Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Hooper.djvu/37

Rh The pilgrims, who visited Jerusalem, eagerly copied, in the most distant climes of the earth, the faithful model of monastic life. The disciples of Antony spread themselves beyond the tropic, over the Christian empire of Œthiopia. The monastery of Banchor, in Flintshire, which contained above two thousand brethren, dispersed a numerous colony among the barbarians of Ireland; and Iona, one of the Hebrides, which was planted by the Irish monks, diffused over the northern regions a doubtful ray of science and superstition."

The roving characters of the monks, therefore, is another link of the chain by which I introduce oriental fiction into the West; and it is utterly impossible (maturely weighing the habits and propensities of this class of people) that they should not have picked up and retained the floating traditions of the countries through which they passed. "Some of the early romances," says Mr. Walker, "as well as the legends of saints, were undoubtedly fabricated in the deep silence of the cloister. Both frequently sprung from the warmth of fancy, which religious seclusion is so well calculated to nourish; but the former were adorned with foreign embellishments." It is exactly on this footing (though I certainly include the latter, that is, the legends of the saints, in the idea of foreign embellishment!) that I would place the hypothesis I have advanced; and here Mr. Walker's opinion, that Ireland is indebted to Italy for some of her fictions, derived originally from the East, will find confirmation. They might, at the same time, have been received by way of, and as history testifies the fact of a colony of monks from thence, taking root in Ireland, the notion is more than probable. But in either case the original is the same. As further corroborative I may add, that in the ninth century Crete and Sicily were invaded and conquered by the Arabs; who likewise entered Italy, and almost approached Home.

I need scarcely allude to the crusades as sources of romantic fabling. They are undisputed parts of the system; and probably, at the termination of the third expedition, toward the close of the twelfth century, this kind of writing was at its height. Chivalry was then followed with a steady devotion, which, I am inclined to think, soon afterwards abated; and was rather the undulation of the water succeeding the tempest, than the tempest itself. The fourth and