Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/257

Rh could not enter into their race-tradition. The story-teller had as his chief theme the prowess and skill of the individual "brave," the part he took in the conflicts which clan incessantly waged with clan, or his encounters with those powers of an older mythic world which lived on in the folk-fancy. To borrow Mr. Fitzgerald's convenient terminology, the "constants" of this tradition may be the same as in that of other Aryan races, the "resultants" are not. To give one instance: the conception of a chief surrounded by a picked band of warriors is common to all heroic tradition, but nowhere is it of such marked importance, nowhere does it so mould and shape the story as in the cycles of Conchobor and the Knights of the Red Branch, of Fionn and the Fianna, and of Arthur and his Knights. The careers of any of the early Irish heroes, the single-handed raids of Cét mac Magach or Conall Cearnach, above all the fortunes of Cuchullain, his hero's training in the Amazon-isle, his strife with Curoi mac Daire, his expeditions to fairy-land, his final holding of the ford against all the warriors of Erinn, breathe the same spirit of adventure for its own sake, manifest the same subordination of all else in the story to the one hero, that are such marked characteristics of the Arthurian romance.

Again, in the bands of picked braves who surround Conchobor or Fionn, in the rules by which they are governed, the trials which precede and determine admission into them, the duties and privileges which attach to them, we have, it seems to me, a far closer analogue to the knighthood of mediæval romance than may be found either in the Peers of Carolingian saga or in the chosen warriors who throng the halls of Walhalla.

In the present connection the part played by woman in Celtic tradition is perhaps of most import to us. In no respect is the difference more marked than in this between the twelfth century romances, whether French or German, and the earlier heroic literature of either nation. The absence of feminine interest in the earlier chansons de geste has often been noted. The case is different with Teutonic heroic literature, in which woman's rôle is always great, sometimes pre-eminently so. But a comparison of the two strains of traditions, Celtic and Teutonic, one with the other, and again with the romances, may help to account