Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/133

 The Roman van Waleivciii.

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waste city, and the " carols" in the streets, is associated with the story of a similar deliverance wrought by Lancelot beyond the Perilous Bridges, in the Land of Gorre, as it is told by Crestien de Troyes in his poem of Lancelot {C/ievalicr de la Char re tie, 11. 3515 sq. ; cf Rhys, Celtic Heathejidovi, p. 354).

Gawain in that story has to pass through several strange regions in the search for the magic Bridle. A forest full of wild beasts ; a valley of fiery serpents and scorpions,, and stink, and cold wind ; a flowery plain ; and then the black river, with the sharp bridge ;

" et si YDS di, sanz nule fable, que ce est li fluns un deable" ;

then the whirling castle.^

In Walewein, while the entrance into the Land of the Dead is plainly indicated, by the description of the waters of Purgatory running in front of the castle of the third adventure, the earlier adventures imply, with more ambi- guity, that the common world is left behind when Gawain enters into the mountain, and finds himself, after the fight with the dragons, on the brink of a river which he has to cross in order to win the magical thing he is looking for. The second castle, with the sword in it, is an island ; though the water crossed by Gawain (at low tide) is somewhat tamer than the sounds that Mac Iain Direach had to cross in his search for the Glaive of Light.

On the return, in Walezvein, there is no borderland to be passed over ; the way back is open, and the way through the mountain into the common world is not mentioned again. Is the passage under the water a prosaic invention of the Dutch romancer, or his original " French book" ? Or is it

1 It is worth noting that, besides the ordeal of beheading, common to this story with the Enghsh poem of Gawain and the Green Knight, and with the Irish story of the Feast of Brier zu (M. Gaston Paris, loc. cit), the whirling castle is also common to this and to the Irish story (cf. Rhys, ArtJmria?! Legend, Appendi.x, p. 392).