Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/310

196 Britain; but others, e.g. Gaston Paris and A. Nutt, find the sources in Welsh tradition and native Celtic tales, learned by Normans after the Conquest of England and passed thence to France, either directly or via Anglo-Norman poems. This is supported by the identity of episodes in the Romances with those of Irish sagas; and Miss Weston has adduced new evidence which indicates that in Wauchier's Perceval, the Elucidation, and the English Gawain poems "we have a precious survival of the earliest collected form of Arthurian romantic tradition."$33$ Wauchier de Denain refers to a certain Bleheris, of Welsh birth, whose patron was the Count of Poitiers, and to him he attributes the source of his narrative. Bleheris is probably the Blihis to whom the Elucidation refers as source of the Grail story, the Bledhericus described by Giraldus as famosus ille fabulator, and the Breri mentioned by an Anglo-Norman poet named Thomas, who wrote on Tristan about 1170.$34$ Arthurian romance is thus traced directly to Welsh sources through this writer, who certainly flourished not later than the beginning of the twelfth century.

Arthur and Arthur's court are a centre toward which or from which stories converge or issue, whence other personages are apt to be regarded as more interesting than he or to have a larger number of deeds attributed to them. Conchobar's court, with its heroes, where boys are brought up and go forth armed to their first adventures, suggests the primitive Celtic Arthurian court, unaltered by mediaeval chivalric ideas.$35$ In the Cúchulainn stories it is not so much Conchobar who is the chief figure as Cúchulainn, though he is always in the background, and in this Arthur in relation to Gawain, Perceval, and others corresponds to him. Arthur has little to do with the Grail, and new important personages, not necessarily of the early Celtic group, tend to be introduced.

Gawain was Arthur's nephew as úchulainn was Conchobar's, and the earlier presentation of him is more just than the later. "He never returned from a mission without having