Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/605



queste of Jherusalem, with many histories therein comprised;” Westmester, fol. 1480.

It is from the first thirty-eight chapters of the French “Faits et Gestes,” that Robert Copland translated his Helias, which he dedicated “to the puyssant and illustrious prynce, lorde Edwarde, duke of Buckynghame,” because he was lineally descended from the Knight of the Swan. This duke was beheaded, May 17th, 1521.

We need hardly follow the story in other translations.

The romance, as we have it, is a compilation of at least two distinct myths. The one is that of the Swan-children, the other of the Swan-knight. The compiler of the romance has pieced the first legend to the second, in order to explain it. In its original form, the knight who came to Neumagen, or Cleves, in the swan-led boat, and went away again, was unaccounted for: who he was, no man knew; and Heywood, in his “Hierarchies of the Blessed Angels,” 1635, suggests that he was one of the evil spirits called incubi; but the romancer solved the mystery by prefixing to the story of his marriage with the duchess a story of transformation, similar to that of Fionmala, referred to in the previous article.