Page:Paton - Studies in the fairy mythology of Arthurian romance (1903).djvu/16

 STUDIES IN THE FAIRY MYTHOLOGY OF ARTHURIAN ROMANCE

CHAPTER I

THE FAIRY QUEEN

The fairy mythology of the middle ages is represented in its most important literary form by the lays and romances embody- ing the " matter of Britain " which were written in France dur- ing the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A Breton lay or an Arthurian romance consists essentially in the glorification of a single hero, and its incidents are strung,' one after the other, upon the thread of his individual prowess. As a crowning tribute to his excellence, often as the prize that rewards his most difficult achievement, the love of a fay is bestowed upon him by the narrator of his exploits. For the purposes of romance the fay exists that she may set a seal upon the hero's valor and beauty by granting him her favor, or that she may afford an opportunity for him to display his courage by demand- ing of him an appai-ently impossible adventure. Hence, although the fay's place in the narrative is really secondary to the hero's, she is a highly important element in the structure of Arthurian romance, and we may scarcely wonder that it is in truth " fulfild of fayerye," nor that in it we have a treasure-house of fairy lore. The romances, however, are by no means a final source for information in regard to the other world and its inhabitants. To discover the fay in her true nature we must follow her to her home in Ireland and Wales, where among the earlier traditions of the Celtic people she stands nearer simple myth than in many of the twelfth-century lays and romances of France.

There is no lack of Celtic sources to furnish us with a clear conception of the Celtic fairy queen. In Irish literature the earliest extant narrative in which we meet her is the Imram