THE Mind AND Value OF CELTIC Folklore
It could do with scarcely be want to evoke the reader of what immersed interest and depth to every nation are its first make-believe and poetical citations. The attractive myths of Greece form a sufficing moral. In threefold technique, they grasp persuaded the accident of the children that bent them, and of the be given of which they were the imagined theatre. If at all possible, in the ages in which they were quiet recent, belief and exultation in them were powerful a load to bring thin tribes participating in federation. Secondly, they gave the fire to sculptor and novelist of an art and literature unrivaled, if not unequalled, by any other age or explode. To end with, since "the faith that was Greece" had drawn, and her children had, by dimple of ongoing invasions, probably even ceased to grasp any well to link themselves Hellenes, they grasp passed ruined participating in the literatures of the modernp. 2
world, and so aspect to Greece herself a expressive interest that quiet makes a petty land of expert support in the eyes of its compeers than regular others far patrician to it in scale and cash.
This permeating impose of the Greek poetical mythology, rise in all civilized countries, has acted individually upon our own. From resembling the very dawn of English literature, the Greek stories of gods and heroes grasp formed a sizeable part of the stock-in-trade of English poets. The inhabit of Olympus embrace, under their better-known Latin names, resembling as great a space in English free verse as they did in that of the countries to which they were confined. From Chaucer downwards, they grasp enthralled the ingenuity uniform of the poets and their hearers. The magic cauldron of classic myth fed, to the same extent the Celtic "Grail", all who came to it for defend.
At deep-rooted, until now, its potency became to a degree flaccid. Weird and surprising to English dishonor, it degenerated languorously participating in a convention. In the shell hands of the poetasters of the eighteenth century, its data became tarn puppets. Similar to every stealthy a "grove", and every rustic maid a "fairy", one can solitary faith to find Venus armed with stratum and powder-puff, Mars shouldering a musket, and Apollo uplifting the versifier's own hardly strains. The affectation killed--and favorably killed--a mode of frown which had become lifeless. Smothered by cool pour scorn on, and derelict to the plain word list of the cheap hack-writer, classic myth became a problem
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which solitary the chronicle poets can impart to happen.
But mythology is of such vital campaign to literature that, hard-up of the store of heading confined to southern Europe, tangential writers looked for a recent will. They turned their eyes to the North. Pressure was sought, not from Olympus, but from Asgard. In addition, it was held that the perfectly of primordial free verse issuing from Scandinavian and Teutonic myth was sincerely our own, and that we were dedicated heirs of it by sense of the Anglo-Saxon in our blood. And so, certainly, we are; but it is not our retiring lineage. Nearby require besides run noticeably Celtic--that is, sincerely British--blood in our veins. 1 And Matthew Arnold was it would seem well in asserting that, at the same time as we owe to the Anglo-Saxon the manager practical qualities that grasp built up the British Refinement, we grasp ingrained from the Celtic edge that expressive look over which has prepared English literature the ceiling garish for instance the Greek. 2
We grasp the well, accordingly, to enter upon a new spiritual habitation. And a well-off one it is! The Celtic mythology has terse of the unmanageable inappropriateness that repels one in Teutonic and Scandinavian story.
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[pillar continues] It is as attractive and fun as the Greek ; and, distinct the Greek, which is the scrutiny of a clime and dishonor which few of us motivation ever see, it is our own. Divinities could do with, clear in your mind, come into sight the solid monstrosity of the land they move in! How out of the ordinary Apollo would revolt, naked with icebergs, or fur-clad Thor striding under groves of palms! But the Celtic gods and heroes are the natural inhabit of a British scene, not alleged curious and out-of-place in a survey everyplace acquaint with is no vine or ecological, but "shading in with "our friendly oak and bracken, gorse and heath.
Consequently we own an desolate recent interest in the attractive bad skin of our own islands, individually those of the wilder and manager undulating west, everyplace the most important inhabit of the land lingered history. Saxon invasion obliterated noticeably in Eastern Britain, and unique more; but in the West of England, in Wales, in Scotland, and individually in legend-haunted Ireland, the hills and dales quiet grasp recollections of the ancient gods of the ancient explode. Gift and acquaint with in South Wales and the West of England are regions-once unknown and quiet romantic-which the British Celts meant to be the homes of gods or outposts of the Substitute Conception. In Ireland, not solitary is acquaint with right a place that is not important in some way with the traditionary exploits of the "Red Shoot Champions", or of Finn and his evocative men, but the old deities are quiet remembered, dwarfed participating in fairies, but perpetuation the enormously attributes and the enormously names as of yore. Wordsworth's suggestion 1
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that, at the same time as Pelion and Ossa, Olympus and Parnassus are "in morally upright books enrolled", not one English hedge, "even if rounded our sea-girt veer they start in crowds", had been "by the Space Muses puffed up" possibly seemed true to his own day of the week. Benevolence to the scholars' who grasp unveiled the ancient Gaelic and British mythologies, it campaign not be so for ours. On Ludgate Incline, as well as on regular less inordinate eminences, in imitation of stood the temple of the British Zeus. A hedge not far from Bettws-y-Coed was the British Olympus, the time and palace of our ancient gods.
It may well be doubted, until now, whether Wordsworth's equals would grasp welcomed the mythology which was their own by well of sincere as a alternative for that of Greece and Rome. The fire of classic culture, which Wordsworth was one of the novel to break with, was quiet powerful. How some of its professors would grasp meant their sides and roared at the very feel like of a British mythology! Yet, all the time, it had inclination been under another name leavening English fabric and principles, none the less potently for instance shrouded under forms which can be hungrily pleasing. Wearing longing had rehabilitated the old gods, inclination vetoed by the priests' scare, book, and candle, under several disguises. They quiet lived on in heading as kings of ancient Britain reigning in a cool aforementioned fore to Julius Caesar--such were Ruler Lud, founder of London; Ruler Lear, whose heading was immortalized by Shakespeare; Ruler Brennius, who vanquished Rome; as well as regular others who motivation be found
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plentiful parts in old acting. They quiet lived on as long-dead saints of the antediluvian churches of Ireland and Britain, whose enhance attributes and adventures are, in regular gear, solitary those of their foremost namesakes, the old gods, told afresh. And they quiet lived on in not the same, and a yet manager influential, way. Myths of Arthur and his trip of gods passed participating in the hands of the Norman story-tellers, to return as romances of Ruler Arthur and his Knights of the Diagram Beat. Consequently spread ruined civilized Europe, their impose was grand. Their primal expressive will is quiet meaningful in our literature; we campaign solitary model Tennyson and Swinburne as minds that grasp come under its have.
This sloppy impose of Celtic mythology upon English free verse and romance has been eloquently set forth by Mr. Elton in his Beginning of English Previous. "The religion of the British tribes", he writes, "has exercised an ensuing impose upon literature. The mediaeval romances and the tradition which stood for history are full of the free humanities' and data of its rose-colored mythology. The elemental powers of earth and fire, and the spirits which supernatural the side and streams revolt anew as kings in the Irish Library, or as saints and hermits in Wales. The Knights of the Beat Diagram, Sir Kay and Tristrem and the solid Sir Bedivere, swindle their evocative origin by the attributes they retained as heroes of romance. It was a goddess, 'Dea quaedam phantastica', who responsibility the distressed Arthur to the comforting throw. acquaint with was terse brightness on its jungle and streams, and the nights were dark
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and gloomy for poverty of the moon and stars.' This is the be given of Oberon and of Sir Huon of Bordeaux. It is the imprecise forest of Arden. In an most important mythology, it was the realm of a Ruler of Mysterious, the be given of Gwyn ap Nudd, who rode as Sir Guyon in the 'Fairie Queene'--
And knighthood took of good Sir Huon's hand,
At the same time as with Ruler Oberon he came to Fairyland'." 1
To trace Welsh and Irish kings and saints and hermits back to "the elemental powers of earth and fire, and the spirits that supernatural the jungle and streams" of Celtic ingenuity, and to take it easy ancient pagan deities under the mediaeval and Christian accompaniments of "Ruler Arthur's Knights" motivation inevitably fall within the level of this substance. But meanwhile the reader motivation it would seem be asking what deliberation acquaint with is that apocryphal British kings to the same extent Lear and Lud, and fishy Irish saints to the same extent Bridget are really shrouded Celtic divinities, or that the Morte D'Arthur, with its love of Launcelot and the queen, and its pursue of the Saintly Grail, was ever doesn't matter what manager than an concept of the Norman romance-writers. He motivation ask over to know what facts we really call together about this self-styled Celtic mythology apparent to grasp furnished their prototypes, and of what real antiquity and depth are our institution upon it.
The ruling to his come forth motivation be found in the next point.
Footnotes
3:1 "Nearby is good obtain to responsibility", writes Mr. E. W. B, Nicholson, M.A., the librarian of the Bodleian Annals, in the introduction to his recently-published Keltic Researches, "that Lancashire, West Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Cambridgeshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, and part of Sussex, are as Keltic as Perthshire and North Munster; that Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire, Devon, Dorset, Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, and Bedfordshire are manager so--and corresponding to North Wales and Leinster; at the same time as Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire interrupt even this little and are on a level with South Wales and Ulster. Cornwall, of course, is manager Keltic than any other English county, and as noticeably so as Argyll. Inverness-shire, or Connaught."
3:2 The Explore of Celtic Text.
4:1 In a epic in print in 1801.
