Page:Le Morte d'Arthur - Volume 1.djvu/12

Rh carried with them the stories current about Arthur in the southern districts of this country, it may be further supposed that, ages later, those of their descendants who submitted to the Normans in the eastern portion of Brittany must have translated their popular stories about Arthur into their adopted Norman French. Thus a channel would be opened for Breton stories to reach the ears of Normans and Frenchmen. It is natural, further, to infer that, in the transition from the one language to the other, the Celtic names of most importance in the stories would inevitably undergo a considerable modification of form. This would seem to be countenanced by the circumstance, that certain of these names in the romances cannot be identified with the Welsh ones by merely allowing for the errors in copying and reading incident to the manuscripts of the time in question. Such is the fact, for example, with Galvain, Perceval, Calibor, as compared with the Welsh Gwalchmei, Peredur, and Caletvwlch. For my own part, I have found this to be much less marked in the case, for example, of the Grail legend, the proper names in which lend themselves, on the whole, more readily to identification with their original, in Welsh. In other words, Professor Zimmer’s views led me to draw the following two-fold conclusion:—(1) The older romances relating chiefly to Arthur and his Men are of Breton rather than of Welsh origin, while (2) the reverse is the case with the Grail romances. The Welsh origin of the Grail legend has been discussed by me elsewhere, so that I think it needless to endeavour to prove it here. But as to the alleged Breton origin of the romances about Arthur, it is to be observed that if the picture presented in them of Arthur and his Men be mainly Breton, one may expect to find those warriors represented differently in Welsh literature, especially such Welsh literature as one finds to be fairly free from the influence of the romances when they reached the Welsh. So one could, perhaps, not do better than devote the rest of this introduction to a review of the more important passages concerning Arthur in manuscripts which have come down to us from Welsh sources. I have, however, to confess at the outset that those of them which happen to be in Welsh, as most of them are, prove to be couched in very obscure language, so that my rendering must be regarded as only tentative.