Part 3

Now let us turn to another of M. Cosquin’s tales, _Jean de l’Ours_,[37] where the main theme of the story is the release of a princess from an Otherworld prison. Here we shall find a Greek tale given, the details of which are, as we shall see, specially important for our investigation. A prince delivers his sister and three stranger princesses from the prison of a _drakos_ (translated by M. Cosquin as _sorte d’ogre_) on the summit of a high mountain. When about to descend himself, his brother cuts the cord and leaves him a prisoner on the mountain. In the ogre’s castle he sees three marvellous objects: a greyhound of velvet pursuing a hare also of velvet; a golden ewer which pours water of itself into a golden basin; a golden hen with her chickens. He also finds three winged horses, respectively white, red, and green, and sets them at liberty. In gratitude they transport him to the plain, and each gives him a hair from their tail, bidding him burn it when he needs their aid. The prince takes service with a goldsmith in his father’s city. The eldest brother desires to marry the eldest of the rescued princesses; she demands a velvet greyhound pursuing a velvet hare, such as she has seen in the ogre’s castle. The king offers a reward to any who can make such an object. The pretended goldsmith’s apprentice undertakes to do so, and sends the green horse to fetch the original. At the tournament in honour of the wedding he appears on the horse in a dress to correspond, carries off the honours of the day, and escapes unrecognised. His second brother marries the second princess. She demands the golden ewer—the red horse comes to his aid, and he wins the tournament in his red dress. When the third and youngest princess is to be wedded to the king’s brother he appears in white, on the white steed, slays the would-be bridegroom with a cast of his javelin, reveals his identity, and wins the bride. Here we have the three colours of the _Lanzelet_.

Again, in the variants of _Le Prince et son Cheval_, another tale of the same collection,[38] we find the Three Days’ Tournament allied to the rescue and escape from the Otherworld _motif_. In this latter story we have the well-known incident of escape from a giant, or a magician, by means of magical objects which, thrown behind the escaping pair, erect mysterious barriers between pursuer and pursued.

In his notes to _Le Petit Berger_, M. Cosquin quotes a remark of M. Mullenhoff, to the effect that in one variant of the story collected by him it is combined with ‘_le conte bien connu où le héros gravit à cheval une montagne de verre, pour conquérir la main d’une belle princesse_.’[39] Now the glass mountain is a well-recognised form of the Otherworld prison. Probably, too, we ought to connect with this some variants of the tale where the feat is to attain the summit of a high tower; a version of this is known among the Avares of the Caucasus; here the horses are blue, red, and black.

Thus we may note two well-marked classes of the tales, in one of which (_a_) the hero simply wins the hand of the princess at a tourney; in the second of which (_b_) he also rescues her from the Otherworld.

But there is a third variant of our story, in which the feat differs somewhat from _b_. The hero is again a rescuer, but this time he rescues the princess from death at the jaws of a monster, generally a dragon. This we may call class _c_. In the notes to _Leopold_,[40] M. Cosquin refers to a German variant where the combat lasts for three days, and horses and armour are black, red, and white. In this connection, as member of class _c_, Mr. Hartland has studied the story in his well-known _Legend of Perseus_,[41] and some of the variants he gives we shall find of interest to us.

In an Irish version, _The Thirteenth Son of the King of Erin_,[42] the hero, who has previously slain three giants, and taken possession of their castles and wealth, comprising three steeds, black, brown, and red, rescues the king’s daughter from a great monster, a serpent of the sea, ‘which must get a king’s daughter to devour every seven years.’ The combat lasts three days; but though the hero appears each day in a different dress, only on the first does it correspond with the colour of his horse. Here the tournament incident is lacking.

A very good example, this time hailing from the Odenwald, contains the conquest of the giants (eight), the three days’ fight with the dragon, and the Three Days’ Tournament. Here the hero is a king’s son, who, seeing the portrait of the princess, falls in love with her and dares the adventure from which his father shrinks.[43] This tale, as Mr. Hartland points out, apparently bears traces of literary influence, and it certainly recalls the _données_ of the _Ipomedon_ where the hero, also a king’s son, is attracted by the fame of _La Fière’s_ beauty, before he sees her.

In a gipsy variant from Transylvania, also given by Mr. Hartland, the princess has been carried off by a dragon to the glass mountain (thus apparently combining _b_ and _c_); and the horse—there is but one—has the mysterious property of appearing red in the morning, white at noon, and black at night.

It must be borne in mind that the legend which Mr. Hartland was engaged in studying was, before all else, a rescue legend—the rescue of Andromeda—consequently the variants of our tale, collected by him, are practically confined to what we have designated as class _c_, where the feat performed by the hero is the rescue of the princess from a monster. This particular feature he carries back, in insular tradition, to the old Irish story of Cuchullin’s rescue of Deborghill from the Fomori; sea-robbers, whose real character and origin are doubtful. The hero hears sounds of wailing, and finds the maiden, the daughter of the King of the Isles, exposed upon the seashore. He confronts the Fomori, three in number, and slays them one after the other. Thus the triple combat is preserved, but it appears evident that, even at this early date, the story had been modified in the interests of romantic saga.[44] With this (class _c_) form of the story we frequently find combined what is known as _The False Claimant_ ‘motif.’ The hero disappears after the rescue, having either left behind him some proof of his identity, such as, _e.g._, the binding of the heads of the monster on a withy in such a manner that none but himself can unloose them; or having in his possession such a proof as, _e.g._ the tongues of the severed heads, or the handkerchief, ring, or ear-ring of the princess. By means of this proof he confutes the cowardly rival who claims to have achieved the feat. This particular form of the story is perhaps, on the whole, the one in which it is best known. There is one group which, as we shall see, is of extraordinary interest and importance for the special study in which we are engaged.

In his _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, under the title of the _Sea Maiden_, Mr. Campbell gives the following story.[45] An old and childless fisherman meets with persistent ill-luck in his calling, till one day a sea-maiden rises from the waves and promises him future success, if he in return will give her his firstborn son (assuring him of the birth of three). The fisher consents, and all falls out as the maiden foretells. Grown to manhood, the son, aware of the fate in store for him, resolves to go ‘where there is not a drop of sea-water.’ He sets out, and on his journey finds a lion, a wolf, and a falcon disputing over the carcase of a horse. He divides the spoil between them, and in return they promise him their aid, should he be in need of it. He becomes herdsman to a king, and we have the adventure with the three giants, in which the grateful beasts aid him, and he wins a white, a red, and a green filly ‘that will go through the skies’—obviously the winged horses of the Greek folk-tale[46]—and three dresses to correspond. Here he also slays the giants’ mother, and wins a comb and a basin, the use of which will make him the most beautiful man on earth. Follows the adventure with the sea-monster, a dragon apparently. The fight lasts for three days, and he appears each day in a different dress, and mounted on a different steed. The princess makes a mark on his forehead as he sleeps, and thus identifies the hero as her rescuer. They marry, but while walking by the seashore, the sea-maiden rises from the waves and carries off the hero as her property. The princess, by the advice of a soothsayer, succeeds in releasing her husband, and with the help of the grateful beasts, destroys the soul of the sea-maiden, which is in an egg. She being slain, the pair live happily ever after.

In this particular variant there is no _False Claimant_; but he appears in version number three of this story, and in version four we have the curious detail that the beast ‘was a fresh-water lake when he had killed her.’

Students of folk-lore will note that the tale in this form includes features not found in the majority of the versions, but representing well-recognised folk-tale _formulæ_. Thus the _Life Token_ is here—incomplete—the maiden gives the fisherman ‘something’ to be given to his wife, his horse, and his dog (obviously a _fisherman_ does not need a horse and a dog—these two features do not belong to each other); the wife has three sons, the horse three foals, and the dog three pups. Horse and dog ought rightly to play a part in the story, but in this special variant they do not appear, though in another they are mentioned in a subordinate rôle. The _Grateful Beasts_ and the _External Soul_ are equally well known in folk-tale, though again, as a rule, in a different connection. But the tournament is lacking; and after examining many variants of the tale, I have come to the conclusion that this feature belongs exclusively to the continental versions. Horses and dresses are found in the insular forms, but, so far, I have not found a single instance of the tournament. On the other hand, no continental variant appears to contain the sea-maiden episodes.

If we now summarise the leading incidents of the various groups, we shall find them somewhat as follows:—

1. Hero—King’s son. Herdsman or shepherd. Fisherman’s son turned herdsman.

2. Slays three giants and wins three castles in which he finds three steeds of different colours with dresses or armour to correspond. The horses are occasionally winged.

3. Appears at a Three Days’ Tournament in these dresses, and thus wins the hand of a princess.

(Incidents 1, 2, 3, which combined correspond to _Le Petit Berger_, form the shortest version of our story, but probably not the most primitive.)

4. Rescues the princess from an ‘Otherworld’ prison. Form of imprisonment varies, but the ‘rescue’ is most generally found in company with the tournament.

5. Rescues princess from a monster. Here the conflict generally lasts three days, the three disguises are employed, and the tournament is often absent.

6. Is robbed of the credit of his deed by a cowardly rival. This, which is most generally found in combination with 5, is also sometimes found in a modified form combined with 4, and is often lacking altogether.

7. Is carried off by a mermaid, to whom he had been promised before his birth. This appears to be confined to the Celtic group collected by Mr. Campbell.

If the reader will refer to the various examples I have given above, he will see that these seven incidents represent what we may call the perfect skeleton of our story (to use a simile often applied by Mr. Campbell), though the bones are differently placed in different versions.

But, having summarised them, we also become aware of a very curious coincidence. Out of these seven incidents, six are found, and found more than once, in the earlier forms of the _Lancelot_ story. Thus dropping out incident 2, the winning of the armour, to which I know no good parallel, we find that Lancelot was a king’s son (incident 1), which, in itself, of course counts for little, but is of value in combination with other features (_Lanzelet_—_Prose Lancelot_); that he appears at a tournament, three days running, in different armour, the colours of which correspond with the prevailing colours of the folk-tale—green, red, white, or black, red, white (incident 3) (_Lanzelet_—_Prose Lancelot_); that he frees a princess (queen) from an Otherworld prison (incident 4) (_Charrette_—_Prose Lancelot_—_Lanzelet_, modified form); that he slays a monster (apparently a dragon), and is robbed by a cowardly rival (incidents 5 and 6) (_Morien_). A second version of the _False Claimant_ story is found in _Le cerf au pied blanc_. Finally, when a child, he was carried off by a water maiden, _meer-wîb_ (incident 7) (_Lanzelet_—_Prose Lancelot_).

Now these are characteristics which, in their _ensemble_, he shares with no other Arthurian hero. True, Gawain visits the Otherworld, but he does so rather in the character of lover of the queen of that world than as rescuer of one confined within its precincts. In the Dutch _Walewein_ alone, so far as I know, is his rôle definitely that of the deliverer. But none of the other incidents belong to his story. So, too, Tristan is the hero of a very fine version of the _Dragon Slayer_ and _False Claimant_ story, and it is moreover probable that the _Morien_ version has borrowed certain details from the _Tristan_, but he too can claim no share in the other incidents. The close correspondence, point by point, with a folk-tale of so widespread and representative a character, is, I submit, a peculiarity of the earlier _Lancelot_ story, which is of extraordinary interest as throwing light upon the genesis and growth of Arthurian legend.

In this connection I have by no means forgotten the energetic protests which, in certain quarters, were evoked by Mr. Nutt’s attempt to show that the story of _Perceval_ might in this way be connected with popular tales; and I am quite prepared to be told that tales collected in the nineteenth century are not to be trusted as indications of the sources of twelfth century romance. But in the instance before us the evidence, while of precisely the same nature as in the case of _Perceval_, exceeds it, both in bulk and extent. The story is not one story, but a large and well-marked group of tales; the folk-lore parallels affect not one, but many incidents of the romance. How large and how widely diffused is that story-group can only be appreciated by those who will examine the lists of variants appended by M. Cosquin to the four stories I have named above and those cited by Mr. Campbell under the heading of the _Sea Maiden_, and then compare these stories with the numerous examples given by Mr. Hartland in his exhaustive study of the _Perseus_ legend. The incidents are, as I have shown, six out of a possible list of seven. If, further, we remember that the group, with all its varying forms, is connected with such pre-historic heroes as Perseus and Cuchullin, we have, I think, a sufficient answer to those critics who would reject the evidence _en masse_ on the ground of modernity.

But supposing, for the sake of argument, that we accept the possible priority of the romantic over the popular form, what, with regard to the criticism of the Arthurian literary cycle, is the logical result? This: if the folk-tale be dependent upon a romance, that romance must of necessity be the _Lancelot_, as no other hero offers the same combination of incident. But a version of the _Lancelot_ story, from which _all_ these incidents could have been borrowed, must have been older than any form of the story we now possess. As we have seen above, the correspondence is sometimes with one, sometimes with another version; and a very famous incident of the tale, the _False Claimant_, only exists now in two romances, each of them preserved in an isolated and unique form. Therefore, if this be not a fully proven instance of the conversion of a popular folk-tale into an Arthurian romance, it must be a case of the development of a folk-tale from a fully organised and coherent _Lancelot_ story in a form anterior to Chrétien. The adherents of the theory which ascribes independent invention to Chrétien de Troyes, and a literary origin to the Arthurian stories, can make their choice between these two solutions of the problem—one or the other it must be.

For myself, I unreservedly accept the verdict pronounced by Mr. Campbell upon the _Sea Maiden_ as representative of the entire story-group. ‘Is it possible that a Minglay peasant and Straparola[47] (_or we may add Hue de Rotelande and the peasants of the Odenwald and Lorraine_)—neither of whom can have seen a giant, or a flying horse, or a dragon, or a mermaid—could separately imagine all these impossible things, and, having imagined them simultaneously, invent the incidents of the story and arrange so many of them in the same order?

‘Is it on the other hand possible that all these barefooted, bareheaded, simple men, who cannot read, should yet learn the contents of one class of rare books and of no other? I cannot think so.

‘I have gone through the whole _Sea Maiden_ story, and all its Gaelic versions, and marked and numbered each separate incident, and divided the whole into its parts, and then set the result beside the fruit of a similar dissection of Straparola’s _Fortunio_, and I find nearly the whole of the bones of the Italian story, and a great many bones which seem to belong to some original antediluvian Aryan tale. The Scotch (_insular_) is far wilder and more mythical than the Italian (_continental_).[48] The one savours of tournaments, kings’ palaces, and the manners of Italy long ago; the other of flocks and herds, fishermen and pastoral life; but the Highland imaginary beings are further from reality and nearer to creatures of the brain. The horses of Straparola are very material and walk the earth; those of old John MacPhie are closely related to Pegasus and the horses of the Veda, and fly and soar through grimy peat-reek to the clouds.’[49]

Mr. Campbell continues: ‘What is true of the Gaelic and Italian versions is equally true of all others which I know. If examined, they will be found to consist of a bare tree of branching incidents common to all, and so elaborate that no minds could possibly have invented the whole seven or eight times over[50] without some common model, and yet no one of these is the model, for the tree is defective in all, and its foliage has something peculiar to each country in which it grows. They are specimens of the same plant, but their common stock is nowhere to be found.’[51] Were Mr. Campbell living now, may we not feel sure that to these closing words he would add: _Assuredly it is not to be sought in an Arthurian romance of the twelfth century_?

THE ROMANCE

So much for the present as regards our folk-tale as a whole. Let us now see what light the study of it may have thrown upon the special subject of our investigation—the Three Days’ Tournament. And first of all, I think it has definitely settled the correctness of our title. East or west, north or south, wherever we have traced our story, whatever the hero’s feat—whether the rescuing the princess from a devouring dragon, or the winning her hand at a knightly tournament—the days required to complete the task are _three_—neither more nor less.

Mr. Hartland, to whom I referred the point, remarks that the unvarying tendency in certain families of folk-tales, notably those of Oriental origin, is to crystallise a small but indefinite number into _three_. Now Mr. Campbell, as we have seen, detects a likeness between the flying horses of the _Sea Maiden_ tales, and the horses of the Veda, and Mr. Joseph Jacobs, in a note appended to another tale,[52] quotes a further remark of the same writer, to the effect that the many-coloured horses of Indian mythology may account for all the magical horses of folk-tales. So if our tale, as a whole, did not come from the east, it seems possible that this particular incident may have done so.[53]

Yet in so far as the tournament form is concerned, it is, of course, _possible_ that certain literary versions of the story might have been affected by the ordinary customs of the day. Anyway there seems to be a fairly close correspondence here between fact and fancy. Niedner, in his work on _Das Deutsche Turnier_,[54] remarks that the tourney proper was generally held on a Monday; the knights assembled on the previous Saturday; Sunday morning was spent in mustering those present and arranging the opposing factions; while the afternoon was devoted to the encounter known as the _Vesper-spiel_, preliminary to the grand struggle of the morrow. Thus the ordinary duration of such a meeting might be reckoned as three days.

But it is clear that there might also be three distinct encounters on as many separate days, as in the folk-tale. Professor Kittredge, in his article, ‘Who was Sir Thomas Malory?[55]’ notes a very remarkable and pertinent instance taken from the life of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. When that nobleman was Governor of Calais, hearing of a great gathering of knights, to be held in the neighbourhood, ‘he cast in his mynde to do sume newe poynt of chevalry’; and under the several names of _The Grene Knight_, _Chevalier Vert_, and _Chevalier Attendant_, sent three challenges to the French king’s court. These being accepted, he appeared the first two days in differing armour, the third ‘in face opyn,’ on each occasion overthrowing his antagonist.[56] The days in question are given by Rous as January 6th, 7th, and 8th; the year he does not mention; but Professor Kittredge, by a process of elimination, arrives at the conclusion that it must have been either 1416 or 1417. It is, of course, obvious that this feat must have been suggested by the romances. It is, I think, equally obvious that the three days of the romances were not at variance with actual practice. As to the version of the folk-tale there can be no question. The correct number is three—neither more nor less.

It is, of course, also clear that the occurrence of the tournament in the folk-tale must be subsequent to the institution of tournaments as part of the ordinary chivalric and social conditions; but the tale itself must be earlier, as is witnessed both by the archaic nature of the rescue incident and the magical nature of the horses. Trials of skill in horsemanship are known to all stages of society; and the original form of this special incident was doubtless something of this kind. In the Odenwald variant referred to above, the hero has to perform the feat of carrying off on his spear a ring suspended from a beam, and to hang it up again in returning. This is here supposed to form part of the tournament; but it seems most likely that in earlier forms the trial of skill by which the hero was tested and identified was simply some such feat of skilled horsemanship.

Nor do I think that we are to see the influence of romance, rather than of custom, in this transformation. Neither of the poems in which the incident approximates most closely to the folk-tale form, the _Lanzelet_ and the _Ipomedon_, appear to have been particularly popular (certainly not the former), judging from the number of manuscripts in which they have been preserved, while the ‘Tournament’ form of the folk-tale is found all over Europe. It is much more reasonable, surely, to conclude that the episode has been borrowed, as so many others have been borrowed, from the stores of popular tradition than to hold that in this case popular tradition has been modified by the influences of a literary cycle.