Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/419

Rh The story, shaped accordingly, reached the Continent, and was elaborated into a romance called the Chevalier au Lion, the oldest edition of which is ascribed to Chrestien de Troyes, who lived in the twelfth century: it became popular also in Germany, and reached Scandinavia.

Why a wild beast of any kind should have been introduced into the story of Owein, especially as it would seem to disturb the symmetry of the myth, is a question of some difficulty, reaching beyond the influence of the name Llew. For a little before Owein came across the white lion, he had been avoiding the haunts of men and living with wild beasts. He had in fact been like one of them, and his body had become covered with hair like theirs. Now this is an incident which has its parallel in the madness of Cúchulainn, and in the pretended dumbness of Peredur when he avoids the abodes of Christians; and it belongs to the hero as a form of the Sun-god, so that to introduce the Sun-god in the form of a wild beast as well would seem to be de trop. To this it might perhaps be answered, that it is useless to expect thorough consistency in such matters; and one might even quote as a kind of parallel the case, to be mentioned later, of a horse of the Irish Sun Hero, Conall Cernach, following him to fight with his teeth on behalf of his master. But possibly the story of Cian offers a better parallel, when it represents him taking advantage of some swine he saw not far off on the plain, to change himself to the form that was theirs; and the story of Owein seems to us to suggest that originally it made Owein himself become a beast, and not simply very like one. The strangeness of a story representing the same individual as a knight and as a wild beast successively, would be eliminated by