Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/276

 240 Reviews.

dating of these tales to the extant form. He would, I am sure, agree with me that the substance may be, nay, almost certainly is, far older. This point of possible misapprehension eliminated, I must say that I do not think Dr. Evans has stated the case quite correctly. He says, (p. xiv), — " It is commonly assumed that nothing containing the name of Arthur can be earlier than Geoffrey of Monmouth. . . The name of Arthur, it is argued, does not occur in the Four Branches, therefore they are older than Geoffrey ; the name of Arthur does occur in Kulhwch, therefore it is later than Geoffrey." I confess I don't quite know against whom this polemic is directed. The " common assumption " can only be that of very ignorant persons.^ A moment's glance at Nennius would convict them of error. What I think is commonly held, is that the appearance of Geoffrey's Historia exercised such a marked effect on Welsh literature as to render the emergence of any body of romantic fiction independent of the Arthur cycle, or of other portions of Geoffrey's work, unlikely in the extreme. The Four Branches cycle stands entirely outside the Arthur legend, and in no relation to any non-Arthurian section of Geoffrey; it is therefore a fair assumption that it must have preceded the latter. But this assumption by no means implies the presumption that all Arthurian romance must necessarily be post-Geoffrey. That is a question to be decided on its merits in each case. Now, as regards Kulhwch (the Winning of Olwen), the case is a complicated one. That remarkable story is one of the finest romantic fairy tales in all literature. As a fairy tale the "matter" u early, as early probably as anything preserved in Welsh ; true, also, that the " primitive atmosphere " of this fairy tale is, on the whole, kept with extraordinary skill. All this must be granted to Dr, Evans. But Kulhwch is not a fairy tale pure and simple ; it is a fairy tale which has been woven into the framework of the Arthurian epic. Considered under this aspect it cannot belong to an early stage of that epic, neither to its spring nor its summer, but must be referred to its autumn, its decadence, in the literal

^I had done my best to destroy this "common assumption" by clearly stating in my edition of the Mabinogion, (p. 333), — "The Arthurian legend was, of course, perfectly familiar to eleventh-century Wales, and was un- doubtedly a fertile theme for the Welsh story tellers of that time."