady. This would, I think, represent the original lai, which in its primitive form might well be unconnected with Arthur's court: the king was probably anonymous. The next step would be to Arthurise the story; Yvain must start from Arthur's court, and naturally the court must learn of his success: this was arranged by bringing Arthur and his knights to the spring where they are themselves witnesses, and victims, of Yvain's prowess. It is significant that in all the versions extant Yvain is influenced in his secret departure from court by the conviction that Gawain will demand the adventure of the spring, and thus forestall him; but in the Welsh variant alone is this forecast literally fulfilled and the undecided conflict between Yvain and Gawain fought at the spring. And here the Welsh version breaks again. This was evidently the end of the Arthurised lai, and the point where the conflict between the friends was originally placed. All the variants bear the trace of this second redaction; the Welsh tale alone indicates clearly what was the primitive form. Yvain's transgression of his lady's command (probably first introduced for this purpose), a transgression much more serious in the Welsh, where he stays away for three years, СКАЧАТЬ