Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/71

Rh maidens anoint him with a flask of precious ointment and bring him a horse and clothing. In gratitude Owain rescues the countess from a young earl, who is oppressing her. He then resumes his wanderings through distant lands and deserts.

In a forest he comes upon a serpent and a black lion fighting. He kills the serpent and is followed by the lion, which forages for him. He next finds Luned imprisoned in a stone vault. She had defended his character, when two pages of the Countess of the Fountain had called him a deceiver. In two days' time they will put her to death, unless he himself appears to rescue her. Owain, without revealing his name, withdraws to a neighbouring castle for food and shelter. The earl who lives in this castle is downcast, because a man-eating giant of the mountain has seized his two sons and threatens to slay them on the morrow unless the earl's daughter is delivered up in their stead. Next morning Owain fights the giant and, thanks to his lion, is victorious. He now hastens away to protect Luned and arrives just as the pages are about to cast her into a great fire. He attacks them both at once, and again the lion comes to his aid and destroys the pair of them. Owain then returns with Luned to the Countess of the Fountain, whom he takes with him as his wife to Arthur's court.

Owain visits the court of the savage black man and fights with him. The lion does not quit Owain until he has vanquished his foe. In the black man's hall Owain sees four and twenty fair ladies in deep sorrow. The demon who owns the castle has slain their husbands and robbed them of their horses and raiment and money. Outside the castle Owain is saluted in friendly fashion by a knight, who is the savage black man himself. Owain attacks, overcomes, and binds him, as had been foretold, but grants him his life on condition that he becomes the keeper of an hospice. Next day Owain returns with the four and twenty ladies and their possessions to Arthur's court. 'And thenceforward,' says the tale, 'Owain dwelt at Arthur's court greatly beloved, as the head of his household, until he went away with his followers; and those were the army of three hundred ravens which Kenverchyn had left him. And wherever Owain went with these he was victorious.'

We are now in a position to reconstruct the lost Anglo-Norman romance that lies behind Yvain and The Lady of the Fountain. Confining our attention to the incidents that occur in both, we obtain the following outline:

While King Arthur is holding his court at Carduel in Wales (Caerlleon upon Usk), his knights converse and one of them named Calogrenant (Kynon) recounts a tale. In search of adventure he had once come first to the castle of a hospitable host, then to a monstrous black herdsman armed with a club, and lastly to a wonderful tree standing beside a stone and a fountain, which fountain was guarded by a knight on horseback. Having unsuccessfully attacked the knight, he had returned home in dejection.