Notes on the Sources of "Sir Orfeo"
[Footnotes moved to the end]
Notes on the Sources of "Sir Orfeo"
by Constance Davies
The Modern Language Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Jul., 1936), pp. 354-357
NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF 'SIR ORFEO'
So far the presence of any definitely 'Breton' element in this lai has been largely a matter of surmise: the general opinion has been that the tale, as its title suggests, is a mediaeval retelling of the classical legend of Orpheus with a Celtic colouring of fairy. Foulet[1] frankly regards this latter as due to imitation of Marie de France, but Kittredge,[2] seeking a less general source, cited the Wooing of Etain and Midir from the Cuchulain saga, at the same time inclining to the view that the story on which the original lai Breton was based emanated originally from Ireland, and was circulated throughout Brittany and elsewhere by Irish
harpers. The resemblances between this story of Etain and Sir Oifeo
are pervasive rather than particular, and can be paralleled in several
other Irish and Welsh legends;[3] we might infer from them that Sir Orfeo
is in the Celtic tradition, but that they cannot be its immediate source is
apparent. If, as seems so probable from some of Marie's lais,[4] the lais
Bretons sang of local tradition, the immediate source of Sir Orfeo-if it is
to be proved a lai Breton at all-must be sought for in some version of the
Orpheus legend that was peculiar to Brittany, and attached to some
family or place. A local Orpheus tale of exactly this type is told by Walter
Map in the De Nugis Curialium, i.e., the legend of the Filii Mortue, or
Sons of the Dead (Mother). He makes mention of it twice. in Dist. II,
cap. 13, and Dist. iv, cap. 8, but both versions appear to have been
written about the same time.[5] In Dist. II, cap. 13, he only refers to it
apropos of his definition offantasma;
at quid de his fantasticis dicendum casibus qui manent et bona se successione perpetuant,
ut hic Alnodi et ille Britonum de quo superius,5 in quo dicitur miles quidam
uxorem suam sepellisse reuera mortuam, et a chorea redibuisse raptam, et postmodum
ex ea filios et nepotes suscepisse, et perdurare sobolem in diem istum, et eos qui
traxerunt inde originem in multitudinem factos, qui omnes ideo 'filii mortue'
dicuntur?
In Dist. iv, cap. 8, he gives the story in somewhat more detail.
Quia de mortibus quarum iudicia dubia sunt incidit oracio, miles quidam Britannie
minoris uxorem suam amissam diuque ploratam a morte sua in magno feminarum
cetu de nocte reperit in conualle solitudinis amplissime. Miratur et metuit, et cum
rediuiuam uideat quam sepelierat, non credit oculis, dubius quid a fatis agatur. Certo
proponit animo rapere, ut de rapta uere gaudeat, si uere uidet, uel a fantasmate
fallatur, ne possit a desistendo timiditatis argui. Rapit earn igitur, et gauisus est eius
per multos annos coniugio, tar iocunde, tam celebriter, ut prioribus, et ex ipsa
suscepit liberos, quorum hodie progenies magna est et 'filii mortue' dicuntur. Incredibilis
quidem et prodigialis iniuria nature, si non extarent certa uestigia ueritatis.
Map does not profess to give the story fully,[6] but what he does give is
remarkably like the general outline of Sir Orfeo; differences such as the
hero being a king instead of a knight, and the wife being seen in a fairy
hunt instead of in a dance are minor or adventitious, and can be explained
by reference to contemporary events;[7] both tales agree in those features
that render them essentially unlike the Classical Orpheus story, that is,
the finding of the wife in a company of fairy women in a wilderness, and
her happy return to life with her husband. It would not therefore be
unreasonable to assume that some form of the legend of the Filii Mortue
combined with the classical version may have been the basic and
immediate source first of the original lai Breton d'Orphey, a few references
to which are still extant,[8] and then of a French lai narratif from which the
English Sir Orfeo seems to have been derived.
That the story owes something to the Latin versions is evident from the
titles, d'Orphey and Sir Orfeo,[9] but it is difficult to point to any details
with certainty, as in nearly every case in which either Map's story or
Sir Orfeo coincides with Ovid and Vergil, parallels can be cited from
Marie's lais or other contemporary tales and legends, e.g., Orfeo's visit
to the Underworld and his skill as a harper.[10] The two versions of the
Orpheus legend, originally belonging to two different races, have been so
cleverly merged that one feels, but cannot with surety distinguish, the
separate elements.
There are other details in the English lai, however, that cannot be accounted for by comparison with either the Filii Mortue legend or the classical tales chief among these are Heurodis' abduction and Orfeo's disguises as a minstrel and pilgrim. Both might be explained by general reference to beliefs and customs prevailing at the time, for stories of abduction by devils and fairies were common enough, and the assumption of minstrel and pilgrim disguises as much a real practice as a favourite
literary device,[11] but it is just possible that they may have been drawn
from a more explicit and intimate source. Dugdale, in the Monasticon
Anylicanum, VI, Part I, quotes from the history of the foundation of
Lacock Priory for Nuns the following story of the abduction of Ela, the
young heiress of William Fitzpatrick, Earl of Salisbury. This William died
in 1196, leaving Ela, his only daughter, an orphan, as her mother had died
two years previously. Being heiress to great wealth and property it
appears that her Norman relations[12] carried her off to Normandy
et ibidem sub tuta et arcta custodia nutrita. Eodem tempore in Anglia fuit quidam
miles, nomine Gulielmus Talbot, qui induit se habitum peregrini, in Normanniam
transfretavit, et ibi moratus per duos annos; huc atque illuc vagans ad explorandum
dominam Elam Sarum, et illa inventa, exuit habitum peregrini et induit se quasi
cytharisator, et curiam ubi morabatur intravit; et ut erat homo jocosus, in gestis
antiquorum valde peritus, ibidem gratanter fuit acceptus, quasi familiaris. Et
quando tempus aptum invenit, in Angliam reparavit, habens secum istam venerabilem
dominam Elam, et haeredem comitatus Sarum, et eam regi Ricardo praesentavit.
At ille lectissime eam suscepit et fratri suo Gulielmo Lungespe maritavit, per quem
liberos subscriptos habuit....
Besides offering interesting resemblances to the above-mentioned features
in Sir Orfeo this little story has particular point in relation to Marie de
France. The identities of Marie, the 'noble king' to whom she dedicated
her collected lais narratifs, and the 'Count William' at whose request she
translated her Ysopet, are very uncertain, but of the several theories
brought forward concerning them the most convincing and most
generally accepted are in favour of the King being Henry II, the Count
William, his natural son, William Longespee, and Marie herself, Mary,
Abbess of Shaftesbury, natural daughter of Geoffrey of Anjou, Henry II's
father.[13] If this were really the case all three would be related, and Ela, by her marriage with William Longespee, would become Marie's niece.[14]
Marie therefore would not only know the story of her abduction but take
a particular family interest in it; she would also be almost certain to
know not only the legend of the Filii Mortue but the members of the
family then living;[15] and finally, being a literary woman and well-versed
in the classics,[16] she would know Ovid's and Vergil's tale of Orpheus. One
wonders whether there might not be some significance in this, for under
the circumstances it would not have been difficult for her to have woven
these three stories into a courtly and elegant lai narratif that would not
only appeal to the literary taste of her friends, but contain topical allusions
calculated to win their particular attention. That she might have
done so is at least plausible, for similar coincidences between fact and
fiction occur in her Guigemar and Le Purgatoire de Saint-Patrice ;[17] and since
the question of the date of her lais is still an open one,[18] it is possible that
she may have composed a lai narratif of Orphey some short time after
Ela's marriage in 1198. One other point is worth mentioning: with the
exception of Sir Degarre,[19] the only other lais extant in English are free
translations of Marie's Fresne and Lanval, Le Frayn and Landavall.
Landavall exists in nothing earlier than fifteenth-century versions, but
Le Frayn dates from about the mid-fourteenth, is in the same MS. as
Sir Orfeo, and has the same Prologue.[20] Naturally, one hesitates to make
any statement, for the facts are not conclusive, but such as they are, they
are at any rate suggestive and offer some ground for thinking that Marie
herself might have been the author of a French lai narratif of Orphey
that has been preserved for us in its English versions only. Perhaps more
will come to light later.
CONSTANCED AVIES.
BANGOR.
1. Z. fur ron. Phil., xxx, p. 704 and Mod. Lang. Notes, xxI, pp. 46 ff.
2. Amer. J. Philol., viI, pp. 176 f.
3. For the rape of a bride by faery, cf. story of Cuchulain's mother, Dechtire, and of Finn's wife, Saba. For Heurodis' magic sleep, cf. tale of Cuchulain, in which he rests against a rock and is visited by two fairy women who beat him with switches. For the trick by which Orfeo gains his wife, cf. Welsh Gwydion and Pryderi, Math mab Mathonwy (Mabinogion),
etc.
4. E.g., Guigemar, Les Deus Amnanz, and Le Fresne. See Warnke, Lais, Introd.; Rickert, Marie de France, Seven Lais, Introd. and Notes; De la Borderie, Hist. de Bretagne, III, p. 223; Foulet (ed.), Galeran de Bretagne, pp. 259-60.
5. I.e., 1182-3. See Anecdota Oxoniensia, xIv; De Nugis, ed. M. R. James, Preface, pp. xxiv-xxvii.
6. See Dist. II, cap. 32: 'Siluam uobis et materiam, non dico fabularum, sed faminum
appono: cultui etenim sermonum non intendo, nec si studeam consequar; singuli lectores
appositam ruditatem exculpant, ut eorum industria bona facie prodeat in publicum.
Uenator uester sum, feras uobis affero, fercula faciatis.'
7. Cf. Map's story of Herla (Dist. i, cap. 11); Odericus Vitalis, Eccles. Hist., vin, ch. 17,
Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imp., Secunda Decisio XII, Matt. Paris and Roger of Wendover
(sub ann. 1236) for contemporary references to fairy hunts 'seen' at the time.
8. Lai de L'Espine, 11. 176-81; Floire et Blancflor, 11. 70-1; Lancelot en Prose (Schofield,
Eng. Lit. from Conquest to Chaucer, p. 186).
9. The Auchinleck MS. has no title as the folio on which the poem begins appears to have
been cut out: but the Ashmole MS. bears the title Kyng Orfew, and according to Ritson
the Harleian MS. also had one, Sir Orpheo, although I cannot see any trace of it in the MS.
now.
10. E.g., more especially Yonec, 11. 350 f. Cf. also stories of Sir Tristrem, King Horn, Nera
(Cuchulain saga), etc.
11. Cf., for instance, Map, De Nugis (Dist. II, cap. 29; Dist. v, cap. 6). Hist. of Charles the
Great, trans. T. Rodd, 1821, ch. 7.
12. 'cognatos et notos.' Ela's ancestorwas Walter de Ewrus, Earl of Rosmar, who came over with William I. He had a son in Normandy, Gerald le Gros, afterwards Earl of Rosmar, and another in England, Edward of Salisbury, Ela's great-great-grandfather. Gerald had a son William who had a son William who died without issue; and William Longespee on his marriage to Ela was given the Earldom of Rosmar as part of her inheritance.
13. See A. Duval, Hist. Litt. de la France, xix, p. 793, n. 1; Emil Winkler, 'Marie de France', S.B. Akad. W'iss. Wien, CLXXXVIII (1918), Abhand. 3, pp. i ff.; Giulio Bertoni, Nuova Antologia, pp. 18 if., Sept. 1,1920; Charles J. Fox, English Hist. Rev., xxv (1910), pp. 303 ff., and xxvi, pp. 317 f.; Warnke, op. cit., p. viii; Elise Richter, Z. fur rom. Phil., XL, pp. 728 ff.; T. A. Jenkins, L'Espurgatoire seint Patriz, pp. 21 ff., etc.; and the older critics, notably Fauchet, Pasquier, Massieu, Le Grand Aussy, de la Rue, de Roquefort, Gaston Paris and Suchier.
14. I.e., allowing for the illegitimacy.
15. Being Norman-French, interested in Breton legends, and well known in society. As a member of the royal family, she would certainly have known Map (see De Nugis, Dist. v, cap. 6).
16. Cf. what she says in her prologue to the Lais, 11. 29-32: 'Pur ceo comencai a penser /
d'alkune bone estoire faire / je de Latin en Romanz traire; / mais ne me fust guaires de
pris: / itant s'en sunt altre entremis.'
17. The story of the magic hind in Guigemar; cf. Giraldus Cambrensis, It. Kamb., Lib. I, cap. 1 (1188); Marie's mention of bishop Malachias in the Purgatory, cf. Giraldus Camb., Topographia Hibernica (1187). See Warnke, op. cit., p. xvii.
18. See Mall, Z. fir rom. Phil., ix, pp. 161 ff.; Jenkins, op. cit.; Cohn, Lit. fur germ. ron. Phil. (1905), pp. 280 if.; G. Paris, Romania, xiv, pp. 290 ff.; Suchier, Geschichte der franz. Lit. (Leipzig, 1913), pp. 132 f.; Levi, 'Sulla Cronologia delle Opere di Maria di Francia,' Nuovi Studi Medievali, I (1922), and Warnke, op. cit., p. xx.
19. Which only purports to be 'a tale of Brittany', and has not yet been proved a lai.
20. The Prologue to Sir Orfeo has been preserved in MSS. Harl. and Ashm. only, but there is no reason for supposing that it was not included in the Auchinleck version also, i.e., on the verso of the missing folio 299.