Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/361

 The European Sky- God. 347

the vegetable world. If I am right in my conjecture/ Gramoflanz or rather Guiromelans was a king who defended a tree against all comers and himself bore a name meaning ' He of the Mistletoe-branch ' or ' the Mistletoe-branch-man.' - As already mentioned, he wore a mantle of velvet ' green as grass ' — a trait which recalls Gawain's other antagonist the Green Knight and suits the guardian of a sacred tree.^ On another occasion

Gramoflanz, he ware For garment a robe of wonder, in Gampfassasch wroughten fair. 'Twas a rick silk, all gold embroidered, and woven with golden thread, And a shimmer of light from his vesture afar round the monarch spread.*

^Bartsch Germanische Studien ii. 121 would derive the name ixora. guirlande (Lat. ^^r«j) and meller, meskr, 'to fight,' i.e. 'He who fights for the gar- land.' But the Old French garlande, Proven9al garlanda, are against him ; nor has guirlande anything to do with gyrus. See Korting op. cit. nos. 4429, 10389.

^ Hence the appellative forms li guiromelans, etc.

^Mr. D. Fitzgerald in the Revue celtique iv. 185 f. reports the following folk-tale concerning Loch Guirr: ' This lake, all Munster knows, is enchanted; but the spell passes off it once in every seven years. The lake then, to who- ever has the luck to behold it, appears dry ; and the Tree may be partly seen at the bottom of it, covered with a Green Cloth. A certain bold fellow was at the spot one day at the very instant when the spell broke, and he rode his horse towards the tree and snatched away the Brat ^Uaine [Green Cloth] that covered it. As he turned his horse, and fled for his life, the woman who sat on the watch, knitting under the cloth, at the foot of the tree, cried out.

Awake, awake, thou silent tide !

From the Dead Women's Land a horseman rides,

From my head the green cloth snatching. At the words the waters rose ; and so fiercely did they pursue him that as he gained the edge of the lake one half of his steed was swept away, and with it the Brat 'Uaine, which he was drawing after him. Had that been taken, the enchantment was ended for ever.' Mr. Fitzgerald ib. p. 192 cp. Campbell Popular Tales of the West Highlands ii. 42 ff.

The Rev. J. Macdougall Folk and Hero Tales London 1891 {Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition : Argyllshire iii.) p. 231 tells of 'the Knight of the Green Vesture . . . who fell fighting in the play of swords against the Fierce Earl of the Wood-of-Masts {Coille-nan-Crann).'
 * Wolfram Parzival trans. Miss J. L. Weston xiv. 733 ff.