Celtic Fairy Tales Part 34

_Parallels_.--The latter half resembles the second part of the Sea-Maiden (No. xvii.), which see. The earlier portion is a Cinderella tale (on which see the late Mr. Ralston's article in _Nineteenth Century_, Nov. 1879, and Mr. Lang's treatment in his Perrault). Miss Roalfe c.o.x is about to publish for the Folk-Lore Society a whole volume of variants of the Cinderella group of stories, which are remarkably well represented in these isles, nearly a dozen different versions being known in England, Ireland, and Scotland.

XX. JACK AND HIS MASTER.

_Source_.--Kennedy, _Fireside Stories of Ireland_, 74-80, "Shan an Omadhan and his Master."

_Parallels_.--It occurs also in Campbell, No. xlv., "Mac a Rusgaich."

It is a European droll, the wide occurrence of which--"the loss of temper bet" I should call it--is bibliographised by M. Cosquin, _l.c._ ii. 50 (_cf._ notes on No. vi.).

XXI. BETH GELLERT.

_Source_.--I have paraphrased the well-known poem of Hon. W. R.

Spencer, "Beth Gelert, or the Grave of the Greyhound," first printed privately as a broadsheet in 1800 when it was composed ("August 11, 1800, Dolymalynllyn" is the colophon). It was published in Spencer's _Poems_, 1811, pp. 78-86. These dates, it will be seen, are of importance. Spencer states in a note: "The story of this ballad is traditionary in a village at the foot of Snowdon where Llewellyn the Great had a house. The Greyhound named Gelert was given him by his father-in-law, King John, in the year 1205, and the place to this day is called Beth-Gelert, or the grave of Gelert." As a matter of fact, no trace of the tradition in connection with Bedd Gellert can be found before Spencer's time. It is not mentioned in Leland's _Itinerary_, ed.

Hearne, v. p. 37 ("Beth Kellarth"), in Pennant's _Tour_ (1770), ii.

176, or in Bingley's _Tour in Wales_ (1800). Borrow in his _Wild Wales_, p. 146, gives the legend, but does not profess to derive it from local tradition.

_Parallels_.--The only parallel in Celtdom is that noticed by Croker in his third volume, the legend of Partholan who killed his wife's greyhound from jealousy: this is found sculptured in stone at Ap Brune, co. Limerick. As is well known, and has been elaborately discussed by Mr. Baring-Gould (_Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, p. 134 _seq._), and Mr. W. A. Clouston (_Popular Tales and Fictions_, ii. 166, _seq._), the story of the man who rashly slew the dog (ichneumon, weasel, &c.) that had saved his babe from death, is one of those which have spread from East to West. It is indeed, as Mr. Clouston points out, still current in India, the land of its birth. There is little doubt that it is originally Buddhistic: the late Prof. S. Beal gave the earliest known version from the Chinese translation of the _Vinaya Pitaka_ in the _Academy_ of Nov. 4, 1882. The conception of an animal sacrificing itself for the sake of others is peculiarly Buddhistic; the "hare in the moon" is an apotheosis of such a piece of self-sacrifice on the part of Buddha (_Sasa Jataka_). There are two forms that have reached the West, the first being that of an animal saving men at the cost of its own life. I pointed out an early instance of this, quoted by a Rabbi of the second century, in my _Fables of Aesop_, i. 105. This concludes with a strangely close parallel to Gellert; "They raised a cairn over his grave, and the place is still called The Dog's Grave."

The _Culex_ attributed to Virgil seems to be another variant of this.

The second form of the legend is always told as a moral apologue against precipitate action, and originally occurred in _The Fables of Bidpai_ in its hundred and one forms, all founded on Buddhistic originals (_cf._ Benfey, _Pantschatantra_, Einleitung, --201).

[Footnote: It occurs in the same chapter as the story of La Perrette, which has been traced, after Benfey, by Prof. M. Muller in his "Migration of Fables" (_Sel. Essays_, i. 500-74): exactly the same history applies to Gellert.] Thence, according to Benfey, it was inserted in the _Book of Sindibad_, another collection of Oriental Apologues framed on what may be called the Mrs. Potiphar formula. This came to Europe with the Crusades, and is known in its Western versions as the _Seven Sages of Rome_. The Gellert story occurs in all the Oriental and Occidental versions; _e.g._, it is the First Master's story in Wynkyn de Worde's (ed. G. L. Gomme, for the Villon Society.) From the _Seven Sages_ it was taken into the particular branch of the _Gesta Romanorum_ current in England and known as the English _Gesta_, where it occurs as c. x.x.xii., "Story of Folliculus." We have thus traced it to England whence it pa.s.sed to Wales, where I have discovered it as the second apologue of "The Fables of Cattwg the Wise," in the Iolo MS. published by the Welsh MS. Society, p.561, "The man who killed his Greyhound." (These Fables, Mr. Nutt informs me, are a pseudonymous production probably of the sixteenth century.) This concludes the literary route of the Legend of Gellert from India to Wales: Buddhistic _Vinaya Pitaka--Fables of Bidpai_;--Oriental _Sindibad_;--Occidental _Seven Sages of Rome_;--"English" (Latin), _Gesta Romanorum_;--Welsh, _Fables of Cattwg_.

_Remarks_.--We have still to connect the legend with Llewelyn and with Bedd Gelert. But first it may be desirable to point out why it is necessary to a.s.sume that the legend is a legend and not a fact. The saving of an infant's life by a dog, and the mistaken slaughter of the dog, are not such an improbable combination as to make it impossible that the same event occurred in many places. But what is impossible, in my opinion, is that such an event should have independently been used in different places as the typical instance of, and warning against, rash action. That the Gellert legend, before it was localised, was used as a moral apologue in Wales is shown by the fact that it occurs among the Fables of Cattwg, which are all of that character. It was also utilised as a proverb: "_Yr wy'n edivaru cymmaint a'r Gwr a laddodd ei Vilgi_" ("I repent as much as the man who slew his greyhound"). The fable indeed, from this point of view, seems greatly to have attracted the Welsh mind, perhaps as of especial value to a proverbially impetuous temperament. Croker (_Fairy Legends of Ireland_, vol. iii. p.

165) points out several places where the legend seems to have been localised in place-names--two places, called "Gwal y Vilast"

("Greyhound's Couch"), in Carmarthen and Glamorganshire; "Llech y Asp"

("Dog's Stone"), in Cardigan, and another place named in Welsh "Spring of the Greyhound's Stone." Mr. Baring-Gould mentions that the legend is told of an ordinary tombstone, with a knight and a greyhound, in Abergavenny Church; while the Fable of Cattwg is told of a man in Abergarwan. So widespread and well known was the legend that it was in Richard III's time adopted as the national crest. In the Warwick Roll, at the Herald's Office, after giving separate crests for England, Scotland, and Ireland, that for Wales is given as figured in the margin, and blazoned "on a coronet in a cradle or, a greyhound argent for Walys" (see J. R. Planche, _Twelve Designs for the Costume of Shakespeare's Richard III._, 1830, frontispiece). If this Roll is authentic, the popularity of the legend is thrown back into the fifteenth century. It still remains to explain how and when this general legend of rash action was localised and specialised at Bedd Gelert: I believe I have discovered this. There certainly was a local legend about a dog named Gelert at that place; E. Jones, in the first edition of his _Musical Relicks of the Welsh Bards_, 1784, p. 40, gives the following _englyn_ or epigram:

Claddwyd Cylart celfydd (ymlyniad) Ymlaneau Efionydd Parod giuio i'w gynydd Parai'r dydd yr heliai Hydd;

which he Englishes thus:

The remains of famed Cylart, so faithful and good, The bounds of the cantred conceal; Whenever the doe or the stag he pursued His master was sure of a meal.

No reference was made in the first edition to the Gellert legend, but in the second edition of 1794, p. 75, a note was added telling the legend, "There is a general tradition in North Wales that a wolf had entered the house of Prince Llewellyn. Soon after the Prince returned home, and, going into the nursery, he met his dog _Kill-hart_, all b.l.o.o.d.y and wagging his tail at him; Prince Llewellyn, on entering the room found the cradle where his child lay overturned, and the floor flowing with blood; imagining that the greyhound had killed the child, he immediately drew his sword and stabbed it; then, turning up the cradle, found under it the child alive, and the wolf dead. This so grieved the Prince, that he erected a tomb over his faithful dog's grave; where afterwards the parish church was built and goes by that name--_Bedd Cilhart_, or the grave of Kill-hart, in _Carnarvonshire_.

From this incident is elicited a very common Welsh proverb [that given above which occurs also in 'The Fables of Cattwg;' it will be observed that it is quite indefinite.]" "Prince Llewellyn ab Jorwerth married Joan, [natural] daughter of King John, by _Agatha_, daughter of Robert Ferrers, Earl of Derby; and the dog was a present to the prince from his father-in-law about the year 1205." It was clearly from this note that the Hon. Mr. Spencer got his account; oral tradition does not indulge in dates _Anno Domini_. The application of the general legend of "the man who slew his greyhound" to the dog Cylart, was due to the learning of E. Jones, author of the _Musical Relicks_. I am convinced of this, for by a lucky chance I am enabled to give the real legend about Cylart, which is thus given in Carlisle's _Topographical Dictionary of Wales_, s.v., "Bedd Celert," published in 1811, the date of publication of Mr. Spencer's _Poems_. "Its name, according to tradition, implies _The Grave of Celert_, a Greyhound which belonged to Llywelyn, the last Prince of Wales: and a large Rock is still pointed out as the monument of this celebrated Dog, being on the spot where it was found dead, together with the stag which it had pursued from Carnarvon," which is thirteen miles distant. The cairn was thus a monument of a "record" run of a greyhound: the _englyn_ quoted by Jones is suitable enough for this, while quite inadequate to record the later legendary exploits of Gelert. Jones found an _englyn_ devoted to _an_ exploit of a dog named Cylart, and chose to interpret it in his second edition, 1794, as _the_ exploit of a greyhound with which all the world (in Wales) were acquainted. Mr. Spencer took the legend from Jones (the reference to the date 1205 proves that), enshrined it in his somewhat _ba.n.a.l_ verses, which were lucky enough to be copied into several reading-books, and thus became known to all English-speaking folk.

It remains only to explain why Jones connected the legend with Llewelyn. Llewelyn had local connection with Bedd Gellert, which was the seat of an Augustinian abbey, one of the oldest in Wales. An inspeximus of Edward I. given in Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, ed. pr. ii.

100a, quotes as the earliest charter of the abbey "Cartam Lewelin, magni." The name of the abbey was "Beth Kellarth"; the name is thus given by Leland, _l.c._, and as late as 1794 an engraving at the British Museum is ent.i.tled "Beth Kelert," while Carlisle gives it as "Beth Celert." The place was thus named after the abbey, not after the cairn or rock. This is confirmed by the fact of which Prof. Rhys had informed me, that the collocation of letters _rt_ is un-Welsh. Under these circ.u.mstances it is not impossible, I think, that the earlier legend of the marvellous run of "Cylart" from Carnarvon was due to the etymologising fancy of some English-speaking Welshman who interpreted the name as Killhart, so that the simpler legend would be only a folk-etymology.

But whether Kellarth, Kelert, Cylart, Gelert or Gellert ever existed and ran a hart from Carnarvon to Bedd Gellert or no, there can be little doubt after the preceding that he was not the original hero of the fable of "the man that slew his greyhound," which came to Wales from Buddhistic India through channels which are perfectly traceable.

It was Edward Jones who first raised him to that proud position, and William Spencer who securely installed him there, probably for all time. The legend is now firmly established at Bedd Gellert. There is said to be an ancient air, "Bedd Gelert," "as sung by the Ancient Britons"; it is given in a pamphlet published at Carnarvon in the "fifties," ent.i.tled _Gellert's Grave; or, Llewellyn's Rashness: a Ballad, by the Hon. W. R. Spencer, to which is added that ancient Welsh air, "Bedd Gelert," as sung by the Ancient Britons_. The air is from R.

Roberts' "Collection of Welsh Airs," but what connection it has with the legend I have been unable to ascertain. This is probably another case of adapting one tradition to another. It is almost impossible to distinguish palaeozoic and cainozoic strata in oral tradition.

According to Murray's _Guide to N. Wales_, p. 125, the only authority for the cairn now shown is that of the landlord of the Goat Inn, "who felt compelled by the cravings of tourists to invent a grave." Some old men at Bedd Gellert, Prof. Rhys informs me, are ready to testify that they saw the cairn laid. They might almost have been present at the birth of the legend, which, if my affiliation of it is correct, is not yet quite 100 years old.

XXII. STORY OF IVAN.

_Source_.--Lluyd, _Archaeologia Britannia_, 1707, the first comparative Celtic grammar and the finest piece of work in comparative philology hitherto done in England, contains this tale as a specimen of Cornish then still spoken in Cornwall. I have used the English version contained in _Blackwood's Magazine_ as long ago as May 1818. I have taken the third counsel from the Irish version, as the original is not suited _virginibus puerisque_, though harmless enough in itself.

_Parallels_.--Lover has a tale, _The Three Advices_. It occurs also in modern Cornwall _ap._ Hunt, _Drolls of West of England_, 344, "The Tinner of Chyamor." Borrow, _Wild Wales_, 41, has a reference which seems to imply that the story had crystallised into a Welsh proverb.

Curiously enough, it forms the chief episode of the so-called "Irish Odyssey" ("_Merugud Uilix maiec Leirtis_"--"Wandering of Ulysses M'Laertes"). It was derived, in all probability, from the _Gesta Romanorum_, c. 103, where two of the three pieces of advice are "Avoid a byeway," "Beware of a house where the housewife is younger than her husband." It is likely enough that this chapter, like others of the _Gesta_, came from the East, for it is found in some versions of "The Forty Viziers," and in the _Turkish Tales_ (see Oesterley's parallels and _Gesta_, ed. Swan and Hooper, note 9).

XXIII. ANDREW COFFEY.

_Source_.--From the late D. W. Logie, written down by Mr. Alfred Nutt.

_Parallels_.--Dr. Hyde's "Teig O'Kane and the Corpse," and Kennedy's "Cauth Morrisy," _Legend. Fict._, 158, are practically the same.

_Remarks_.--No collection of Celtic Folk-Tales would be representative that did not contain some specimen of the gruesome. The most effective ghoul story in existence is Lover's "Brown Man."

XXIV. BATTLE OF BIRDS.

_Source_.--Campbell (_Pop. Tales, W. Highlands_, No. ii.), with touches from the seventh variant and others, including the casket and key finish, from Curtin's "Son of the King of Erin" (_Myths, &c., 32 seq._). I have also added a specimen of the humorous end pieces added by Gaelic story-tellers; on these tags see an interesting note in MacDougall's _Tales_, note on p. 112. I have found some difficulty in dealing with Campbell's excessive use of the second person singular, "If thou thouest him some two or three times, 'tis well," but beyond that it is wearisome. Practically, I have reserved _thou_ for the speech of giants, who may be supposed to be somewhat old-fashioned. I fear, however, I have not been quite consistent, though the _you's_ addressed to the apple-pips are grammatically correct as applied to the pair of lovers.

_Parallels_.--Besides the eight versions given or abstracted by Campbell and Mr. Curtin's, there is Carleton's "Three Tasks," Dr.

Hyde's "Son of Branduf" (MS.); there is the First Tale of MacInnes (where see Mr. Nutt's elaborate notes, 431-43), two in the _Celtic Magazine_, vol. xii., "Grey Norris from Warland" (_Folk-Lore Journ._ i.

316), and Mr. Lang's Morayshire Tale, "Nicht Nought Nothing" (see _Eng.

Fairy Tales_, No. vii.), no less than sixteen variants found among the Celts. It must have occurred early among them. Mr. Nutt found the feather-thatch incident in the _Agallamh na Senoraib_ ("Discourse of Elders"), which is at least as old as the fifteenth century. Yet the story is to be found throughout the Indo-European world, as is shown by Prof. Kohler's elaborate list of parallels attached to Mr. Lang's variant in _Revue Celtique_, iii. 374; and Mr. Lang, in his _Custom and Myth_ ("A far travelled Tale"), has given a number of parallels from savage sources. And strangest of all, the story is practically the same as the cla.s.sical myth of Jason and Medea.

_Remarks_.--Mr. Nutt, in his discussion of the tale (MacInnes, _Tales_ 441), makes the interesting suggestion that the obstacles to pursuit, the forest, the mountain, and the river, exactly represent the boundary of the old Teutonic Hades, so that the story was originally one of the Descent to h.e.l.l. Altogether it seems likely that it is one of the oldest folk-tales in existence, and belonged to the story-store of the original Aryans, whoever they were, was pa.s.sed by them with their language on to the h.e.l.lenes and perhaps to the Indians, was developed in its modern form in Scandinavia (where its best representative "The Master Maid" of Asbjornsen is still found), was pa.s.sed by them to the Celts and possibly was transmitted by these latter to other parts of Europe, perhaps by early Irish monks (see notes on "Sea-Maiden"). The spread in the Buddhistic world, and thence to the South Seas and Madagascar, would be secondary from India. I hope to have another occasion for dealing with this most interesting of all folk-tales in the detail it deserves.

XXV. BREWERY OF EGGSh.e.l.lS.

_Source_.--From the _Cambrian Quarterly Magazine_, 1830, vol. ii. p.

86; it is stated to be literally translated from the Welsh.

_Parallels_.--Another variant from Glamorganshire is given in Y Cymmrodor, vi. 209. Croker has the story under the t.i.tle I have given the Welsh one in his _Fairy Legends_, 41. Mr. Hartland, in his _Science of Fairy Tales_, 113-6, gives the European parallels.

XXVI. LAD WITH THE GOAT SKIN.

_Source_.--Kennedy, _Legendary Fictions_, pp. 23-31. The Adventures of "Gilla na Chreck an Gour'."