Gaelic Ballad Metre and Assonance
Hearken a space, if ye wish a LAY;
Of the days that from us have GONE;
Of MacCoaill, and of the FEINNE;
And of Mac o’ Duine, a woeful SONG.
Morte Arthur.
“Lancelot wist what was her will,
Well he knew, by other mo;
Her brother cleped he him till;
And to her chamber gonne they go.”
The rhythm is nearly that of the old Irish air “The Groves of Blarney,” and probably the whole series of traditions, English, Scotch, Welsh, Breton, German, and Irish, have been sung by wandering minstrels, in various shapes and to various tunes, time out of mind. The story is at least as old as the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who relates that after the battle of Camblan, Arthur was transported by his bard and prophet Merlin to “The Fortunate Island, or Island of Apples.”
“Sir Guy of Warwick” is also like Gaelic stories. Like Manus he was attended by a faithful lion, and the story of Raymond, Sir Guy’s son, has much in common with one of Marie’s lays and the story of Cuchulin’s son above mentioned.
“Sir Bevis of Hamptown” is also very Celtic in character. The hero, like “the great fool,” loses his father, is nursed in secret, becomes a herd boy, and, as a child, performs the feats of a great warrior. When wounded he is cured with a wonderful balsam. One of his adventures is the slaughter of a boar which devoured men, which no spear would pierce nor sword bite—like the magic boar slain by Diarmaid. His sword is called Mor Glay, which is evidently Gaelic, and two lines of the romance are in Shakespere—
‘Rats and mice and such small deer,
Was his meat that seven year.”
Sir Bevis, like the man in Murdoch MacBrian, and other heroes, comes disguised as a poor man, and is recognised by his love. Lions are like Conall’s lions, they kill and devour a man and his horse, but lay their heads in the lap of a king’s daughter—
“For it is the lion’s kind y wis,
A king’s daughter that maid is,
Hurt nor harm none to do,
Therefore lay these lions so.”
There is also the magic healing well which is in so many Gaelic stories.
The romances which treat of Charlemagne also bear a strong resemblance to the rest. ‘Roland and FerraGus” introduces a Gaelic name, though it is that of the pagan villain of the piece, who is sent by the Soudan from Babylon to fight Charlemagne. He is a giant, black, and a great deal bigger than Fergus the son of Fionn—
“He had twenty men’s strength,
And forty feet of length,
And four feet in the face,
And fifteen in brede.”
“His nose was a foot and more.
His browe as bristles wore.”
Nevertheless, after a severe fight with Roland the Christian warrior, he is overcome, but first he sits down and argues against the true faith, exactly as Oisein does with St. Patrick in Irish Fenian tales.
The romance of “Cceur de Lion” makes that chivalrous monarch dine upon boiled Saracens more than once, and is as wild and impossible as any of its predecessors, though it treats of real events in the life of a real king,
And so, throughout these medieval romances, and the history of the Feinne, the same stories and characters can be traced. There is always a leading king, and a knight who is more valiant than his leader; a Fionn and a Diarmaid, a Charlemagne and Roland, an Arthur and Lancelot, a Mark and Tristrem, and a bard who is a chief actor in the piece, which generally ends in a great battle and general slaughter, such as Roncevalles, Barrendown, Camblan, Gabhra, and, shall I add, the battle of Mons Grampius.*
There are, of course, two ways of accounting for this resemblance. Those who believe in creations of the human brain will look on the traditions as fragments of a ruined romance. Those who think that creations of the brain are very rare, will look on traditions as the quarry whence materials have been taken by a succession of romancers, who said nothing about their mine of wealth. The difference between the two may help to turn the scale. There is not a single mediæval battle, or armed knight, such as Sir Lancelot and his fights, to be found in modern Gaelic tradition. There is not a trace of the Gaelic Diarmaid, as he is described by tradition, or of the battle of Gabhra, as described by the Irish, to be found in any medieval romance that I know of. But they have this common want: I know of no single description of a battle on the sea in any British tradition, romance, or popular tale, old or new, though people are always sailing about, and fighting battles on the strand. But the moment a saga is taken up, a sea-fight is a prominent object amongst the endless plunderings and battles on shores. The sagas are the history of the Northmen, and bear the stamp of matter-of-fact narratives. The romances in which the Northmen delighted, when they had taken root in France and England, were, as I believe, made from the Celtic histories, traditions, popular tales, and pagan mythology of the newly-converted half-pagan tribes of the now united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of ancient Gaul.