Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/335

CELTIC LITERATURE 323 position in the north as to give him of right the place occupied by Arthur in those productions. Some tale or ballad, in which a hero called Artur was the chief actor, might have had perchance the necessary elements for popular success ; and around this as a nucleus gathered the legends of other Arturs. One of the sons of Aedan Mac Gabran, killed at the battle of Cattraeth, was named Artur; and there were doubtless many others of the name, both Scots and Britons. The name Art has a place in Irish romance also. Thus Art, " the lone man," son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, was beloved on account of his great fame by Becuma of the fair skin, wife of Labrad of the quick-hand-at-sword, and probably the same as Etain, a goddess already so often mentioned, and who had been unfaithful with Gaiar, son of Manandan Mac Lir. Becuma, driven out of Tir Tairngire or Elysium on account of her offence, is sent adrift in a boat, and lands on the Hill of Howth in Ireland, where, under the name of Delbh Caemh, daughter of Morgan, she presents herself to Conn and marries him. She next insists on the banishment of Art from Tara. Evil, however, comes on the country on account of Conn s marriage, and the Druids announce that it could only be averted by sprinkling the blood of the eon of an undefiled couple on the door posts. Conn sails away in search of such a youth, finds him in Tir Tairn gire, Elysium, and brings him to Ireland. Then we have a scene of exactly the same character as that told of Gorti- gern, but the boy is ultimately saved from immolation by the appearance of his mother, who tells them they must banish Becuma. The latter then plays a game of chess with Art the son of Conn, and he wins, and imposes upon her the obligation of getting the champion s wand which was in the hand of CuroiMacDaire when making the conquest of Erin, and of the whole world. She visits the Side, and at length finds it, and brings it to Art. They play again, and this time Becuma wins, and sends him in search of Dell/h Caemh, daughter of Morgan, i.e., herself, whom he would find in an island in the middle of the sea. He sails away, and arrives at a beautiful island full of apple-trees, flowers, birds, and spotted horses ; in which too there were joyous ever-blooming women, and Crede, the ever beautiful. Again Art was named Oenfhir, " the lone man," because his brother Condla, " the beautiful," being invited by a Ben Side to rule over Magh Mell, " the plain of honey in the Laud of Promise," went thither and left him without a brother. Art is also credited with having anticipated Christian belief; and consequently it is supposed that neither he nor his son Cormac was buried in the pagan cemetery on the River Boyne. Growth it should be remembered that this Art lived either at ^ Hj e . the beginning of the Scotic invasions of Roman Britain, fible. or immediately before that period, for his son Cormac, according to Irish legends, was expelled from Ireland, and, going over the sea, obtained the sovereignty of Alba, and his fame must have been carried into Wales, where he must have been the subject of many legends. These legends were the nucleus around which gathered all the floating traditions which came down from the north into North Wales, and thence into South Wales. Some obscure Arthur of the north, perchance Aedan s son, was clothed in tht> legendary glory of Art, and was made a Gidedig or generalissimo, and paramount king of Britain. From South Wales these legends passed into Cornwall and Armorica, where it is probable the Round Table was invented or borrowed in the same way that at a later period the legend of the St Graal, which there is reason to believe originally came from Provenge, was carried by the Jongleurs into Brittany, and thence into Wales. If the preceding view be correct, the Arthurian legends attained considerable development in Wales before the Round Table was Other Welsh n terati:re developed, and were carried by itinerant story-tellers and musicians among the Normans before Geoffrey of Mon- mouth wrote his history. That book gave a value to the popular tales which they otherwise could never havo attained, and afforded a key by which to correct them. To the Norman clerics the romances owe their polish, and to a large extent their chivalry. But the germs of mediaeval chivalry, and even of knight-errantry were already in the original legends, associated, no doubt, with much barbarism. Besides the Brute, poems, Mabinogion, genealogies, and some miscellanous pieces including a few legendary lives of saints and the grammatical works alluded to iu. a pre- ceding part, the only other early works in the Welsh language which have been printed, are two medicine books, and a music book. The two medicine books belonged to Medicine. a family of leeches of Mydvai in Carmarthen, descended from Rhiivallon, family leech to Rhys Gryg or Rhys the Hoarse, prince of South Wales, in the 1 3th century. The oldest of the two books is in the Red Book, and may possibly have been copied from the Book of Rhiu allon himself, or of his sons ; the second is the Book of Howd Veddyg, or Howel the Leech, a descendant of Einion, son of Rhiivallon, and was written probably towards the end of the 17th century. Both books are mere dispensatories, and contain very little which would enable us to judge of the theoretical knowledge of disease possessed by the Welsh leeches, and cannot represent the real state of leech- craft in Wales in the 16th and 17th centuries. In Wales the practice of leechcraft was, as in Ireland, hereditary in certain families, who held land by the tenure of medical service. The rank and privileges of the family leech to the king are given in the Welsh laws; and in Wales he was obliged, as in Ireland, to take a guarantee from the kindred of his patient equal to the sum which should be paid for the homicide of a man of his rank, in case he might happen to die from his treatment, otherwise he should answer for his death. The music book, published Music. in the Myvyrian Archaiology , which is believed to contain some of the ancient music of Wales, and a peculiar system of musical notation, contains merely the music of the lute or some stringed instrument, perhaps the Welsh Cmvth or Crowd, with the notation in common use for such instru ments in every part of Europe, and there is no evidence that it contains any of the ancient music of Wales. The literature of the Cornish dialect of the British, which was once the spoken language of the centre and south of England, is very limited indeed. There is first the Pascon Ar/an Arluth, The Passion of our Lord, con sisting of 259 stanzas, each of which is a quatrain of four double lines, in rhyme, or eight single heptasyllabic lines with alternate rhymes, the final vowel and consonant in the rhymes being almost always the same : n each stanza. This important monument of the Cornish language has been printed with a translation by Mr Whitley Stokes. Secondly, there is the Ordinalia, a MS. of which is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It forms a dramatic trilogy, consisting of three miracle plays the Beginning of the World, the Passion, and the Resurrection of our Lord. The latter piece is divided into the Resurrection and the Ascension, with a curious interlude of the putting of Pilate to death. These dramas are founded on the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus or Acts of Pilate, and several legends which were current all over Europe in the Middle Ages. They are probably translations or adaptations of French miracle plays of the end of the 14th century. The metre is syllabic, with few exceptions, each line having seven syllables, like the lines of the poem of the Passion. A great many of those lines are arranged in stanzas of eight or of four lines, with alternate rhymes, as in the poem just CORNIBE LITEIU-

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