Favorite Superstitions of Celtic Imagination
May 16, 2020![]() |
Ernest Renan |
Ernest Renan.. The
Poetry of The Celtic Races II
Vol. 32, pp. 145-155 of
The Harvard Classics
Chessboards on
which, of their own accord, black pieces played against white;
chariots that swiftly turned hither and yon without a driver; pots in
which a coward's meat would not cook - all these are woven into
bewitching stories.
AT a first glance the
literature of Wales is divided into three perfectly distinct
branches: the bardic or lyric, which shines forth in splendour in the
sixth century by the works of Taliessin, of Aneurin, and of Liwarc’h
Hen, and continues through an uninterrupted series of imitations up
to modern times; the Mabinogion, or literature of
romance, fixed towards the twelfth century, but linking themselves in
the groundwork of their ideas with the remotest ages of the Celtic
genius; finally, an ecclesiastical and legendary literature,
impressed with a distinct stamp of its own. These three literatures
seem to have existed side by side, almost without knowledge of one
another. The bards, proud of their solemn rhetoric, held in disdain
the popular tales, the form of which they considered careless; on the
other hand, both bards and romancers appear to have had few relations
with the clergy; and one at times might be tempted to suppose that
they ignored the existence of Christianity. To our thinking it is in
the Mabinogion that the true expression of the
Celtic genius is to be sought; and it is surprising that so curious a
literature, the source of nearly all the romantic creations of
Europe, should have remained unknown until our own days. The cause is
doubtless to be ascribed to the dispersed state of the Welsh
manuscripts, pursued till last century by the English, as seditious
books compromising those who possessed them. Often too they fell into
hands of ignorant owners, whose caprice or ill-will sufficed to keep
them from critical research.
The Mabinogion have
been preserved for us in two principal documents—one of the
thirteenth century from the library of Hengurt, belonging to the
Vaughan family; the other dating from the fourteenth century, known
under the name of the Red Book of Hergest,and now in
Jesus College, Oxford. No doubt it was some such collection that
charmed the weary hours of the hapless Leolin in the Tower of London,
and was burned after his condemnation, with the other Welsh books
which had been the companions of his captivity. Lady Charlotte Guest
has based her edition on the Oxford manuscript; it cannot be
sufficiently regretted that paltry considerations have caused her to
be refused the use of the earlier manuscript, of which the later
appears to be only a copy. Regrets are redoubled when one knows that
several Welsh texts, which were seen and copied fifty years ago, have
now disappeared. It is in the presence of facts such as these that
one comes to believe that revolutions—in general so destructive of
the works of the past—are favourable to the preservation of
literary monuments, by compelling their concentration in great
centres, where their existence, as well as their publicity, is
assured.
The general tone of
the Mabinogion is rather romantic than epic. Life is
treated naively and not too emphatically. The hero’s individuality
is limitless. We have free and noble natures acting in all their
spontaneity. Each man appears as a kind of demi-god characterised by
a supernatural gift. This gift if nearly always connected with some
miraculous object, which in some measure is the personal seal of him
who possesses it. The inferior classes, which this people of heroes
necessarily supposes beneath it, scarcely show themselves, except in
the exercise of some trade, for practising which they are held in
high esteem. The somewhat complicated products of human industry are
regarded as living beings, and in their manner endowed with magical
properties. A multiplicity of celebrated objects have proper names,
such as the drinking-cup, the lance, the sword, and the shield of
Arthur; the chess-board of Gwendolen, on which the black pieces
played of their own accord against the white; the horn of Bran Galed,
where one found whatever liquor one desired; the chariot of Morgan,
which directed itself to the place to which one wished to go; the pot
of Tyrnog, which would not cook when meat for a coward was put into
it; the grindstone of Tudwal, which would only sharpen brave men’s
swords; the coat of Padarn, which none save a noble could don; and
the mantle of Tegan, which no woman could put upon herself were she
not above reproach. 1 The animal is conceived in
a still more individual way; it has a proper name, personal
qualities, and a rôle which it develops at its own will and with
full consciousness. The same hero appears as at once man and animal,
without it being possible to trace the line of demarcation between
the two natures.
The tale of Kilhwch and
Olwen, the most extraordinary of the Mabinogion, deals
with Arthur’s struggle against the wild-boar king Twrch Trwyth, who
with his seven cubs holds in check all the heroes of the Round Table.
The adventures of the three hundred ravens of Kerverhenn similarly
form the subject of the Dream of Rhonabwy. The idea
of moral merit and demerit is almost wholly absent from all these
compositions. There are wicked beings who insult ladies, who
tyrannise over their neighbours, who only find pleasure in evil
because such is their nature; but it does not appear that they incur
wrath on that account. Arthur’s knights pursue them, not as
criminals but as mischievous fellows. All other beings are perfectly
good and just, but more or less richly gifted. This is the dream of
an amiable and gentle race which looks upon evil as being the work of
destiny, and not a product of the human conscience. All nature is
enchanted, and fruitful as imagination itself in indefinitely varied
creations. Christianity rarely discloses itself; although at times
its proximity can be felt, it alters in no respect the purely natural
surroundings in which everything takes place. A bishop figures at
table beside Arthur, but his function is strictly limited to blessing
the dishes. The Irish saints, who at one time present themselves to
give their benediction to Arthur and receive favours at his hands,
are portrayed as a race of men vaguely known and difficult to
understand. No mediæval literature held itself further removed from
all monastic influence. We evidently must suppose that the Welsh
bards and story-tellers lived in a state of great isolation from the
clergy, and had their culture and traditions quite apart.
The charm of
the Mabinogion principally resides in the amiable
serenity of the Celtic mind, neither sad nor gay, ever in suspense
between a smile and a tear. We have in them the simple recital of a
child, unwitting of any distinction between the noble and the common;
there is something of that softly animated world, of that calm and
tranquil ideal to which Ariosto’s stanzas transport us. The chatter
of the later mediæval French and German imitators can give no idea
of this charming manner of narration. The skilful Chrétien de Troyes
himself remains in this respect far below the Welsh story-tellers,
and as for Wolfram of Eschenbach, it must be avowed that the joy of
the first discovery has carried German critics too far in the
exaggeration of his merits. He loses himself in interminable
descriptions, and almost completely ignores the art of his recital.
What strikes one at a first glance in
the imaginative compositions of the Celtic races, above all when they
are contrasted with those of the Teutonic races, is the extreme
mildness of manners pervading them. There are none of those frightful
vengeances which fill the Edda and
the Niebelungen. Compare the Teutonic with the
Gaelic hero,—Beowulf with Peredur, for example. What a difference
there is! In the one all the horror of disgusting and blood-embrued
barbarism, the drunkenness of carnage, the disinterested taste, if I
may say so, for destruction and death; in the other a profound sense
of justice, a great height of personal pride it is true, but also a
great capacity for devotion, an exquisite loyalty. The tyrannical
man, the monster, the Black Man, find a place here
like the Lestrigons and the Cyclops of Homer only to inspire horror
by contrast with softer manners; they are almost what the wicked man
is in the naive imagination of a child brought up by a mother in the
ideas of a gentle and pious morality. The primitive man of Teutonism
is revolting by his purposeless brutality, by a love of evil that
only gives him skill and strength in the service of hatred and
injury. The Cymric hero on the other hand, even in his wildest
flights, seems possessed by habits of kindness and a warm sympathy
with the weak. Sympathy indeed is one of the deepest feelings among
the Celtic peoples. Even Judas is not denied a share of their pity.
St. Brandan found him upon a rock in the midst of the Polar seas;
once a week he passes a day there to refresh himself from the fires
of hell. A cloak that he had given to a beggar is hung before him,
and tempers his sufferings.
If Wales has a
right to be proud of her Mabinogion, she has not
less to felicitate herself in having found a translator truly worthy
of interpreting them. For the proper understanding of these original
beauties there was needed a delicate appreciation of Welsh narration,
and an intelligence of the naive order, qualities of which an erudite
translator would with difficulty have been capable. To render these
gracious imaginings of a people so eminently dowered with feminine
tact, the pen of a woman was necessary. Simple, animated, without
effort and without vulgarity, Lady Guest’s translation is a
faithful mirror of the original Cymric. Even supposing that, as
regards philology, the labours of this noble Welsh lady be destined
to receive improvement, that does not prevent her book from for ever
remaining a work of erudition and highly distinguished taste. 2
The Mabinogion, or at
least the writings which Lady Guest thought she ought to include
under this common name, divide themselves into two perfectly distinct
classes—some connected exclusively with the two peninsulas of Wales
and Cornwall, and relating to the heroic personality of Arthur; the
others alien to Arthur, having for their scene not only the parts of
England that have remained Cymric, but the whole of Great Britain,
and leading us back by the persons and traditions mentioned in them
to the later years of the Roman occupation. The second class, of
greater antiquity than the first, at least on the ground of subject,
is also distinguished by a much more mythological character, a bolder
use of the miraculous, an enigmatical form, a style full of
alliteration and plays upon words. Of this number are the tales
of Pwyll, of Branwen, of Manawyddan, of Math
the son of Mathonwy, the Dream of the Emperor
Maximus, the story of Llud and Llewelys, and
the legend of Taliessin. To the Arthurian cycle
belong the narratives of Owen, of Geraint, ofPeredur, of Kilhwch
and Olwen, and the Dream of Rhonabwy. It is
also to be remarked that the two last-named narratives have a
particularly antique character. In them Arthur dwells in Cornwall,
and not as in the others at Caerleon on the Usk. In them he appears
with an individual character, hunting and taking a personal part in
warfare, while in the more modern tales he is only an emperor
all-powerful and impassive, a truly sluggard hero, around whom a
pleiad of active heroes groups itself. The Mabinogi of Kilhwch
and Olwen, by its entirely primitive aspect, by the part
played in it by the wild-boar in conformity to the spirit of Celtic
mythology, by the wholly supernatural and magical character of the
narration, by innumerable allusions the sense of which escapes us,
forms a cycle by itself. It represents for us the Cymric conception
in all its purity, before it had been modified by the introduction of
any foreign element. Without attempting here to analyse this curious
poem, I should like by some extracts to make its antique aspect and
high originality apparent.
Kilhwch, the son of
Kilydd, prince of Kelyddon, having heard some one mention the name of
Olwen, daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr, falls violently in love,
without having ever seen her. He goes to find Arthur, that he may ask
for his aid in the difficult undertaking which he meditates; in point
of fact, he does not know in what country the fair one of his
affection dwells. Yspaddaden is besides a frightful tyrant who
suffers no man to go from his castle alive, and whose death is linked
by destiny to the marriage of his daughter. 3 Arthur
grants Kilhwch some of his most valiant comrades in arms to assist
him in this enterprise. After wonderful adventures the knights arrive
at the castle of Yspaddaden, and succeed in seeing the young maiden
of Kilhwch’s dream. Only after three days of persistent struggle do
they manage to obtain a response from Olwen’s father, who attaches
his daughter’s hand to conditions apparently impossible of
realisation. The performance of these trials makes a long chain of
adventures, the framework of a veritable romantic epic which has come
to us in a very fragmentary form. Of the thirty-eight adventures
imposed on Kilhwch the manuscript used by Lady Guest only relates
seven or eight. I choose at random one of these narratives, which
appears to me fitted to give an idea of the whole composition. It
deals with the finding of Mabon the son of Modron, who was carried
away from his mother three days after his birth, and whose
deliverance is one of the labours exacted of Kilhwch.
“His followers said unto Arthur,
‘Lord, go thou home; thou canst not proceed with thy host in quest
of such small adventures as these.’ Then said Arthur, ‘It were
well for thee, Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd, to go upon this quest, for
thou knowest all languages, and art familiar with those of the birds
and the beasts. Thou, Eidoel, oughtest likewise to go with my men in
search of thy cousin. And as for you, Kai and Bedwyr, I have hope of
whatever adventure ye are in quest of, that ye will achieve it.
Achieve ye this adventure for me.”
They went forward until they came to
the Ousel of Cilgwri. And Gwrhyr adjured her for the sake of Heaven,
saying, “Tell me if thou knowest aught of Mabon the son of Modron,
who was taken when three nights old from between his mother and the
wall.” And the Ousel answered, “When I first came here there was
a smith’s anvil in this place, and I was then a young bird; and
from that time no work has been done upon it, save the pecking of my
beak every evening, and now there is not so much as the size of a nut
remaining thereof; yet all the vengeance of Heaven be upon me, if
during all that time I have ever heard of the man for whom you
enquire. Nevertheless I will do that which is right, and that which
it is fitting I should do for an embassy from Arthur. There is a race
of animals who were formed before me, and I will be your guide to
them.”
So they proceeded to the place where
was the Stag of Redynvre. “Stag of Redynvre, behold we are come to
thee, an embassy from Arthur, for we have not heard of any animal
older than thou. Say, knowest thou aught of Mabon the son of Modron,
who was taken from his mother when three nights old?” The Stag
said, “When first I came hither there was a plain all around me,
without any trees save one oak sapling, which grew up to be an oak
with an hundred branches. And that oak has since perished, so that
now nothing remains of it but the withered stump; and from that day
to this I have been here, yet have I never heard of the man for whom
you enquire. Nevertheless, being an embassy from Arthur, I will be
your guide to the place where there is an animal which was formed
before I was.”
So they proceeded to the place where
was the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd. “Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd, here is an embassy
from Arthur; knowest thou aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was
taken after three nights from his mother?” “If I knew I would
tell you. When first I came hither, the wide valley you see was a
wooded glen. And a race of men came and rooted it up. And there grew
there a second wood; and this wood is the third. My wings, are they
not withered stumps? Yet all this time, even until to-day, I have
never heard of the man for whom you enquire. Nevertheless I will be
the guide of Arthur’s embassy until you come to the place where is
the oldest animal in the world, and the one that has travelled most,
the Eagle of Gwern Abwy.”
Gwrhyr said, “Eagle of Gwern Abwy,
we have come to thee an embassy from Arthur, to ask thee if thou
knowest aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken from his
mother when he was three nights old.” The Eagle said, “I have
been here for a great space of time, and when I first came hither
there was a rock here, from the top of which I pecked at the stars
every evening; and now it is not so much as a span high. From that
day to this I have been here, and I have never heard of the man for
whom you enquire, except once when I went in search of food as far as
Llyn Llyw. And when I came there, I struck my talons into a salmon,
thinking he would serve me as food for a long time. But he drew me
into the deep, and I was scarcely able to escape from him. After that
I went with my whole kindred to attack him and to try to destroy him,
but he sent messengers, and made peace with me; and came and besought
me to take fifty fish spears out of his back. Unless he know
something of him whom you seek, I cannot tell who may. However, I
will guide you to the place where he is.”
So they went thither; and the Eagle
said, “Salmon of Llyn Llyw, I have come to thee with an embassy
from Arthur, to ask thee if thou knowest aught concerning Mabon the
son of Modron, Who was taken away at three nights old from his
mother.” “As much as I know I will tell thee. With every tide I
go along the river upwards, until I come near to the walls of
Gloucester, and there have I found such wrong as I never found
elsewhere; and to the end that ye may give credence thereto, let one
of you go thither upon each of my two shoulders.” So Kai and Gwrhyr
Gwalstawd Ieithoedd went upon the shoulders of the salmon, and they
proceeded until they came unto the wall of the prison, and they heard
a great wailing and lamenting from the dungeon. Said Gwrhyr, “Who
is it that laments in this house of stone?” “Alas there is reason
enough for whoever is here to lament. It is Mabon the son of Modron
who is here imprisoned; and no imprisonment was ever so grievous as
mine, neither that of Lludd Llaw Ereint, nor that of Greid the son of
Eri.” “Hast thou hope of being released for gold or for silver,
or for any gifts of wealth, or through battle and fighting?” “By
fighting will whatever I may gain be obtained.”
We shall not follow
the Cymric hero through trials the result of which can be foreseen.
What, above all else, is striking in these strange legends is the
part played by animals, transformed by the Welsh imagination into
intelligent beings. No race conversed so intimately as did the Celtic
race with the lower creation, and accorded it so large a share of
moral life. 4 The close association of man and
animal, the fictions so dear to mediæval poetry of the Knight
of the Lion, the Knight of the Falcon, the Knight
of the Swan, the vows consecrated by the presence of birds
of noble repute, are equally Breton imaginings. Ecclesiastical
literature itself presents analogous features; gentleness towards
animals informs all the legends of the saints of Brittany and
Ireland. One day St. Kevin fell asleep, while he was praying at his
window with outstretch arms; and a swallow perceiving the open hand
of the venerable monk, considered it an excellent place wherein to
make her nest. The saint on awaking saw the mother sitting upon her
eggs, and, loth to disturb her, waited for the little ones to be
hatched before he arose from his knees.
This
touching sympathy was derived from the singular vivacity with which
the Celtic races have inspired their feeling for nature. Their
mythology is nothing more than a transparent naturalism, not that
anthropomorphic naturalism of Greece and Indian, in which the forces
of the universe, viewed as living beings and endowed with
consciousness, tend more and more to detach themselves from physical
phenomena, and to become moral beings; but in some measure a
realistic naturalism, the love of nature for herself, the vivid
impression of her magic, accompanied by the sorrowful feeling that
man knows, when face to face with her, he believes that he hears her
commune with him concerning his origin and his destiny. The legend of
Merlin mirrors this feeling. Seduced by a fairy of the woods he flies
with her and becomes a savage. Arthur’s messengers come upon him as
he is singing by the side of a fountain; he is led back again to
court; but the charm carries him away. He returns to his forests, and
this time for ever. Under a thicket of hawthorn Vivien has built him
a magical prison. There he prophesies the future of the Celtic races;
he speaks of a maiden of the woods, now visible and now unseen, who
holds him captive by her spells. Several Arthurian legends are
impressed with the same character. Arthur himself in popular belief
became, as it were, a woodland spirit. “The foresters on their
nightly round by the light of the moon,” says Gervais of
Tilbury, 5 “often hear a great sound as of
horns, and meet bands of huntsmen; when they are asked whence they
come, these huntsmen make reply that they are of King Arthur’s
following.” 6 Even the French imitators of the
Breton romances keep an impression—although a rather insipid one—of
attraction exercised by nature on the Celtic imagination. Elaine, the
heroine of Lancelot, the ideal of Breton perfection, passes her life
with her companions in a garden, in the midst of flowers which she
tends. Every flower culled by her hands is at the instant restored to
life; and the worshippers of her memory are under an obligation, when
they cut a flower, to sow another in its place.
The worship of
forest, and fountain, and stone is to be explained by this primitive
naturalism, which all the Councils of the Church held in Brittany
united to proscribe. The stone, in truth, seems the natural symbol of
the Celtic races. It is an immutable witness that has no death. The
animal, the plant, above all the human figure, only express the
divine life under a determinate form; the stone on the contrary,
adapted to receive all forms, has been the fetish of peoples in their
childhood. Pausanias saw, still standing erect, the thirty square
stones of Pharæ, each bearing the name of a divinity. The men-hir to
be met with over the whole surface of the ancient world, what is it
but the monument of primitive humanity, a living witness of its faith
in Heaven? 7
It has frequently
been observed that the majority of popular beliefs still extant in
our different provinces are of Celtic origin. A not less remarkable
fact is the strong tinge of naturalism dominant in these beliefs. Nay
more, every time that the old Celtic spirit appears in our history,
there is to be seen, re-born with it, faith in nature and her magic
influences. One of the most characteristic of these manifestations
seems to me to be that of Joan of Arc. That indomitable hope, that
tenacity in the affirmation of the future, that belief that the
salvation of the kingdom will come from a woman,—all those
features, far removed as they are from the taste of antiquity, and
from Teutonic taste, are in many respects Celtic. The memory of the
ancient cult perpetuated itself at Domremy, as in so many other
places, under the form of popular superstition. The cottage of the
family of Arc was shaded by a beech tree, famed in the country and
reputed to be the abode of fairies. In her childhood Joan used to go
and hang upon its branches garlands of leaves and flowers, which, so
it was said, disappeared during the night. The terms of her
accusation speak with horror of this innocent custom, as of a crime
against the faith; and indeed they were not altogether deceived,
those unpitying theologians who judged the holy maid. Although she
knew it not, she was more Celtic than Christian. She has been
foretold by Merlin; she knows of neither Pope nor Church,—she only
believes the voice that speaks in her own heart. This voice she hears
in the fields, in the sough of the wind among the trees, when
measured and distant sounds fall upon her ears. During her trial,
worn out with questions and scholastic subtleties, she is asked
whether she still hears her voices. “Take me to the woods,” she
says, “and I shall hear them clearly.” Her legend is tinged with
the same colours; nature loved her, the wolves never touched the
sheep of her flock. When she was a little girl, the birds used to
come and eat bread from her lap as though they were tame. 8
Note
1. Here may be recognized the origin of trial by court
mantle, one of the most interesting episodes in Lancelot
of the Lake.
Note
2. M. de la Villemarqué published in 1842 under the title
of Contes populaires des anciens Bretons, a French
translation of the narratives that Lady Guest had already presented
in English at that time.
Note
3. The idea of making the death of the father the condition
of possession of the daughter is to be found in several romances of
the Breton cycle, in Lancelot for example.
Note
4. See especially the narratives of Nennius, and of Giraldus
Cambrensis. In them animals have at least as important a part as
men.
Note
6. This manner of explaining all the unknown noises of the
wood by Arthur’s Huntingis still to be found in several
districts. To understand properly the cult of nature, and, if I may
say so, of landscape among the Celts, see Gildas and Nennius, pp.
131, 136, 137, etc. (Edit. San Marte, Berlin, 1884).
Note
7. It is, however, doubtful whether the monuments known in
France as Celtic (men-hir, dol-men, etc.)
are the work of the Celts. With M. Worsaae and the Copenhagen
archæologists, I am inclined to think that these monuments belong to
a more ancient humanity. Never, in fact, has any branch of the
Indo-European race built in this fashion. (See two articles by M.
Mérimée in L’Athenæum français, Sept. 11th, 1852, and April
25th, 1853.)
Note
8. Since the first publication of these views, on which I
should not like more emphasis to be put than what belongs to a
passing impression, similar considerations have been developed, in
terms that appear a little too positive, by M. H. Martin (History
of France, vol. vi., 1856). The objections raised to it are,
for the most part, due to the fact that very few people are capable
of delicately appreciating questions of this kind, relative to the
genius of races. It frequently happens that the resurrection of an
old national genius takes place under a very different form from that
which one would have expected, and by means of individuals who have
no idea of the ethnographical part which they play.
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