Page:Paton - Studies in the fairy mythology of Arthurian romance (1903).djvu/19

 4 The Fairy Queen

unknown lady wearing a garment of shining gold come riding toward him. She was mounted on a large snow-white horse, and rode at a slow and even pace. Pwyll sent one of his followers to meet her, but she passed by, and although the page rode the fleetest horse in Pwyll's stables, "the more he urged his horse, the further was she from him. Yet she held the same pace as at first. ... ' Of a truth,' said Pwyll, ' there must be some illusion here.' " On the next day the same experience was repeated. On the third day, Pwyll once again went to the mound, and when the lady came pacing by, he himself rode after her, and urged his horse on to its greatest speed, yet he found that it availed nothing to follow her. Then Pwyll entreated her for the sake of him whom she best loved to stay for him. " ' I will stay gladly,' said she, ' and it were better for thy horse, hadst thou asked it long since.' " She was journeying on her own errand, she told him in answer to his questions, and her chief quest was to seek him. She was Rhiannon, she said, the daughter of Heveydd Hen, who wished to give her to a husband against her will ; but such was her love for Pwyll that him alone would she have for a husband. As she spoke, Pwyll, gazing upon her, thought that she was more beautiful than any lady whom he had ever seen, and he gladly promised to meet her a year from that day at the palace of Heveydd.

In a year's time, attended by a retinue of knights, he fulfilled his word, and was received with joy and gladness in the palace, where he was treated as lord.

The rest of the narrative does not concern us here, nor the future fate of Rhiannon. Her summons of Pwyll is enough to place her beside the queen of the Land of Women and Connla's love, even if we heard nothing of Harlech where the magic song of her birds over the sea makes time pass with the same mysterious swiftness as in Emain.^

From these three stories we can form a distinct conception of the Celtic fairy queen, which we shall do well to keep before us in studying the fay of mediaeval romance, whose likeness in attribute and deed to the maidens beloved by Bran, Connla, and Pwyll stamps her clearly as their lineal descendant. So we must lay aside, for the time being, our cherished pictures of Queen Titania and Faery Mab,^ and remember that the fay of Arthurian'romance is essentially a supernatural woman, always more beautiful than the imagination can possibly fancy her, untouched by time, unhampered by lack of resources for the

^ See p. 2H, note 5.

2 For a popular discussion of the relation between the Celtic fay and the fairy of Shakespeare see Nutt, The Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare, London, 1900.