Bluegrass Messengers

Sir Orfeo- George Lyman Kittredge 1886

Sir Orfeo
George Lyman Kittredge
The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1886), pp. 176-202

III.-SIR ORFEO.
Dating from the end of the thirteenth century, when imitation, not originality, was the rule in English writing, the Romance or Lay of Sir Orfeo is not more remarkable for its grace and beauty than for the freedom with which it handles the classic mythology. The ultimate source of the poem is evidently the story of Orpheus and Eurydice as told by Virgil and Ovid, but so different is the romance from any known version of this story that, if the English minstrel had not called his hero and heroine Orfeo and Heurodys, his indebtedness to the ancients would be hard to prove. The present discussion aims to show the direct antecedents of the Orfeo, and to throw some light on the causes that have led the story so far away from its original shape.[1] In the first place, the poem professes to be a Breton lay. This claim is made not only in the opening lines-which, as almost identical with the beginning of the English Lay le Fresne, and possibly borrowed from that poem, may be left out of account [2]- but also very distinctly in the closing verses:

Harpours in Bretaine afterpan
Herd hou pis mervaile bigan,
And made herof a lay of gode likeing
And nempned it after the king:
pat lay Orfeo is yhote,
Gode is pe lay, swete is pe note.
pus com Sir Orfeo out of his care.
God graunt ous alle wele to fare. (vv. 595 ff. Zielke.)

If these lines are to be taken seriously, and not as a literary artifice, they prove that the Orfeo is translated from some French poem[3] purporting-like any one of Marie's collection-to give the substance of a Breton lay. Only through the French could a Breton lay get into English; from none but a French poem could verses like these be derived. If, however, the lines are a mere flourish on the part of the English minstrel, intended to gain respect for his piece, of course they prove nothing.[4] Comparison may help decide the question.

Besides the Orfeo there are six Middle English poems that profess to be Breton lays. These are: (1) Lay le Fresne, (2) Sir Launfal, (3) Sir Gowther, (4) Emare, (5) Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, and (6) the Erl of Tolous. Of these the Fresne and Launfal are free translations from Marie de France. The others are more doubtful.[5] Sir Gowther has long been recognized as an offshoot of the story of Robert the Devil. The anonymous author twice declares it to be a lay of Britain:

A lai of Breyten long y sought
And owt perof a tale have brought,
pat lufly is to tell. (vv. 28-30, p. 6, ed. Breul.)[6]

pis is wreton in parchemyn,
A story hope gud and fyn,
Owt off a lai of Breyteyn. (vv. 751-3, p. 38.)

The French original of Sir Gowther is unknown, but was doubtless a free translation of some Breton lay. Normandy and Brittany were closely associated. It is chiefly through the Normans that the lays of Brittany have come down to us.[1] The Breton Lay of the Two Lovers, preserved in Marie's version, is founded on a Norman popular tale.[2] Robert the Devil, then, being a Norman
story, was within easy reach of any Armorican harper. When
the Gowther varies from the Robert, it often approaches Celtic
tradition. Robert is devoted to the devil before his birth,3 but
Gowther is actually the son of a demon who has deceived the
Duchess of Estryke as Uther cheated Igerne,4 by putting on the
semblance of her husband. The scene in the orchard and the joy
of the duke when he finds himself likely to become a father, may
be compared with the Lay de Tydorel.' There is nothing like
them in any version of Robert. Robert repents when he finds
himself dreaded and avoided by all. This is after he has murdered
the nuns (or hermits). Gowther is brought to his senses rather
differently-by a taunt from an old monk, who declares that so
wicked a man cannot be of human origin. In like manner Tydorel,
the son of a queen and a fairy knight, is set thinking by a young
man who has been impressed to tell him stories at night. Tydorel
never sleeps, and the young man flings at him the proverb, " Qui ne
dort n'est pas d'ome " (vv. 329-30). In all three poems, Gowther,
1 Cf. Aubertin, Hist. de la Langue et Litt. franc. I 203-4. At the beginning
of the eleventh century, the Norman historian Dudon de Saint-Quentin,
"pour que la gloire du duc Richard ler se repandit dans le monde, conjurait
les harpeurs armoricains de venir en aide aux clercs de Normandie."-P. Paris,
Les Romans de la Table Ronde, I 7.
See R. K6hler's n. in Warnke's ed. of the Lais, pp. lxxxv-viii. G. Paris
(Rom. VIII 34) says that the story is not yet forgotten in Normandy.
3 Romans de R. le Diable (thirteenth century), ed. Trebutien, 1837, sig. A ii;
Miracle de Nostre Dame de R. le Dyable, ed. Fournier, p. 36; ed. Paris and
Robert, Miracles de Nostre Dame, No. 33, VI 27-8; Robert the Deuyll,
Thoms, Early Prose Romances, 2d ed., I 7; Roberte the Deuyll (Eng. poem),
ed. Herbert, 1798, p. 6.
4 Geoffrey of Monmouth, viii 19, p. 117 Schulz; Eng. prose Merlin, Ch. iv,
pp. 76-7, ed. Wheatley; Girald. Cambr., Itin. Kamb. I 12, Opera, ed. Dimock,
VI 96; Eulogium Historiarum, ed. Haydon, II 305.
5An undoubted Armorican lay, first printed by G. Paris, Rom. VIII 67-72.
I78
Tydorel, and the romance of Robert,' the son, when once his
suspicions are excited, rushes into his mother's chamber with
drawn sword and forces her to confess. These considerations
perhaps justify us in regarding Sir Gowther as really founded on
a Breton lay.2
Emare ends with the usual prayer, before which come these
lines:
Thys ys on of Brytayne layes,
That was used by olde dayes,
Men callys playn the garye. (vv. I030-2.)3
The story of Emare is very much like the Tale of the Man of
Lawe, from which it differs chiefly in having a disagreeable
beginning. Chaucer's tale comes directly from Trivet's Life of
Constance,4 but other versions were current in the Middle Ages,5
and one of them may easily have come to the ears of a Breton
harper. The title of the lay is perhaps preserved in a French
form in the verse "Men callys playn the garye," which I take to
mean that the lay is called " La Garie "-" the saved or preserved
one "-an appropriate name.6 The direct original of the English
poem was doubtless a French version of this lay.
The Franklin's Tale, if we may take the franklin's word for it,
is founded on one of the " layes " which " these olde, gentil Britons "
made "of diverse aventures" (C. T. II,02I ff.). No such lay,
however, is extant, and it is not impossible that Chaucer simply
took the story from Boccaccio,7 changed the setting, and referred
1 Ed. Trebutien, sig. A iiii; Tydorel, 339 ff. In the Miracle (ed. Paris and
Robert, pp. 24-5), the Eng. poem (pp. 22-3), and the Eng. prose version
(Thoms, I 20), Robert does not threaten, but beseech, and there are other
differences.
2Cf. F. Wolf, Ueber die Lais, p. 219.
3 Ritson, Anc. Eng. Metr. Romancees, II 247; cited by De la Rue, Recherches
sur les ouvrages des bardes de la Bretagne armoricaine, 18r5, p. 9,who remarks
that the original Breton and the French appear to be lost. De la Rue also
cites the Franklin's Tale.
4 Edited by Brock for Chaucer Society, Originals and Analogues.
5 Merelaus the Emperor, in the Eng. Gesta Romanorum, Herrtage, p. 31 ;
Matthew Paris, Vita Offae Primi, ed. Wats, I684, pp. 965-8, etc. Cf. Skeat's
Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale, and Van der Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer,
I c-civ, 135 ff.
8 Ritson cuite misunderstands the passage. His explanation of it is even
absurd (III 333). I know of no attempt made to interpret it since his day.
Cf. with the title " Lai la Garie," the " Lai del Desire " (Michel, Lais inedits,
1836, p. i).
7 Decam. x 5; Filocopo, lib. v, qu. 4.
SIR ORFEO. 179
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY.
the adventure to "Armorik, that called is Britayne." For Chaucer
handled his material with conscious literary art, and is much more
likely to have treated a tale in this fashion than the obscure translator
who has left us Emare. Against this it may be urged that the
Franklin's Tale has some Breton proper names, and that, in
general, the plot would have been attractive to the Armorican
minstrels. The story came from the East, and may have reached
Chaucer through a lay of Brittany.'
The Erl of Tolous speaks for itself thus:
Yn Rome thys gest cronyculyd ys,
A lay of Bretayn callyd ywys
And evyr more schall be.
(vv. 1219-21, p. 279 Ludtke.)
Gustav Ltidtke, who has studied this story with wonderful industry
and acuteness, has no misgivings in referring the English poem to
a lost French Comte de Toulouse, and that, in turn, back to a
Breton lay, These English and French versions, he thinks, followed
their respective originals with fidelity.2
For all six of the poems we have examined, a Breton source may
reasonably be claimed. It appears, then, that Middle English
authors, however recklessly they appealed to " the book," or " the
history," or " the romance," did not call their poems Breton lays
unless they meant what they said. In the absence of evidence to
the contrary, we may infer that the author of Sir Orfeo was
equally in earnest-that is, that the French piece from which he
translated, professed to be a rendering of a Breton lay.
That such a lay once existed is shown by two well-known passages.
The first is from the Lai de l'Espine, mistakenly ascribed
by De la Rue to Guillaume le Normand' and by Roquefort to
Marie de France.4 The king of " Bretaigne" and his knights
listen to music after hunting:
1See Landau, Die Quellen des Decamerone, 2d ed., 1884, pp. 94, 95,
o00, 248.
2 Erl of Tolous, pp. 131, I63. Ltidtke thinks the Breton lay was founded
directly on Aquitanian tradition. Wolf, who derives the story differently, has
no doubt that the English romance is from an Armorican lay (Ueber die Lais,
p. 217). On the story and its connections, see Child, Eng. and Scottish Popular
Ballads, II 33 ff., who calls attention to a point of similarity between the Erl
and the Lai du Corn (p. 43, n. :).
3 G. Paris, Rom. VIII 35.
4 Mall, De Aetate Rebusque Mariae Francicae, p. 56.
I80
SIR ORFEO.
Le Lais escoutpnt d'Aielis,
Que uns irois sone en sa rote
Mout doucement le chante et note.
Apries celi d'autre commenche,
Nus d'iaus ni noise ne ni tenche;
Le Lai lor sonne d'Orphey. (v. I o-5.)1
The second is from the first version of Floire et Blanceflor,
Among the wonders shown by the magician to entertain Floire
is an image of gold:
. grant corn un vilains:
Une harpe tint en ses mains,
Et harpe le lai d'Orphey:
Onques nus hor plus n'en oi
Et le montee et I'avalee. (Ed. Du Meril, p. 231.)2
These two passages show that the Lai d'Orph6y was well known
and popular. They show also that it was a genuine lay of Brittany,
and not a French poem merely pretending to give the story of a
lay which, after all, did not exist; for the French versionsgenuine
or counterfeit-of Breton lays were probably not sung or
accompanied by the harp or rote.' They simply gave the plot
of the real or pretended lay in rhymed couplets, with no attempt
to preserve its rhythmical structure, and, if it were possible to sing
them at all, could have been set only to a monotonous strain4
quite different from the tune here indicated.
It is impossible not to identify this Breton lay with the original
of our Sir Orfeo. The existence of a French intermediary cannot
be directly proved '-for the three or four other places in which
1 Roquefort, Poesies de Marie de France, 1 556. I have given vv. 181-2 as they
stand in the MS of the Bibl. Nat. (nouv. acq., fonds franc. 1104) according to
G. Paris, Rom. VIII 36. Roquefort reads" Que uns Yrois doucement note, Mout
le sonne ens sa rote."
eBekker, vv. 86I ff., in Philol. u. hist. Abhandl. der Akad. der Wiss. zu
Berlin, I844. The whole episode of the magician is relegated to-an appendix
by Du Meril a" being spurious.
3 G. Paris, Rom. VIII 33.
4 F/tis, Hist. generale de la Musique, V 46-7.
5 The passages cited from the Lai de l'Espine and Floire and BI., together
with the Sept Sages ("et bien aues oi conter, Cor Alpheus ala harper En
infier por sa femme traire.- Apolins fu si deboinaire K'il li rendi par tel
conuent S'ele ne s'aloit regardant. Femme est tous iors plainne d'enuie,
Regarda soi par mesproisie," vv. 27-34, p. 2 Keller), are commonly said (as by
Zielke, p. I31) to prove the existence of a French poetical Orpheus in the
twelfth century. Though I have-no doubt of the conclusion, I do not think it
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY.
the story of Orpheus is mentioned in Old French literature have
no necessary connection with the lay'-but must certainly be
inferred as our only means of connecting the English poem with
the lay of Brittany.
At this point it may reasonably be asked: Have we any other
examples of Breton lays composed on classical themes? This
question must be answered in the negative; for the various poems
that have been at one time or another cited as such examples-
Aristotle,' Pyramus and Thisbe,3 Narcissus,4 etc.-have nothing
follows from the premises. In the Sept Sages the writer seems to refer simply
to the classical story, with a mischievous perversion by which the blame of the
catastrophe is thrown on Eurydice. In the Espine the minstrel does not sing
in French. In Fl. and B1. the image does not sing at all. The tunes of the
Breton lays were known all over France before the words came to be translated
(cf. G. Paris, Rom. VII I). To infer from these two places that a twelfthcentury
French Lai d'Orphey existed, is to confuse the Breton original with a
French translation.
1 There are two versions of the classical story in Old French, one, a fragment,
pub. by Ritter in the Bulletin de la Soc. des Anc. Textes Franc. I877,
pp. 99 if.; the other, part of the Confort d'ami of Guillaume de Machaut, as
contained in the Bern MS, printed in part by Zielke, pp. 132-3. The episode
is not contained in the Paris MS from which Tarbe published the Confort. The
Bern MS is the same (No. 218) from which Sinner (Extraits de quelques Poesies
du XII, XIII et XIV Siecle, I759, p. 35) cites: " Le Poite assure d'avoir tres
souvent vf la chanson qu'Orphee recita devant Pluton. Cela est positif.
Jai son lay maintesfois vfi
Et l'ai de chief en chief leu."
The lay of Orpheus here mentioned is simply his song in Hades, reported in
full by Ovid, and not to be confounded with anything Armorican. On Guillaume
de Machaut see Wolf, pp. I41, I68. He was an industrious writer of
lyrical lays, and probably here used the word in that sense. These lyrical poems
have nothing to do with the narrative lays. A Descent of Orpheus to Hell is
also found in a Geneva MS, and is perhaps identical with Guillaume's. See
Wolf, Ueber die Lais, pp. 238-40; Du Meril, Floire et Blanceflor, Introd.,
p. clxxij, n. I; cf. Zielke, pp. 130-33.
2Barbazon-Meon, III 96; Montaiglon and Raynaud, Recueil general des
fabliaux, V 243. The title given is Le Lai ?d'Aristote; the colophon, Explicit
Ii lais d'A., but the word lai, or Breton, does not occur in the piece. The story
is of Oriental origin ; see Von der Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer, I 21-35 (Aristoteles
und Fillis), and the Introduction, pp. lxxv ff., and compare Zingerle in
Pfeiffer's Germania, XVII 306-9. That the poem has nothing to do with tht
lays of Brittany was remarked in.1814 by De la Rue, Recherches, p. 26. It
occurs, to be sure, among the poems collected, under the general title of " Les
lais de Breteigne," in the MS from which Gaston Paris published Lais inedits
in Rom. VIII 29 ff., but this shows merely that the compiler of that collection
182
SIR ORFEO.
to do with Brittany. This, however, should not damage the credit
of Sir Orfeo. The Aristotle, etc., do not profess to be anything
but contes or dities. The word lay does not occur in any of
them. They tell neither for nor against the alleged source of the
English poem. The question must be decided without their aid.
The Breton lays, now generally agreed to be of Armorican
origin, attained their greatest popularity in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries. Most of them naturally were on Celtic subjects,
and laid their scenes in Celtic countries-Great and Little Britain,
Ireland and Scotland. But the Armorican minstrels did not confine
themselves to Celtic themes. Their music was famous throughout
France. " Le Moyen-Age," says Joly, " est un grand enfant
qui, comme tous les enfants, demande sans cesse qu'on lui conte
des nouvelles histoires. Ses fournisseurs habituels vont puiser a
toutes les sources."' Among these purveyors were the Bretons:
Mult unt este noble barun
cil de Bretaigne, li Bretun.
Jadis suleient par pruesce,
par curteisie e par noblesce
des aventures que oeient,
ki a plusurs genz aveneient,
could not distinguish a true lay from a false. The MS is not earlier than the
end of the thirteenth century-later by more than a hundred years than the
time when Marie began her work of translation. P. Meyer (Rom. I 192) notes
that Henri d'Andeli, the author of the poem, calls his work a ditie (v. 38), and
that the title Lais comes from MS 837 (old 7218), whereas the other MSS of
the same version have simply Explicit Aristotes. Henri was canon of Rouen
in 1207.
3 Barbazon-Meon, IV 326-54. Cf. Hist. Litt. XIX 765. The poem is a
stupid working over of Ovid, M. v Io ff. For a comparison, see Bartsch, Ovid
im Mittelalter, pp. lx ff. Bartsch, who gives ample evidence of the popularity
of the story in the Middle Ages, properly calls this piece a fabliau, but Paulin
Paris speaks of the Lai de Pirame et Thisbe as a genuine Breton production
in the same breath with Garin, Graelent, Ignaure, etc. (Les Romans de la
Table Ronde, I 23). Wolf, p. 54, mentions a " Lai de la courtoise Thisb6."
4Barbazon-Meon, IV I43-75. Cf. Bartsch, Ovid im Mittelalter, pp. lvii ff.
The author has handled his original (Ov. M. iii 339-5o1) rather freely, and
has touched on popular superstition (especially vv. 454, 650, 655). "Les
Bretons prirent quelquefois leurs sujets dans la Mythologie, comme le Lai de
Narcisse," says De la Rue, Recherches, p. 28; but this poem is not a lay, even
in its title, which is De Narcisus. Wolf conjectures that the piece, as we have
it, is an adaptation of the Cantilena de Narcisso mentioned by Peter Cantor,
Verbum Abbreviatum, cap. 27, in the first half of the twelfth century (Ueber
die Lais, p. 5i). Cf. Hist. Litt. XIX 76I, where the matter is confused.
1 A. Joly, Benoit de Sainte-More et le Roman de Troie, I 7.
I83
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY.
faire les lais pur remembrance,
qu'um nes meist en ulliance. (Lai d'Equitan, vv. r-8.)1
So in Sir Orfeo:
When pey (sc. Brytouns) myght owher heryn
Of aventures pat per weryn,
pey toke her harpys wip game,
Maden layes and 3af it name. (vv. 17-20 Zielke.)2
We have already seen Breton jongleurs appropriating the Norman
stories of Robert the Devil and the Two Lovers, as well as the
Aquitanian tradition of the Earl of Toulouse. In the Lai d'Havelok,
an Anglo-Danish local legend is in like manner made the subject
of a Breton lay.3 In a word, the Armorican minstrels picked up
good stories wherever they could find them,4 and nothing is more
likely than that, in their wanderings, they heard somebody tell the
tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.
This might have happened either in England or in the South of
France, where Ovid and Virgil were well known,5 and where the
I Warnke, Die Lais der Marie de France, I885, p. 41. The source of this
very lay is by no means evident. R. Kohler (n. to Warnke, p. lxi) can cite
only Die dri miinche von Kolmatre, V. d. Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer, No. 62,
III 163, as in some respects parallel.
2 So, almost word for word, in the English Lay le Fresne, vv. I5 ff., as published
by Varnhagen, Anglia, III 415.
3See Wolf, Ueber die Lais, pp. 68, 217; Ten Brink, Gesch. der. engl. Litt.,
I 227. It will not do to be too positive, however, that the Havelok ever passed
through Breton hands. The question is difficult and has never been adequately
discussed. Madden, in his elaborate introduction, pp. v-vi, dismisses it with
scant notice. Wright merely remarks that the term " Breton lay" had become
almost proverbial, and adds that it is not at all likely that Havelok ever existed
in a Breton version (Chron. de Geoffrey Gaimar, ed. for Caxton Soc., App., p. 3).
As to the English Havelok, it cannot be directly derived from the French, though
most scholars seem to think so. Storm, for instance, remarks (Englische
Studien, III 533): " The English lay, on the whole, corresponds to the French;
only some details and names are different." On the contrary, the two poems
differ in almost every particular. The English version is about three times as
long as the French, and ought not to be called a lay-as even Skeat has named
it-but a gest, as it styles itself. Storm's suggestion that the Lay " is come to
the Norman poet from the Welsh " deserves examination.
4 On the miscellaneous stock-in-trade of a Breton jongleur, see Paulin Paris,
Rom. de la Table Ronde, I 15, though some of the classical traits he finds in
the Arthurian romances may more probably be credited to Chrestien and his
like than to the Celts. Ovid is mentioned once in Marie's Lais, Guigemer,
239.
5 Cf. Bartsch, Ov. im Mittelalter, pp. i, xi.
184
SIR ORFEO.
Breton harpers were also no strangers.1 However it came about,
there is nothing remarkable in their hearing the story. It was a
subject for popular poetry-or, at least, for the lightest style of
monkish verse-as early as the tenth century, when the monk
Froumont wrote to the Abbot of Tegernsee:
Si . . . Dulcifer aut fabulas possem componere mendas,
Orpheus ut cantans Eurydicen revocat,2
and it may have reached Breton ears in some cantilena similar to
that De Narcisso mentioned by Peter Cantor in the twelfth century
as performed by a strolling musician.3
Our Breton harper, however, probably got the story by word of
mouth and in no very accurate shape; and, in making it over into
a lay, he must inevitably have changed the story still further to
make it square with his own beliefs and traditions and those of his
auditors. In this process, such parts of the classic myth as were
within his circle of ideas were retained with least alteration; such
things as he could not understand, were cast aside or forgotten;
many points were misunderstood and unwittingly misrepresented.
In short, the Ovidian story became a Breton lay in every
sense-short, romantic, Celtic. This the French translator must
have rendered without much change, his aim being to tell the tale
of a favorite lay, not to restore an antique. And from this French
version came our English Orfeo, freely handled, no doubt, but
with no essential variation.
The French element in the Orfeo is rather pervasive than
striking. The English element is seen in the parliament which is
to appoint a new king if Orfeo does not come back (vv. 214-16),
and perhaps in the steward, though that personage reminds one of
I Wolf, Ueber die Lais, p. Io. G. Paris suggests (Rom. XII 362; cf. VIII
364) that the source of the lost Provencal romance from which were derived
the biography of Guilhem de Cabestaing and Boccaccio's novel of Guardastagno
(Dec. iv 9) was the Breton Lay of Guiron (Gurun, Gorhon, Goron). Cf. Wolf,
pp. 236-8, as to this lay.
2 Wolf, pp. 238-9. Froumont's poem (not seen by me) is in Pezii Thesaur.
Anecd. II i, 184. In the Carmina Burana (from a MS of the thirteenth
century, and mentioning events from II75 to 1208) we read of "Narcissus
floriger, Orpheusque plectiger, Faunus quoque corniger," p. I17 (cited by
Bartsch, p. civ).
3 Cited above, p. I83, n. 4: Hi similes sunt cantantibus fabulas et gesta, qui
videntes cantilenam de Landrico non placere auditoribus, statim incipiunt de
Narcisso cantare: quod si nec placuerit, cantant de alio (Fauriel, Hist. de la
Poisie prov., III 489).
I85
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PIJILOLOGY.
the seneschal so often met with in old French poems. The Celtic
element has never been discussed, and, if it can be shown to exist
in any considerable degree, will serve not merely to clinch what
has so far been said as to the origin and transmission of our poem,
but also as independent and sufficient proof that the Orfeo is what
it professes to be-a Breton lay. If our genesis is correct, we
shall find the Orfeo .preserving or rejecting the incidents of the
classic story according as they agree or disagree with Celtic ideas
and traditions.
On this principle, we should expect the harping of Orpheus to
be made much of in Sir Orfeo. The respect felt by all Celtic
nations for their harpers is famous. Every baron should have
three things, said the Welsh laws-his harp, his cloak, and his
chessboard.1 In the time of Richard II the Irish kings still treated
their minstrels with a consideration that shocked the English
ambassador.2 In this respect the Orfeo meets our expectation.
Orfeo is r *t only the best of harpers, he is a king. The Celts
were fond of putting the harp into the hands of kings and princes.
Every one will think of Tristram and Yseut and Mark.' Glasgerion
was a king's son and a Briton.4 No less than three of the Welsh
bards were royal.5 Above all, the British king Blegabres6 must
not be forgotten. He knew "de tos estrumens maistrie, et de
diverse canterie; et mult sot de lais et de note. . . .
Porce qu'il ert de si bon sens
Disoient li gent, A son tens,
Que il ert Dex des jogleors,
Et Dex de tos les chanteors."
(Roman de Brut., vv. 3763-5, 3773-6; Le Roux de Lincy, I 178-9.)
With this royal patron and god of music may be compared the
crowned figure seated on a throne and playing on that eminently
Celtic instrument, the crwt, found in a manuscript in the French
National Library.7
Wotton and Williams, Leges Walliae, p. 30r; quoted by Fetis.
2 Walker, Irish Bards, I I8o.
3 Michel, Tristan, II Io6; Gottfried v. Strassburg, 8058-71. (Wolf, p. 53.)
4 Cf. Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, II I37.
5 Price, Literary Remains, I 133, 325-6.
6This was Blegywyrd ab Seisyllt, 56th supreme king of Great Britain,
according to E. Jones (Welsh Bards, 3d ed., 1808, I I), who cites Tyssilio's
Welsh Chron., etc.
7The figure is playing, with a bow held in the left hand, on a three-stringed
instrument. A copy is given by Bottee de Toulmon, Memoires de la Soc.
I86
SIR ORFEO.
The power exercised by the harp of Orpheus over the beasts of
the wood is carefully preserved in the lay; for, though this trait
occurs oftener in Norse than in Celtic, it cannot be claimed as the
exclusive property of any people, and would doubtless have been
retained by any mediaeval minstrel who had undertaken to work
over the classic tale.' The Celts were no strangers to marvellous
feats of minstrelsy. The Irish had a wild tale of the three sons
of Uaithne, who harped at the court of Ailill one day till twelve
men died of weeping;2 and another of the three tunes played
on a magic harp by Dagde in the hall of his foes: " He played
them the Goltraighe until their women cried tears. He played
them the Gentraighe until their women and youths burst into
laughter. He played them the Suantraighe until the entire host
fell asleep."3 Nearer the Orfeo is the harping of Glasgerion, who,
if not Glas Keraint, is a Briton at least.4 And curiously parallel
is the power with which Tyolet, the hero of a Breton lay, had
been endowed by a fairy-the power of attracting wild beasts,
when he wished, by whistling.5
In the lay, as in the myth, Orpheus wins back his wife by his
music; and this is a trait that we should have expected a Breton to
preserve. At the same time, almost every feature of the picture
has been retouched. In Ovid, Orpheus frankly avows his errand,
and his song is an appeal to Pluto and Proserpine to restore
Eurydice. In the lay he appears as a wandering minstrel, charms
royale des Antiquaires, 2e Serie, VII 154, and by Fetis, Hist. gen. de la
Musique, IV 345.
'For many examples of the power of the harp see Child, II I37. Add
Kalevala, Schiefner's transl., Rune 41, pp. 240 ff. Professor Child mentions
Orpheus, and notes that in the Scandinavian ballad Harpans Kraft (Grundtvig,
II 65-8, etc.), "the harper is a bridegroom seeking (successfully) to recover his
bride, who has been carried down to the depths of the water by a merman."
It is not impossible that we have here another offshoot of the classic story,
developed under Scandinavian, as the Orfeo under Celtic influence. The
Shetland ballad given by Child (I 217) with the title King Orfeo is apparently
from the English romance.
2 Tain Bo Fraich (The Cow-Spoil of Fraech), in the Book of Leinster, a
MS of the twelfth century; O'Curry, Manners and Customs of the Anc.
Irish, III 220; H. d'Arbois de Jubainville, Cours de Litt. celtique, I 58, Essai
d'un Catalogue, pp. 217-I8.
3 Cath Maige Tured na Fomorach (Battle of Mag Tured against the Fomorians),
in O'Curry, Manners and Customs, III 214. Cf. Arbois de Jubainville,
Cours, II 9r ; Essai d'un Catalogue, pp. 8o-I.
4See Child, II 137; cf. Price, Lit. Remains, I 151-2.
5 Lay de Tyolet, vv. 42-8, published by G. Paris, Rom. VIII 67.
I87
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY.
the court of the fairy king with his playing, and, on being promised
whatever boon he may ask, demands the lady asleep under the
tree yonder. In these changes a strong resemblance may be
noticed to the peculiarly Celtic romance of Tristram. An Irish
harper presents himself at the court of King Mark, but refuses to
play till he is promised a gift. Mark assures him he shall have
whatever he may choose; whereupon the minstrel, after a tune or
two, claims the queen. Mark is in despair, but must keep his
word or give up all title to royalty, for no liar can be king.' The
parallel is very close. In both cases we have the same reluctance
to keep faith, and the same warning that it is a foul thing to hear
a lie from a king's mouth.
Another point in which the Orfeo is reasonably close to Ovid is
the despair of the bard and his solitary life in the woods.2 In
this the lay, which is much more circumstantial than the Latin,
may be compared with the romance of Iwain and with the story
of Merlin Silvestris.3
The great difference between our poem and its original-the
central variation which in a manner conditions all the rest-consists
in the change of scene from Hades to fairyland, and the substitution
of the King of Fairies for Pluto. If this change is not in
the direction of Celtic tradition, nothing can establish the claim of
the Orfeo to be a Breton production. Fortunately, the question
admits of no doubt. The fairies in the English poem have nothing
Teutonic about them. They are not gnomes, or trolls, or kobolds,
or brownies, or nixies. They are not the mischievous diminutive
creatures that abound in German popular tales. They are
precisely those mysterious, reverend beings, of human size and
more than mortal power and beauty, in which Celtic imagination
delighted. Two or three minor points in which the fairies of the
Orfeo resemble Celtic tradition may be mentioned before we come
to the main question.
Michel, Tristan, II 126; Sir Tristrem, ii 63-6 Scott, I65-8, II 50-I Kolbing;
Tristrams Saga og Isondar, 49-50, I 61 K81bing, pp. 105-6 Brynjulfson;
Gottfried v. Strassburg, 13,108 ff., II 99 ff. Bechstein. The details, of course,
differ somewhat.
2 Cf. Met. x 72 ff.
a In the Latin poetical Vita Merlini (formerly ascribed to Geoffrey of Monmouth),
vv. 73 ff. Cf. the Welsh poem Avallenau (The Apple Trees), st. 15 (i8).
Both these are printed by A. Schulz, Die Sagen von Merlin, pp. 275, 75; the
latter also by Stephens, Literature of the Kymry, 2d ed., pp. 212-22. Cf.
Girald. Cambr., Descriptio Kambriae, ii 8, Opera, ed. Dimock, V 133, cited
by Schulz.
I88
In the woods Orfeo often saw hosts of fairy knights with flying
banners and gleaming arms, " ac never he nist whider pai wold"
(vv. 287-94). Similar apparitions were common in Little Britain
in the twelfth century and earlier. "In Britannia minore visae
sunt praedae nocturnae militesque ducentes eas cum silentio semper
transeuntes."' The Irish fairy chiefs had always soldiers under
their command and engaged in murderous combats with each
other.2 The knights and ladies, a hundred each, on snow-white
steeds, that accompany the fairy king in Sir Orfeo, may be compared
with the fourscore damsels, each with her ami, that Lorois
(in the Lai du Trot ) saw, in a sort of fairy vision, riding out of
the wood. Too much stress must not, however, be laid on these
minor matters.
The scene in which Sir Orfeo departs farthest from its classic
source is that of the carrying off of Eurydice. The queen had
gone to sleep in her orchard under an ympe-tree. Her sleep was
long and heavy, but her maidens dared not wake her. When it
passed, she was out of her wits, and tore her hair and scratched
her cheeks. She was conveyed to her chamber, where the king
immediately visited her. To him she revealed that while she was
under the tree a gentle knight had summoned her to come and
speak with his king; that on her refusal he had called his lord, who
came with a score of knights and ladies and put her on a steed by
his side; that this king had then carried her to a fair palace, the
magnificence of which he showed her, and had at last brought her
back to the ympe-tree, where he left her with the words:
Loke, dame, to morwe patow be
Ri3t here under pis ympetre,
And pan pou schalt wip ous go
And live wip ous ever mo.
And 3if pou makest ous ylet,
Whar pou be, pou worst yfet,
And totore pine limes al
pat noping help pe no schal;
1 Ex quibus Britones frequenter excusserunt equos et animalia, et eis usi
sunt, quidam sibi ad mortem, quidam indemniter (Walter Mapes, De Nugis
Curialium, iv 13, p. I80 Wright). It does not appear that the knights seen by
Orfeo had any booty with them; perhaps he did not see them on their return !
2As in the Serglige Conculainn, A. de Jubainville, Cours, II 354-5; cf.
p. 361. Compare the procession of fairy knights in the ballad of Tam Lin
(Child, No. 29, A 27, 29, 41; B 25, 27, 39; I 342 ff.).
3vv. 76 ff., Monmerque and Michel, Lai d'Ignaures, etc., p. 74. As to the
fondness of fairies for white horses, cf. Child, I 339.
SIR ORIEO. I89
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY.
And pjei pou best so totorn,
3ete Pjou worst wip ous yborn. (w. I63-72 Zielke.)
On the morrow the king and queen took their place under the tree,
surrounded by two (ten) hundred knights, who swore that they
would live and die before the queen should be taken from them.
Ac 3ete amiddes hem ful ri3t
pe quen was oway ytvi3t,
Wip fairi forp ynome,
Men wist never wher sche was bicome. (vv. 189-92.)
The fairy marauders in this adventure seem to have been visible
to the queen alone.
Apparently it is her sleeping under an ympe (or grafted) tree
that gives the fairies power over Heurodys. This comes out later
in the poem, when Orfeo sees in fairyland very many mortals who
had been stolen away as they slept their "undertides " (vv. 339-
440; cf. the reading of MS O). " Thomas of Erceldoune (in the
Romance) is lying under a semely (derne, cumly) tree, when he
sees the fairy queen. The derivation of that poem from Ogier le
Danois shows that this must have been an apple-tree."' That Tam
Lane was taken by the fairies while sleeping under an apple-tree2
certainly seems to be, in like manner, a Celtic survival. In Sir
Gowther the devil beguiles the duchess in her orchard. The
Breton Lay de Tydorel3 furnishes a curious parallel. The queen,
who is disporting herself in her orchard with her maidens, falls,
like Heurodys, into a heavy and unnatural sleep4 under an " ente
qu'ele choisi" (v. 30). On waking, she sees nothing of her
attendants, but is approached by a knightly stranger, who asks
her love. "If you refuse me," he threatens, "je m'en irai, vos
' Child, I 340, who adds: " Special trees are considered in Greece dangerous
to lie under in summer and at noon, as exposing one to be taken by the nereids
or fairies .... Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. II9." Is not this
connected with the belief in a datu6vtov fJeal7uflptv6v (LXX Psalm. xci 6), as to
which see Rochholz, Deutscher Unsterblichkeitsglaube, pp. 62 ff., 67 ff., and
cf. Lobeck, Aglaoph., pp. 1092-3.
2Child, No. 39, G 26; I 350. In D 14 Tomlin falls asleep by a fairy-hill.
In the Percy MS version of Launfal (Sir Lambwell, 55-65, Hales and Furnivall;
cf. Malone fragment, vv. 43 ff.) the hero goes to sleep under a tree, and
on waking sees two fairy maidens approaching. In Thomas Chestre's Launfal
he is sitting under a tree, not asleep (vv. 226-7). In Marie's Lai de Lanval
there is neither tree nor nap (vv. 45-55).
3 Pub. by G. Paris, Rom. VIII 67.
4 Molt durement m'apesanti, v. 375.
I9o
SIR ORFEO.
remaindrez: Sachiez ja mes joie n'avrez " (vv. 67-8). This knight
is altogether supernatural, and his influence over the queen
mysterious.' His home is under the waters of a neighboring
lake.
I wish especially to call attention, however, to the correspondence
between this scene in Sir Orfeo and a similar scene in the Irish
epic tale of the Wooing of Etain (Tochmarc Etaine).
Etain was the wife of Eochaid Airem, supreme king of Ireland,
and Midir, a fairy chief, was deeply in love with her. One fine
day in summer Eochaid saw approaching his palace a bright-eyed,
yellow-haired warrior, clad in purple and armed with a five-pointed
lance and a buckler adorned with gold. The stranger gave his
name as Midir, and proposed a game of chess. The king, secure
in his reputation as the best chess-player in Ireland, promised
Midir whatever he wished if he could win the game. Midir was
successful and demanded Etain, but was, with difficulty, put off
for a year, and, at the year's end, for a month. At the close of this
month the king held high court at Tara. As night came on, he
shut himself up in his palace with his queen. The doors were
barred; the courtyard was manned by a line of vigilant guards,
with strict orders to let no one pass; in the great hall of audience
sat the king and queen, surrounded by the chief lords and choice
warriors of the realm, each resolved to prevent the fairy chief from
taking away his prize by force. The hour of midnight approached.
Suddenly Eochaid was horrified to see Midir in the midst of the
hall. No one had seen him enter, nor had the doors been unfastened.
The unwelcome visitant advanced to the queen, whom he
addressed in a song of invitation: " O, fair woman, will you come
with me to my beautiful country, where all are beautiful, where
none is sad or silent, where teeth are white and eyebrows black,
where the hue of the foxglove is on every cheek ? Beautiful are
the plains of Inisfail, but they are as nothing to our great plains.
Intoxicating is the beer of Inisfail, more intoxicating is the beer of
the Great Country. There rivers run with wine. There old age
is unknown. There love is unforbidden. 0, fair woman, will you
l He abandons the queen when their amour is discovered, not for fear of an
dclaircissement-for the witness dies at once-but in accordance with his fairy
nature, which cannot bear that his union with a mortal should be known.
Compare the conduct of Lanval's mistress, of Graelent's (in the Lai de
Graelent, 503 ff.; Roquefort, Poesies de Marie de France, I 522), of Lionbruno's
in the Italian tale (Crane's Ital. Pop. Tales, p. I4I).
I9I
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY.
come with me?"' Etain refused to go without her husband's
consent. Midir demanded permission to put his arm around the
queen's waist. To this demand the king was obliged to accede.
Immediately the fairy chieftain shifted his spear to his left hand,
and, encircling Etain with his right arm, rose aloft and disappeared
with her through the smoke-hole in the roof. Nobody could
touch him or hinder his flight. Rushing out of the palace, the warriors
saw two swans floating in the air, their long white tails united
by a golden yoke. The birds were too far off to be followed, and
soon disappeared altogether.2 According to O'Curry's synopsis of
the story, Midir was visible only to the king and queen, and the
former was "so overcome by some supernatural influence that he
was not only powerless to oppose him, but even unable to apprise
the company of what was going on."'
The resemblances of this scene to Sir Orfeo need no emphasizing.
The beautiful fairy warrior Midir corresponds to the fairy king;
the song describing the delights of the Great Country to the
tempting sight of fairyland granted Heurodys in her vision. Both
Eochaid and Orfeo surround themselves with guards on the fatal
day. In both lay and story the ravisher comes suddenly and
1 This song is translated (I) by O'Curry, Manners and Customs, II 192-3;
(2) more literally, by Sullivan, Id., III I9I n.; (3) by A. de Jubainville, Cours,
II 317-I8. I have followed O'Curry in inserting it here. De Jubainville is
not clear on this point. Apparently he makes Midir sing the song on one of
his clandestine visits to Etain. He remarks that the poem does not belong to
the story. This is very probably true; but it was part of the story in IIoo
(the approximate date of the Book of the Dun Cow) or earlier, and for our
present purpose we need not go farther back than that.
2 Swans, whether they properly belong to this story or not, are not unknown
in Breton lays. In the Lay de Doon, v. 140 (Rom. VIII 62), the knight is
required to ride as fast as a swan can fly. In Marie's Lai de Milun the hero
and his love, in South Wales, send letters to and fro by a tame swan for twenty
years.
3 In this story I have generally followed the analysis of A. de Jubainville
(Cours, II 312-22), which is fuller and probably more trustworthy than that of
O'Curry (Manners and Customs, II I92-4). In some cases, however, where
O'Curry is evidently following copy closely, I have preferred his version, noting,
however, any essential variation from De Jubainville. The Irish text has been
edited from the Leabhar na hUidhre by Windisch, Irische Texte, pp. 117-30,
but this book has been beyond my reach in more senses than one. See further
Ed. Miller, Revue Celtique, III 350 if.; O'Grady, Hist. of Ireland, I 88-93.
The Leabhar na hUidhre version is fragmentary and lacks the account of the
recovery of Etain. The chess-scene is translated by O'Donovan, Book of
Rights, Introd., pp. lxi-lxii.
I92
SIR ORFEO. 193
mysteriously; in both, the warriors, if they see the fairy prince,
have no power to resist his occult influence; in both the queen is
carried off, nobody knows whither. In all the particulars, then; of
the loss of Eurydice, Sir Orfeo is utterly at variance with Ovid
and strikingly similar to a famous Celtic tale.
Heurodys is not taken to Hades, but to fairyland. We left the
lay at the same point at which we now leave the Irish story. The
queen had been stolen away "with fairy." Her husband and his
court were at their wit's end. Orfeo immediately abandoned his
realm, leaving his steward in charge, and plunged into the woods,
harp in hand. After ten years of wild life (already noticed) he
recognized his wife one day among a troop of ladies in the wood.
Though the recognition was mutual, neither spoke,' and Heurodys
was soon hurried off by her companions, resolutely pursued by
Orfeo. The ladies rode "in at a rock," which was the entrance to
fairyland. Three miles the king followed them into the hillside,
when he came to "a fair country, as bright as sun on summer's
day, smooth and plain and all green." In the midst was a splendid
castle, the walls of which shone like crystal. Within were spacious
dwellings of precious stones; the worst pillar was of gold. The
land was never dark, for the rich stones gave light in the nighttime.
In the castle, under a "pavilion," sat a king and queen
whose raiment shone so brightly that Orfeo could not look upon it.
A hundred knights waited on the king. Among other stolen
mortals, Orfeo saw his wife, asleep under an imp-tree.' He gained
her freedom,3 as we have already seen, and returned with her in
1 Zielke (p. I37) thinks this may be a reminiscence of the condition of not
looking back imposed on Orpheus in Ov. M. x 5I; Virg. Georg. iv 487-91.
If there is anything more than meets the view in this passage of the romance,
I should rather compare the widespread superstition that it is dangerous to
speak to witches, ghosts, and fairies. " They are fairies; he that speaks to
them shall die " (Merry Wives, v 5). Cf. Child, 1 322, to whose citations may
be added Waldron, Isle of Man, Manx Soc. ed., p. 67.
2 The passage describing the stolen mortals seen by Orfeo in fairyland (vv.
385-406) is very remarkable. Zielke (p. 137) sees classic elements in it, and
perhaps he is right. All sorts of fairies-Celtic and other-are prone to carry
away people.
3 " Bedb was a fairy potentate who, with his daughters, lived under Sidh-ar-
Femhin, a hill or fairy mansion on the plain of Cashel. To this subterranean
residence a famous old harper named Cliach is said to have obtained access by
playing his harp near the spot until the ground opened and admitted him into
the fairy realm " (O'Hanlon, Irish Folk-Lore, Gentleman's Magazine, S165, Pt.
II; Gentl. Mag. Library, ed. Gomme, IV (Eng. Tradit. Lore) 22). Orfeo
I94 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY.
safety to his kingdom, where, concealing his identity, he tested
the fidelity of the steward. The steward was faithful, and the
king revealed himself. A new coronation followed, and Orfeo and
Heurodys lived happily till the end of their days.
Zielke oddly remarks that a subterranean situation for fairyland
is peculiar to the Orfeo-" diese Oertlichkeit des Feenlandes ist
unserm Gedichte eigenthiimlich, da wir dasselbe sonst auf eine
Insel im Ocean oder in dichte Wildnisse verlegt finden" (p. 135).
He is thinking evidently of the Isle of Avalon' and the Forest of
Breceliant.' But we do find fairyland underground often enough,
and under Celtic ground, too. Thus, not long before the time of
Giraldus Cambrensis, a Welsh youngster, one Elidurus, who was
playing truant and hiding " in concava fluvii cujusdam ripa," was
led through subterranean passages "usque in terram pulcherrimam,
fluviis et pratis, silvis et planis distinctissimam " which was
ruled over by a king.3 This is no doubt the same realm in which
Herla, a king, " antiquissimorum Britonum," passed three centuries
as three days. To reach it Herla had to enter " cavernam altissimae
rupis " and travel some distance,4 precisely as in Orfeo. So
in Shropshire a cavern called the Ogo Hole is still pointed out as
the entrance to fairlyand,' and a cave in North Wales has a like
uncanny reputation.6 To these may be added the Peak Cavern
in Derbyshire, at the bottom of which a swineherd, who had
descended in search of a lost sow, found a land where men were
reaping, though it was cold weather in the world above.7 His
sow was restored to him by the "praepositus" of that land. Add
recognizes his wife "by her clothes" (v. 406). The modern Irish "fairy
doctress" is said by O'Hanlon (p. 13) to tell some token or peculiarity of dress
by which the rescuer may distinguish his lost friend amidst the fairy troop as
it sweeps past on Hallowe'en.
I See R. Kohler's n. in Warnke's ed. of Marie's Lais, p. lxxxiii, n.
2Cf. Brun de la Montaigne, 562-7, ed. P. Meyer, p. 20, and Preface, p. xii.
3Girald. Cambr., Itin. Kambriae, i 8, Opera, ed. Dimock, VI 75, cited by
Wright, St. Patrick's Purgatory, p. 83. Cf. Peter Roberts, Cambrian Pop.
Antiquities, I8r5, pp. I95-20I.
4 Gault. Mapes, De Nugis Curial. i II, p. I6 Wright. In this case, as in the
story of Elidurus, the fairies are called pygmaei.
5Welsh ogof, a cavern. Burne and Jackson, Shropshire Folk-Lore, I883,
P. 57.
Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, p. 99.
Gerv. Tilb., Otia Imperialia, p. 975 (iii 45, p. 24 Liebrecht, whose n., pp.
II7 ff., should be compared), cited by Sir Walter Scott, On the Fairies of
Popular Superstition.
SIR ORFEO.
the Wolf Pits in Suffolk, out of which ascended the famous green
children, who inhabited (so one of them said) a beautiful country
sacred to St. Martin.' And Eldon Hill, in the Romance of Thomas
of Erceldoune, into which the queen of fairy led True Thomas,
Vndir-nethe a derne lee
Whare it was dirke als mydnyght myrke,
And euer pe water till his knee
The montenans of dayes three,
before they came in sight of the fairy castle.2 Similarly the young
Tam Lin was caught away by the fairies "in yon green hill to
dwell."3
I am aware that most of the cases so far cited may be challenged
as either not pure Celtic or not quite to the point. But in carrying
out our comparison between Sir Orfeo and the Wooing of Etain,
we shall find an underground fairyland in virgin Celtic soil.
We left Midir flying through the air with his prize. As soon as
King Eochaid came to himself, he sent out his chief Druid, Dalan,
with orders not to return without Etain. After a year of fruitless
toil, Dalan discovered, "through his keys of science and his
ogam," that the queen was concealed in Midir's palace in the hill
of Bri Leith. The king mustered an army and proceeded to dig
into the hill. As the miners approached the precincts of the fairy
palace, the wily Midir displayed upon the hillside fifty beautiful
women all exactly like Etain in dress and person, so that Eochaid
could not distinguish his wife among them till she made herself
known. Then he carried her back to Tara with him in safety.
He had recovered his wife from the underground fairy mansion no
less effectually than Orfeo, though in a different way.
I have called Midir a fairy chief, but he deserves a more careful
definition. By the year i ioo two or three lines of heathen belief
and tradition had become almost inextricably tangled in the
superstition and the literature of Ireland. In common with all Celtic
peoples, the ancient Irish believed in a beautiful country beyond
Guil. Neubrig., Rer. Angl. i 27, ed. Hearne, I 90-93; Radulph. de Coggeshale,
Chron. Angl., ed. Stephenson, pp. II8-20. The accounts differ slightly.
Ralph does not mention St. Martin. I owe the references to Wright, St.
Patrick's Purgatory, p. 84. The date is some time in the reign of Henry II.
2 Sts. 30-31, Murray, p. 10, vv. I69-73.
3Child, No. 39, A 23, I 342. Cf. Gentleman's Magazine, 1832, Pt. 2, p. 223;
Gentleman's Mag. Library, ed. Gomme, IV 52: " In Scotland the fairies dwell
under the little green hills."
195
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY.
the sea, inhabited by gods and sometimes visited by heroes. This
Elysium, related to the Avalon of Arthurian romance and the
Terra Repromissionis Sanctorum of the legends, was called the
Land of Promise (Tir Tairngire), the Land of the Living (Tir na
mBeo), the Land of the Youthful (Tir na nOg), the Pleasant Plain
(Mag Mell), etc.' The Irish also believed in certain divinities
who lived underground and were called Aes Sidhe, and in other
divinities, called Tuatha DA Danann, who, if not originally identical
with the Aes Sidhe, were in time confounded with them.2 Properly
the blissful land beyond the sea had nothing to do with the Aes
Sidhe; but, by the beginning of the twelfth century, the Irish had
long been Christians, their deities had been either euhemerized
into mortals or degraded into demons and fairy chiefs, and they
found it no easier to carry two sets of fairies and two fairylands in
the mind without confusion, than the Greeks found it to keep their
Chthonian and their Uranian gods always sharply distinguished.
Hence they located the Aes Sidhe sometimes in the interior of
pleasant green hills, sometimes in Tir Tairngire ; and Tir Tairngire-
now fairyland-was sometimes regarded as underground,
or as having a fairy-hill for its vestibule, or, perhaps, as dotted with
green hills, in which its people dwelt. Thus, in the Adventures of
Condla the Fair, the fee (Windisch's word) invites Condla to the
Land of the Living and the Pleasant Plain, but adds that the
inhabitants are called Aes Sidhe, " for they have their dwellings in
large, pleasant green hills." Condla finally departs with her in a
crystal canoe.4
We can now understand Midir better. Originally a god, one of
the Aes Sidhe, he is thought of in the Wooing of Etain as a fairy
in the Celtic sense-a being of human stature, wonderful beauty,
1 See particularly E. Beauvois, Rev. de 1'Hist. des Religions, VII (1883) 288
ff. Cf. Joyce, Old Celtic Romances, pp. 405, 4Io; Kuno Meyer, Cath Finntraga,
Oxf., 1885, Introd., p. xiii.
2 A. de Jubainville, Cours, II I40 ff.; O'Curry, MS Materials, pp. 504-5;
Joyce, pp. 40I-2; Kuno Meyer, p. xi.
3 Meyer, pp. xii-xiii.
4 Echtra Condla Chaim in the Leabhar na hUidhre. Windisch, Rev. Celtique,
V 389-90; A. de Jubainville, Cours, II I92-3; Joyce, Old Celtic Romances,
pp. I06-XI; Beauvois, Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, VII (1883) 288-90. De
Jubainville regards this fairy maiden as the Celtic death-messenger. His
brochure, Le Dieu de la Mort, Troyes, 1879, I have not seen. Beauvois (p. 290,
n. I).declares that "cette opinion n'est confirmee ni par la presente legende ni
par les suivantes." Whatever she was originally, to the Irish of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries she was merely, as Windisch calls her; a fee.
I96
SIR OREEO.
and extraordinary powers. He resides in a sidh or fairy-hill,
whence he can come forth among men, visibly or invisibly, as he
may prefer.' He describes his abode in a song intended originally,
no doubt, as a description of the Land of the Living, but in this
the twelfth century saw no contradiction. As soon as the Irish
imagination entered the hill of Bri Leith, it lost itself and saw
there all the wonders that former times had appropriated to the
country beyond the sea. We may compare other Irish descriptions
of fairyland. In the Sickness of Cuchlainn, also in the
Book of the Dun Cow, the abode of the goddess Fand is called
Hill of the Fairies (Dintsid), Powerful Plain of Trogaigi, and Mag
Mell.2 It is a country "bright and noble, in which is not spoken
falsehood or guile"; it is a flowery plain; there are champions
with gleaming arms and shining raiment; there are lovely women
feasting. There sits King Labraid in his palace, surrounded by
thousands of warriors. His hair is yellow as gold and fastened
with a golden apple.3 We see plainly the fusion of different
elements into a more or less harmonious whole.- This fusion had
been fully accomplished by the year IIoo-and we are here concerned
with no earlier state of these stories.
Enough has probably been said to show that it is reasonable to
regard the Orfeo in the light in which it puts itself-that is, as
a Breton lay. Coincidences with Celtic story are too many to
admit of any other conclusion. The conspicuous place which
Irish literature has occupied in our investigation prompts a further
question: Did the Breton Orfeo come into direct contact with
Irish tradition ? That is, are the striking resemblances we have
noticed due (I) to the fact that the story of Midir represents views
common to all Celts-the property as well of a Breton harper as
of an Irish bard 4-or (2) to the fact that the Breton author of our
1 De Jubainville, Revue Archeol., 1878, I 390-91; Cours, II I43-4.
2 Beauvois, Rev. de 1'Hist,des Religions, VII 291.
3 Serglige Conculainn in the Leabhar na hUidhre. Original in Windisch's
Irische Texte, pp. 205-27. I have used the translation given by Gilbert, Facsimiles
of the National MSS of Ireland, Pt. II (I878), Appendix IV F. Two
parallels may be noted-first, the bright raiment, cf. Sir Orfeo, vv. 413-14;
second, the means of light, cf. with Sir Orfeo, vv. 367-70, the words of the
Irish piece: "The noble candle which is there is the brilliant precious
stone." Not much emphasis can be laid on this, however. Carbuncles are a
commonplace in mediaeval literature. See Bartsch, Herzog Ernst, pp. clxi ff.
4 In favor of this might be cited the Welsh fairyland, Annwn, with its king
Arawn, the description of whose castle, and wife, and courtiers, in the tale of
I97
AzAMERZICAJNO URNAL OF PHILOLOGY.
lay had heard from some Irishman the story of Midir or the like,
and had consciously or unconsciously mixed it with the classic
myth? Since either of these hypotheses accounts for the phenomena,
neither can with certainty be proved. Still many features of Sir
Orfeo agree more closely with Irish tradition than with anything
demonstrably Breton or common Celtic, and it is easy to show that
a Breton harper may have heard the Wooing of Etain much as
we have it.
There is no difficulty about dates. The Leabhar na hUidhre,
which contains the Irish story, is a MS written before I Io6. If it
were necessary (as it is not) to suppose any earlier date than this
for the Breton Orfeo, there would still be no difficulty, for the contents
of the Leabhar are of unknown antiquity, and, even in their
present form, must antedate the MS considerably.
Nor need there be any hesitation as to means of transmission.
Intercourse between Ireland and Wales on the one hand, and
Wales and Brittany on the other, was brisk and not unfruitful in a
literary way.' Several of the Mabinogion are thought to betray
an Irish source.2 When Lord Rhys held, in 1177, a great feast in
South Wales, "he instituted two species of contests-one between
Pwyll, Prince of Dyved (Mabinogion, tr. by Lady Charlotte Guest, Pt. V, pp.
41-2), is not unlike the similar place in Orfeo. Gwyn ap Nudd is also called
lord of Annwn and of the Tylwyth Teg, who are fairies of human size, as well as
of the elves. See the tale of Kilhwch and Olwen (Mabinogion, IV 259, 305,
and cf. Lady Guest's n., pp. 323-6). But both these Mabinogion are thought
to be full of Irish elements (Sullivan, Celtic Lit., Encycl. Brit., gth ed., V
321-2). Cf., as to Gwyn and his subjects, Keightley, Fairy Mythol., II I96 ff.,
Price, Lit. Remains, I I46-7, 285-7; Stephens, Lit. of the Kymry, pp. 183 ff. It
should be noted that Gwyn is said to have stolen Creiddylad (Cordelia), the
daughter of Lludd Llaw Ereint (Lear), from her betrothed husband Gwythyr;
but Arthur restored the maiden to her father, stipulating that the two suitors
" should fight for her every first of May, from thenceforth until the day of
doom " (Mabinog. IV 305). Here may be mentioned the romance or ballad of
Burd Ellen, an outline of which Jamieson (Illustrations of Northern Antiquities,
pp. 398-403) gives from his recollection of the shape in which it was
told him in his youth by a country tailor. The story has several correspondences
with Sir Orfeo. Warluck Merlin appears in it as advising Child
Rowland.
Note the importance of Ireland in Arthurian romance. Compare, too, the
Lai de Mellon (Mdnmerque and Michel, Lai d'Ignaures, etc., pp. 43-67), in
which the scene is partly laid in Ireland, though Marie's Bisclavret, of which
Melion is a variant, is intensely Breton. The werewolf superstition is still
alive in Brittany. See Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, Ch. I.
2 Sullivan, Celtic Literature, Encycl. Britannica, 9th ed., V 321-2.
I98
SIR ORFEO.
the bards and poets, and another between the harpers, pipers, and
those who played upon the crwth ..., and this feast was announced
a full year before it took place, in Wales, England, Scotland, and
Ireland, and many other countries."' Gruffydd ab Kynan, who
had taken refuge in Ireland, brought back with him on his
return divers cunning musicians, who are said to have reformed
the music of Wales.2 Similarly it was no uncommon thing for a
Welsh prince to spend some time in Armorica. A famous example
is Rhys ab Tewdwr, who, on his return from Brittany to take the
crown of South Wales in I077, " brought with him," it is said,
" the system of the Round Table, which at home had become
quite forgotten, and restored it as it was with regard to minstrels
and bards."3 Thus closely associated with both countries, Wales
might well have served as an intermediary in the transmission of
Irish stories to Brittany.4
But we are not driven to this expedient. The fame of the Irish
harpers was not confined to their native island. Early celebrated
in Great Britain,5 their renown was at its height there in the twelfth
century, from which dates the enthusiastic testimony of Giraldus ;6
Caradoc's Chron., in the Myvyrian Archaiology, II 574, as quoted by
Stephens, Lit. of the Kymry, pp. 324-5.
2 Powell (Hist. of Cambria, ed. 1584, p. I91, not seen by me) says they
"devised in a manner all the instrumental music that is now there used "
(Walker, Irish Bards, 2d ed., I 143); but Thomas Stephens, who discusses the
subject at some length (Lit. of the Kymry, 2d ed., pp. 56-65), is inclined to
think that the chief innovation was the use of the bagpipes.
3 Stephens, Lit. of the Kymry, p. 322, quoting Iolo MSS, p. 630.
4 Cornubia vero, et Armorica Britannia lingua utuntur fere persimili, Kambris
tamen, propter originalem conventiam, in multis adhuc et fere cunctis intelligibili
(Girald. Cambr., Itin. Kambriae, i 6, Dimock, VI I77). It is often
asserted now-a-days that a Welshman can make himself understood in Brittany,
but this Price denies (Literary Remains, I 35, io8).
5 An Irish king in the sixth century is said to have sent a joculator to the
Welsh court for political purposes. The minstrel delighted the king and
nobles by his harping and singing (D'Alton, Social and Polit. State of People
of Ireland, Trans. R. I. A. XVI (1830) 225). Ethodius of Scotland, cum, de
more procerum Scotorum, fidicinem ex IIibernia in cubiculo suo pernoctantem
haberet, ab eo noctu occisus fuit (Buchanan, Rer. Scotic. Hist. IV 25, cited by
Walker, I 98). The passage may be found in Ruddiman's ed., 1725, I II8.
On the popularity of these harpers in later times, see D'Alton, pp. 162, 225,
226, 338-9; Walker, I 177.
6 Top. Hib. iii II, Dimock, V I53. Cited by Sir James Ware, Antiq. of
Ireland, p. 184 (in Vol. I of his Whole Works Concerning Ireland, translated
by Walter Harris, Dublin, 1764).
I99
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY.
and there is evidence that, by his time, they had visited the Continent
in considerable numbers. From the eighth to the fourteenth
century they "appear to liave wandered about the north of
Europe,"' and it is even thought they got as far south as Italy.
Vincentio Galilei declares without hesitation that the harp was
introduced-or reintroduced- into that country from Ireland 2-
an opinion which has won some assent.3 Of course these harpers
carried their national stories with them, and nothing is more likely
than that they imparted some of them to their Celtic brethren in
Brittany, with whom they would naturally affiliate. To such
intercourse, perhaps, more than to Welsh agency, we owe what
seem to be Irish elements in the beautiful Breton Lay de Guigamor.
4 There is even said to have been a lay on an out-and-out
Irish subject-which had, however, become cosmopolitan through
1 Sullivan, Introd. to O'Curry, Manners and Customs, I dxix.
2As this passage has been oftener cited than seen, I may be pardoned
for giving it at some length: < Fra gli strumenti adunque di corde che
sono hoggi in vso in Italia, ci e primamente f'Harpa, la quale non e altro
che vn' antica Cithara di molte corde; se bene di forma in alcuna cosa differente.
.. .Fu portata d'Irlanda a noi questo antichissimo strumento (commemorato
da Dante) doue si lauorano in excellenza & copiosamete: gli habitatori
della quale isola si esercitano molti & molti secoli sono in esse, oltre all' essere
impresa particolare del regno; la quale dispingano & sculpiscono negli edifizij
pubblici & nelle monete loro " (Dialogo di Vincentio Galilei Nobile Fiorentino
della Musica Antica, et della Moderna. In Fiorenza, MDLXXXI, p. I43). The
author then describes the Irish harp. In spite of the plain meaning of Vincentio,
both D'Alton (Social and Polit. State of People of Ireland, Royal Irish Acad.
Trans. XVI (1830) 339), and Sullivan (Introd. to O'Curry's Manners and Customs,
I dxix) quote him as authority for the statement that Dante says the
harp was introduced into Italy from Ireland. The mistranslation appears to
be due to E. Jones (Mus. and Poet. Relicks of the Welsh Bards, 3d ed., I808,
I 95). Of course the passage means simply that Dante has mentioned the harp
(Paradiso xiv i 8).
3 Sullivan, p. dxx, who cites "Doni, Lyra barberina, etc., Flor., 1763, I 20,"
which I have not seen.
4 Published by G. Paris, Rom. VIII 5I if. Compare with this lay, besides
the citations of the editor, the ancient Irish tale of Loegaire (A. de Jubainville,
Cours, II 356 ff.); the seventeenth-century Oisin in Tirnanoge (Joyce, Old
Celtic Romances, pp. 395-9; Windisch, Verhandlungen der 33sten. Versamrtrlg.
deutscher Philologen, p. 26), and the story of the ancient British king
Herla (Mapes, De Nugis Curial. i II, pp. 14-17 Wright). The resemblance
consists in the disastrous effect of eating earthly food or touching the ground
on returning to this earth from fairyland. De Jubainville (II 363) compares
the fate of Crimthann, but the similarity is doubtful.
200
SIR ORFEO.
the Latin version-the Voyage of St. Brandan.' In the Roman
de Renart, the fox, masquerading as an Anglo-Norman jongleur,
declares:
Ge fot savoir bon lai Breton
Et de Merlin et de Noton,
Del roi Artu et de Tristan,
Del chevrefoil, de saint Brandan.
(i 2389-92, I 67 Martin; 12,I49-52, II 95-6 Meon.)
More than all this, we have, in an undoubted Breton lay, clear
proof that Irish harpers not only played their national melodies,
but that they excelled in the performance of genuine lays of
Brittany. Curiously enough, the passage that shows this gives
the Lai d'Orphey as one of the pieces thus performed. The
quotation has already been made for another purpose:
Le lais escoutent d'Aielis,
Que uns irois sone en sa rote;
Mout doucement le chante et note.
Aprits celi d'autre commenche,
Nus d'iaus ni noise ne ni tenche;
Le Lai lor sone d'Orphey. (Lai de l'Espine, vv. I8o ff.)
Here an Irish harper plays two lays before the King of Bretaigre.
M. Gaston Paris draws this inference: " La conclusion a tirer ...
semble etre que les lais etaient connus en Irlande et executes parfois
par des Irlandais." With the first of these propositions we
need not concern ourselves; the second is certainly borne out by
the evidence. That these wandering minstrels knew the story of
Etain goes without saying. It was their business to know stories
and to tell them. In this way, then, the tale of Midir and Etain
may have reached Breton ears.
The results of our investigation appear then to be: (I) that Sir
Orfeo is translated from a French version of a Breton lay; (2)
that this lay varied from the classical story in the direction of
Celtic tradition, and that these variations are in general preserved
in the English poem. Further, that these variations, since they
coincide in part with Irish tales, and since Irish harpers were known
1 The Latin Life of St. Brandan is perhaps as old as the ninth century. See,
on the whole matter, A. Graf, La Leggenda del Paradiso Terrestre, pp. 33-6,
go ff.; E. Beauvois, L'Eden occidental, Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, VII
(1883) 693, n. 4. As to the alleged Breton lay, the evidence of Reynard is not
altogether conclusive, though it is accepted by Wolf, p. 59, and by Schr6der,
Sanct Brandan, Introd., p. vi. Basse-Bretagne had its own adventurous
voyagers, the monks of Saint-Mathieu (Beauvois, pp. 680-84).
201
202 AMfERICAN JOURANAL OF PHILOLOGY.
in Brittany, may probably have been made under the influence of
stories picked up by some Armorican jongleur from an Irish
brother. And, finally, that it is not absurd to conjecture that in
the Wooing of Etain we have the very tale which, mixed with
the imperfectly understood myth of Orpheus, produced the Breton
lay of which tile English poem is the sole surviving version.
GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE.

Footnotes:
1. I have used the excellent edition of Dr. Oscar Zielke: Sir Orfeo, ein englisches Feenmarchen aus dem Mittelalter. Breslau, I88o. Dr. Zielke was obliged to print his book with a less detailed account of the literary history of the poem than he had intended to give. His untimely death has probably robbed us of all chance of seeing his ideas in any fuller form. If he left any
notes behind him, it is to be hoped they will soon be published.

2. These lines are found in the Harleian MS and the Bodleian MS. The Auchinleck MS lacks them, but the omission is satisfactorily explained by the mutilated condition of that famous quarto. There is no a priori reason why the verses should be regarded as borrowed by the Orfeo rather than by Le Fresne. They fit the former quite as well as the latter, and there is nothing in the French original of the Lay le Fresne from which they can be derived. The English Lay le Fresne is preserved only in the Auchinleck MS, which also contains the oldest copy of Sir Orfeo.

3. F. Lindner (Englische Studien, V I66 if.) argues vigorously against a
French, and for an Italian origin for Sir Orfeo. Most of his reasoning seems
to me to have very little in it. He certainly does not prove that it is even
possible that the Orfeo had other than an immediate French source. His only
real argument for an Italian derivation is based on the form Orfeo. It is
doubly unnecessary to discuss Lindner's article at length, as it has been already
satisfactorily answered by Einenkel (Anglia, Anzeiger, V 13 ff.). Einenkel
refers Sir Orfeo to a " verlorengegangenes franz. lay, dessen inhalt dem ersten
englischen Erzahler oder Abfasser der Dichtung nur noch schwach erinnerlich
war" (p. 17). Zielke (p. 136) refuses to decide whether the interweaving of
the classical mythology with the fairy belief " das werk unsers Dichters resp.
seines franziSsischen GewAhrsmannes gewesen ist, oder bereits zuvor bestanden
hat."
4. The verses are found in two MSS, the Bodleian and the Auchinleck; they
are wanting in the Harleian. According to Zielke's genealogy of the MSS
(p. 25), anything found in the Auchinleck, and at the same time in either of the
other two MSS, must belong to the poem in its oldest English state. 5.
Wolf, Ueber die Lais, p. 216, says that the Cokwold's Daunce is "nachweisbar
auf ein bretonisches Lai gegriindet." He seems to regard it as a
parody on the Lai du Corn (p. I77). Wright's text of this piece, which calls
itself not a lay, but a bourd, may be found in Karadjan's Friihlingsgabe. 6.
I have used Breul's text (1883), but have not seen his prolegomena.