Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/337

CELTIC L I T E R A T U 11 E 325 e.g., those between Arthur and Gwenhwyvar, Gwalchmai and Trystan, Taliessin and Myrtiii (Myrdin or Merlin), &c., and given it as his opinion that written dialogue seems to indicate the existence of drama of some sort, and that dialogues such as those referred to are inexplicable on any other hypothesis. If this argument were admissible, we cannot see how the existence of the dramatic form should be denied to the Irish, inasmuch as dialogue is very fre quent in Irish poems and tales. Indeed, the " Fight of Ferdiad and Cuchulaind," and other episodes of the Tain Bo Cuailnge, the Bridthar c/uith ban UlaJ, or " Wordy War of the Women of Ulster," the Siabitr charpat Conculaind, or " Phantom Chariot of Ctichulaind" possess as much of the character of incipient drama as any poetic or prose dialogues in Welsh literature. The truth is, however, neither the Welsh nor the Irish had the drama in the proper sense of the word, for the sufGcient reason that though, like other Aryan peoples, they may have pos sessed the germ, it could not be developed among a people who had no civic life. The miracle-plays of the Cornish and Bretons are of foreign and ecclesiastical origin, and merely prove that there existed a closer contact between their churches and the great body of the church in Europe than between the latter and the Irish and Welsh churches. No Welsh miracle-play is known, if there ever was one ; nevertheless, it is possible that the words hud a lledritli, which are explained "illusion," "phantasm," may have really referred to some exhibition of the kind, though the explanation of those words given in the lolo MSS , upon the authority of a certain leuan Vawr ap y Diwliths, who, according to Mr Edward Williams (lolo Morganwg], wrote his treatise on Welsh metres about the year 1180, looks very suspicious. M. de la Villemarque also alludes to a rustic fete, known as le jeu de printemps et de la jeunesse, in which three characters, two young men and one maiden, acted, while the spectators formed the chorus, and repeated the dialogued chants of the principal actors while dancing. Although this fete seems to be a survival of pagan times, and to possess to some extent the elements of an incipient drama, yet in the absence of written monuments or ancient evidence, no argument as to the existence of a native drama among the Celts can be legitimately drawn from it. Influence Celtic literature, although it has no great masterpiece of of Celtic its own to point to, has exercised a considerable amount of literature influence on the creations of modern European literature. on modern m a i i IT-, * literature. *-^ ls Hmuence was exerted by several distinct currents of legends. The first is that of the legends of the Acs /Sule and those of Queen Mebd or Mab and the heroic period; of these the existing Irish legends, and the modified form of them in the Welsh Mabinogion, give us one type. In Britain this first current, modified and mixed with foreign and especially Teutonic elements, has gone on altering, growing, and decaying until the traces of its origin are almost unrecognizable. It is from this source that much of our fairy mythology is derived, and that Chaucer and Spenser obtained materials. To it also may be traced the legends which formed the groundwork of Shakespeare s immediate sources for King Lear and Midsummer Night s Dream. The legends of the second stream were in reality but modifications of those of the first all secondary streams of legend must be necessarily but branches of the primitive stream. These legends were translated into Latin at an early period, and thus, while they spread far and wide, and passed into every language of Europe, we are better able to follow the current up to its first sources. These legends are the Irish Immrams or Wanderings and the Fisa or Visions which -we described above. The idea of a land without winter, of never-ending day, in which the flowers of spring and summer should coexist with the fruits of autumn, and in which bodily ills and old age should be unknown, is common to all lands and to all times. The belief in perpetual youth and especially of abundance of fruit at all times was spread over all Western Europe, and found expression in the popular legends of Scldauer- a/enlande, Pays de Cocaigne, <fcc. The Irish idea of this kingdom of the dead, an idea common to all the branches of the Celtic race, and to the Teutonic races also, is given us in the descriptions of Tir Tairngire, The Land of Pro mise ; Magh MM, The Plain of Honey ; and the Country of the Side. Thither went several of the heroes of romance Cuchulaind, Find, Conn, and his son Art. Iii some legends the land of the Aes Side was reached through caves, as in Virgil s Cave of the Sibyl ; in others, and more usually, by water, it being conceived in such cases as an island. In the legends of Conn and Art this island lay to the eastward, that being the direction in which all the expeditions of the Irish went, the direction in which lay the wealth of the Roman towns of Britain and the metals for bronze of Cornwall. In early Christian times asceticism carried many to the headlands and islands along the west and south-west coast, and the Land of Promise followed the setting sun. A comparison between the Irish pagan and Christian legends of Tir Tairngire, the terra repro- missionis of the Latin mediaeval writers, and those of the Teutonic Glasberg, or heaven, shows very clearly the com mon origin of the two streams. The individual features of the Celtic and Teutonic notions of the kingdom of the dead are the same, though their combinations may differ according to age and other circumstances. The great sea cat and the island of cats in St Brendan s voyage the island being also met with in other Immrams are connected with the sacred animal of Freyja or Holda; the island of black faced dwarfs of the Irish legends reminds us of the dwarfs dwelling in Glasberg. Like Holda s soul-kingdom, Tir Tairngire was an island hidden in a cloud-mantle, en joying never-ending day and perpetual legless summer, full of fine mansions surrounded by grassy, flower-bedecked lawns, whose flowers never wither, abounding in apple trees, bearing at the same time flowers and fruit a land rich in milk, ale, and pork, whose air was ever filled with sweet music, and whose inhabitants enjoying perpetual youth were of spotless innocence, free from blemish, disease, or death. Of all the qualities of Tir Tairngire abundance of apples, the only important fruit known to the northern nations, seems to have been the one which conveyed the highest notion of enjoyment. Hence the soul-kingdom was called by the Welsh the island of apples, Ynys yr Avallon, and sometimes Ynysvitrin or Ynysgittrin, Glass Island, a name which identifies it with the Teutonic Glasberg. When these names passed into other languages untranslated, so that their meaning became obscured or forgotten, the kingdom of the dead was localized at Glas- tonbury, the Anglo-Saxon Glaestinga Ittrh. There, accord ing to legend, Arthur lies buried, but another popular tradition has it that he was carried away to the island of Avallon by his sister the fairy Morgana, the Morgue la Fae of French romance. This Morgana is the Becuma, " the fair skinned " daughter of Morgan, in search of whom Art, " the lone man," visits Tir Tairngire, as already mentioned. When Art reaches the Land of Promise, the lady he finds is Crede, " the ever beautiful." In the romance of Ogier le Danois, when Ogier, who Morgue la Fae deter mines shall be her lover, arrives at the palace of Avallon, he finds there besides Morgana, her brother King Arthur, and her brother Auberon, the Oberon of fairy romance, and Mallabron, a sprite of the sea. A curious legend in the vellum manuscript called the Book of Lismore connects Brendan with Crede. According to this legend a certain tribe king named Doburchu, whose wife s name was Crede,

was transformed through the curse of St Brendan into an