Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/185

Rh knowledge. An eighteenth century version given by Kennedy ("Legendary Fictions," p. 216) makes Cumhall offer violence to Muirrean, daughter of the druid Tadg, and his death to be chiefly due to the magic arts of the incensed father. It will hardly be contended that these stories owe their origin to adaptations of Chrestien's poem. But in any case no such contention could apply to the oldest presentment of Fionn as a formula hero, that found in the great Irish vellum, the Leabhar na h'Uidhre, written down from older materials at the beginning of the twelfth century. The tract entitled "The cause of the battle of Cnucha" has been translated by Mr. Henessey Hennessey ("Revue Celtique," vol. ii., pp. 86, et seq.). In it we find Cumhall and Tadhg, the violence done to the latter's daughter, the consequent defeat and death of Cumhall, the lonely rearing of Fionn by his mother, and the youth's avenging of his father. I must refer to my paper in the "Folk-Lore Record" for a detailed argument in favour of the L.n.H. account being an euhemerised version of the popular tradition, represented by the Boyish Exploits, and for a comparison of the Fionn sage as a whole with the Greek, Iranian, Latin, and Germanic hero tales, which like it are modelled upon the lines of the Expulsion and Return formula. I have said enough, I trust, to show that the Fionn sage is a variant (a far richer one) of the theme treated in the boyhood of Perceval, but that it, and a fortiori the allied folk-tales are quite independent of the French poem. It then follows that this portion of Chrestien's poem must itself be looked upon as one of many treatments of a theme even more popular among the Celts than among any other Aryan race, and that its ultimate source is a Breton or Welsh folk-tale.

The genuine and independent nature of the Great Fool prose opening being thus established, it is in the highest degree suggestive to find in the accompanying Lay points of contact with the Grail Legend as given in Chrestien. Three versions of this Lay have been printed in English, that edited by Mr. John O'Daly (Transactions of the Ossianic Society, vol. vi., pp. 161, et seq.); Mr. Campbell's (West Highland Tales, vol. iii. pp. 154, et seq.) and Mr. Kennedy's prose version (Bardic Stories of Ireland, pp. 151, et seq.). O'Daly's, as the