Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/293

Rh other side to prove that Gawain is a solar hero with an essential mythical character of his own; but the alternative theories have not yet been disproved.

One thing is clearly brought out in Miss Weston's book: a very close relation of some sort between the story of Gawain and some parts of Gaelic tradition. It is unfortunate that so little account should have been taken of the literary varieties of French romance. Miss Weston does not discriminate. The French romancers are not quite simple or unsophisticated people, nor are they all alike. They had several aims and ambitions besides the reproduction of British fables. What they wanted to obtain was poetical novelty and brilliance; they are not to be trusted for pure folklore without a scrutiny of their literary methods. Meraugis de Portlesguez is not evidence for folklore. It is the work of an ingenious scholar trying for new sentimental effects and caring nothing for his story apart from these. Nor is Rainouart to be trusted (p. 39); the Bataille de Loquifer is late professional hack-work: an attempt to brighten up a worn-out epic theme with rags of finery from the romances. Chrétien de Troyes, whose Conte du Graal supplies the main part of the materials for Miss Weston's "Legend," is an open and manifest author of fiction; and Wolfram, who continues Chrétien's untold story, is still further removed from "the thing itself," the Celtic originals. Poetry is sometimes an inconvenient thing in a folklore inquiry; and Chrétien was a poet. His story of Gawain is full of malice; for instance, in the humorous account of the rising of the town—mayor, échevins, and commune—against Gawain, to defend the honour of their lord, especially in the mock-heroic reference to the famous Lombard campaign against the snail:—

An author who writes like that is almost as far as Ariosto, and even further than Spenser, from the "primitive" or "original" matter of romance, whatever "primitive" or "original" may mean. Miss Weston has not been well advised in neglecting the earlier kinds of romance for the more finished romantic poems. It is not easy to understand why she has neglected the Mule sans Frein—a story which the references in Sir F. Madden's Sir Gawayne and