The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac

Title: The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac

Author: Jessie L. Weston

Release date: August 3, 2014 [eBook #46497] Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46497

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No. 12

THE LEGEND OF SIR LANCELOT DU LAC

I. GEORGIAN FOLK-TALES. Translated by Marjory Wardrop. Cr. 8vo, pp. xii+175. 5s. net.

II., III., V. THE LEGEND OF PERSEUS. By Edwin Sidney Hartland, F.S.A. 3 vols. £1, 7s. 6d. net.

Vol. i. THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH. Cr. 8vo, pp. xxxiv+228 (not sold separately). Vol. ii. THE LIFE-TOKEN. Cr. 8vo, pp. viii+445. 12s. 6d. net. Vol. iii. ANDROMEDA. MEDUSA. Cr. 8vo, pp. xxxvii+225. 7s. 6d. net.

IV., VI. THE VOYAGE OF BRAN, SON OF FEBAL. An Eighth-century Irish Saga, now first edited and translated by Kuno Meyer.

Vol. i. With an Essay upon the Happy Otherworld in Irish Myth, by Alfred Nutt. Cr. 8vo, pp. xvii+331. 10s. 6d. net. Vol. ii. With an Essay on the Celtic Doctrine of Rebirth, by Alfred Nutt. Cr. 8vo, pp. xii+352. 10s. 6d. net.

VII. THE LEGEND OF SIR GAWAIN. Studies upon its Original Scope and Significance. By Jessie L. Weston, translator of Wolfram von Eschenbach's 'Parzival.' Cr. 8vo, pp. xiv+111. 4s. net.

VIII. THE CUCHULLIN SAGA IN IRISH LITERATURE. Being a Collection of Stories relating to the Hero Cuchullin, translated from the Irish by various Scholars. Compiled and Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Eleanor Hull. Cr. 8vo, pp. lxxix+316. 7s. 6d. net.

IX., X. THE PRE-AND PROTO-HISTORIC FINNS, both Eastern and Western, with the Magic Songs of the West Finns. By the Hon. John Abercromby. Vol. I., Cr. 8vo, pp. xxiv+363. Vol. II., Cr. 8vo, pp. xiii+400. £1, 1s. net.

XI. THE HOME OF THE EDDIC POEMS. With Especial Reference to the 'Helgi Lays,' by Sophus Bugge, Professor in the University of Christiania. Revised Edition, with a new Introduction concerning Old Norse Mythology, by the Author, translated from the Norwegian by William Henry Schofield, Instructor in Harvard University. Cr. 8vo, pp. lxxix+408. 12s. net.

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The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac

Studies upon its Origin, Development, and Position in the Arthurian Romantic Cycle

By Jessie L. Weston

London Published by David Nutt At the Sign of the Phœnix Long Acre 1901

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, (late) Printers to Her Majesty

[Pg v]

PREFACE

The Studies contained in the following pages were, in the first instance, undertaken some four or five years ago. From time to time the exigencies of other literary work have compelled me to lay them aside, but the subject has never been lost sight of, and, not infrequently, studies in appearance wholly unconnected with the Lancelot legend have thrown an unexpected and welcome light on certain points of the story. Undertaken, in the first instance, with an absolutely open mind (even after I had been working at it for two or three years I should have been sorely at a loss if asked to state a theory of the origin of the story), it was only by slow degrees that the real bearing of the evidence became clear, and I felt that I had at last grasped a guiding thread through the perplexing maze. The results, which perhaps to some readers may appear startlingly subversive of opinions formally expressed by certain distinguished scholars, were wholly unforeseen. They are the outcome of genuine study of original texts; whether, in the long-run they be, or be not generally accepted, I would at

least plead that they be judged on the evidence of those texts.

In certain cases I have little doubt as to the verdict. So far as the evidence concerning the sources of Malory, and the differing versions of the prose Lancelot, is concerned,[Pg vi] the facts, now brought forward for the first time, are beyond dispute. They may, I hope they will, be hereafter added to, and confirmed. As they stand they encourage us to hope that further study of the material already available may yield welcome, and perhaps unsuspected results.

We are, so far, only on the threshold of a satisfactory and scientific criticism of the Arthurian cycle, and I doubt whether all who are engaged in this study recognise sufficiently either the extent and complexity of the questions involved, or the absolute futility of, at this early stage, enunciating dogmatic decisions on any of the various points at issue. Is there any one living scholar who is perfectly aware of all the evidence at our disposal for any of the great stories of the cycle? If there be, he will know, better than any other, that till critical editions place us in a position to determine the characteristic readings of the MSS. representing not one alone, but all those stories, their inter-relation, their points of contact with, and variance from each other, the very best work that can be done will be liable to bear the impress of a temporary character—it will not, it cannot be, final.

Elsewhere, I have urged that this fact be recognised and acted upon, and I cannot but hope that the evidence collected in these studies may help to convince others of the real necessity for a determined effort to edit and render accessible the principal Arthurian texts, and the certain and permanent profit likely to result from such a work.

Bournemouth, February 1901.

[Pg vii]

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

To the great majority of English readers, those who are familiar with the Arthurian legend through the pages of Malory and Tennyson, the name which occurs most readily to their minds in connection with the court and Table of King Arthur is that of Lancelot du Lac, at once the most gallant servant of the king, and the secret lover of the queen. To many the story of Lancelot and Guinevere is the most famous of all stories of unlawful love.

True, of late years the popularity of Wagner's music has made their ears, at least, familiar with the names of Tristan and Iseult. Still, that Tristan and Iseult were ever as famous as Lancelot and Guinevere, few outside the ranks of professed students of mediæval literature would believe; still fewer admit that the loves of Arthur's queen and Arthur's knight were suggested by, if not imitated from, the older, more poetic, and infinitely more convincing, Celtic love-tale; that Lancelot, as Arthur's knight and Guinevere's lover, is a comparatively late addition to the Arthurian legend.

[Pg 2]

Yet so it is. I doubt if any scholar of standing would now argue that Lancelot and his relation to the queen formed an integral portion of the early tradition; if any, conversant with the literature of the cycle, would reckon Lancelot among the original band of heroes who gathered round the British king.

In the introduction to my studies on the Gawain legend, I remarked that, if we desired to arrive at an elucidation of the Arthurian problem as a whole, we must first begin with the elucidation of its component parts—we must severally disentangle the legends connected with the leading knights of the cycle before we can hope to understand the growth and development of that cycle. When we have arrived at some clear idea concerning the stories originally told of the Arthurian heroes, and their relation to each other and to the king, we shall then be in a better position to judge of the nature of the original legend—whether it be mainly the product of literary invention, or in its more important features, the work of mythical tradition. It is not a matter of slight importance to ascertain to which of these two categories the leading heroes of Arthurian romance belong.

In the case of Sir Gawain we were able to detect certain features which, by their persistent recurrence in the great mass of tradition connected with this knight, seemed to indicate a general recognition on the part of the romance writers that they belonged to an early form of his story, and as such were to be preserved even when but incompletely understood. Further I pointed out the parallels existing between certain of his most famous adventures and those recorded in early Irish tradition, parallels which went far to prove, not merely the antiquity[Pg 3] of the feats ascribed to him, but their source in Celtic myth.

In the following studies I shall endeavour, in the same way, to trace to its origin the legend of Lancelot du Lac, to discover what was the tale originally connected with him, and, if possible, follow the steps which led to the immense development of his popularity. I do not for a moment suggest, any more than in the case of Gawain, the finality of the results arrived at; but I hope at least to present the reader with a sorely needed summary of the Lancelot legend, and to clear the ground for further researches into his story.

In some ways the task before us is less difficult than that involved in the examination of the Gawain legend; the literature connected with Lancelot, if extensive, is not diffuse; by far the greater portion is covered by the prose Lancelot and the Grail Romances. On the other hand the story, as compared with that of Gawain, is extraordinarily deficient in characteristic features. The adventures ascribed to Lancelot might just as well be placed to the credit of any other knight: they are the ordinary stock-in-trade of the mediæval romancer. Guinevere's lover he is, but the love-story is of the most conventional character: the more it is studied the more clearly do the records in which it is shrined appear the offspring of conscious literary invention, and that invention of by no means a high order. He is certainly no hero of prehistoric myth, solar or otherwise, as Gawain or Perceval may well be; nor does he by force of sheer humanity lay hold on our imagination, as does Tristan.

How then did Lancelot come into the Arthurian cycle? In the earliest records of Arthurian legend he holds no[Pg 4] place. Wace's Brut, the French metrical version of the History of Geoffrey of Monmouth, written about the middle of the twelfth century, gives the names of certain of Arthur's knights, Gawain, Kay, Bedivere, Iwein, but never mentions Lancelot. We have an account of Arthur's expedition to France, in the course of which he slew Frollo outside the walls of Paris, an adventure which the compiler of the Prose Lancelot places during the war against Claudas to recover Lancelot's patrimony, but in the Brut this expedition takes place at an early stage in Arthur's reign, and knows nothing of Lancelot or Claudas.[1]

Dating apparently from the same period, the middle of the twelfth century, is a bas-relief of the cathedral of Modena, representing a female figure standing on the summit of a tower, towards which several armed knights are approaching. Each knight is named, and we find represented Arthur himself, Gawain, Kay, Ider, Carados, and a certain Galuariun, who has not been identified. Lancelot is not among them.[2]

The Welsh Arthurian stories again know nothing of Lancelot, though certain of them contain long lists of heroes of Arthur's court.[3]

So far as we can at present tell, the earliest mention of the knight is that contained in the Erec of Chrétien de[Pg 5] Troyes, where in a long list of the heroes of the Round Table, ranged according to merit (at least in the case of the earlier names), Lanceloz del Lac is reckoned third, the first two being Gawain and Erec.[4] In the German version by Hartmann von Aue, he occupies the same place, but is called Lanzelot von Arlac. Nothing more is related of him: he plays no rôle in the story, he is a name, and nought else. In a later poem by Chrétien, Cligés, the same position, third on the roll of heroes, is ascribed to Lancelot, but here it is Perceval, and not Erec, who ranks second. The hero of the poem, Cligés, appears at a tournament four successive days, in different armour, and overthrows Segramor, Lancelot, and Perceval, finally fighting an undecided combat with Gawain.[5] The Cligés reference is particularly noticeable, as the motif of the story is the love of the hero for the young wife of his uncle and sovereign. In this connection the loves of Tristan

and Iseult are often referred to, but Lancelot and Guinevere never. It seems clear that when Chrétien wrote this poem he did not know Lancelot as the lover of Arthur's queen and the chief of Arthur's knights.

But in the poem which followed the Cligés, Le Chevalier de la Charrette, Lancelot suddenly appears in both these characters, Gawain's superior and the lover of Guinevere: no explanation of the changed position is offered, but Chrétien takes for granted the familiarity of his audience with the relations between the knight and the queen. To add to the confusion, in the succeeding poem Le Chevalier au Lion, Lancelot is only once referred to, in connection with the Charrette adventure, and is never mentioned as[Pg 6] one of the knights of Arthurs household; while in Chrétien's last poem, the Perceval, he is altogether ignored.[6]

It is very difficult, indeed impossible, to date Chrétien's poems with exactness. The only two which afford clear internal evidence on the point, Le Chevalier de la Charrette and Le Chevalier au Lion, fall within the years 1164-1173. Erec was the first of his Arthurian poems, and between Erec and the Charrette, certainly one work, Cligés, and it may be several, intervened.[7]

Very probably the Erec was written early in the decade, 1150-60, and taken in conjunction with the negative evidence afforded by the Brut and the Italian bas-relief, it goes to prove that whereas the name of Gawain, as connected with Arthur, was known by the end of the eleventh century,[8] Arthurian tradition knew nothing of Lancelot till the latter half of the twelfth; and that no mention of his relations with Guinevere is found till between 1160-1170, that is, a decade after the first mention[Pg 7] of his name. It is, of course, a well-recognised fact in the study of romance, that the date of a manuscript does not fix the date of the story contained in it; a younger manuscript may contain the same story under an older form. As a rule, the versions contained in Chrétien's poems appear to present a fairly old form of the stories they relate, saving in the case of Lancelot. About this knight, Chrétien either knows nothing or he knows too much. The earlier stages of his story he leaves unrecorded; yet an allusion in the Charrette poem[9] shows that he was not unacquainted

with the legend concerning his youth and upbringing. Two versions of this legend have been preserved to us, one in verse and one in prose. In the following chapter we will examine the older of these versions, and inquire into the origin of our hero's name.

[Pg 8]

CHAPTER II

THE 'LANZELET' OF ULRICH VON ZATZIKHOVEN

The origin of the name Lancelot has been a subject of considerable debate among scholars, and has given rise to the most widely differing explanations. M. de la Villemarqué, who was a warm advocate of the Welsh origin of the Arthurian stories, derived the name from the French l'ancelot, a youth or servant, which he held to be a translation of the Welsh Melwas, or Maelwas. This solution was rejected by M. Gaston Paris, in his study on the Lancelot poems,[10] in which he showed that ancelot was not a French common name, and that Maelwas did not bear the signification attributed to it. Professor Rhys,[11] adopting the theory of the Welsh origin of the name, which in its present form he admitted only exists in Welsh literature as borrowed from French or English sources, decided that it represented a Welsh variant of Peredur, the root of this latter name being Pâr=a spear or lance. 'The characters,' says Professor Rhys, 'were originally the same, though their respective developments eventually differed very widely.' I doubt if this solution

ever found any adherents except its author: it is sufficient[Pg 9] to remark that the derivation of Peredur, on which it rests, is by no means universally accepted, and that Lancelot is in no special way connected with a spear or lance.[12] It is certainly true that the Lancelot story shows signs of having been affected by the Perceval legend, but as we shall see the borrowings are restricted to one special and purely continental form of the story.

M. Gaston Paris, in the study referred to above, suggested that Lancelot might be either a Celtic name altered, or, more probably, the substitution, by French poets, of a name of Germanic origin for one of Breton form strange to the ears of their French audiences, e.g. it might be a diminutive form of Lanzo. This is also the conclusion of Professor Zimmer.[13] The prefix Lant is often found in names of Frankish origin transferred to Breton ground: such names are Lando, Landolin; Lanzo, Lanzolin, etc.

In the introduction to his edition of the Charrette, recently published,[14] Professor Foerster announces his complete adhesion to this view.

It certainly seems that the evidence points strongly to this conclusion. The fact that Lancelot's name does not appear in the earliest obtainable Arthurian documents shows that he did not belong to the original 'stoff' of the cycle; the entire silence of Welsh literature, and the[Pg 10] practical silence of English vernacular romances,[15] seem to show that he formed no part of the insular Arthurian tradition. For my own part I unhesitatingly accept Professor Foerster's dictum, 'Lancelot ist den Kymren gänzlich unbekannt, und ist unter allen Umständen Kontinentaler[16] Herkunft.'[17]

A weak point in the proposed Celtic solutions appears to me to be that both entirely ignore the qualifying title du Lac, by which Lancelot is invariably known. Neither M. de la Villemarqué nor Professor Rhys appear to consider it of any special importance, yet if I mistake not this is just the significant point of the Lancelot story, and that which from the very outset differentiates it from the legends connected with Peredur or Maelwas. From the moment of his appearance in Chrétien's list of Arthur's knights to that in which the prose Lancelot records his death in the odour of sanctity, Lancelot is Lancelot du Lac, and the earliest version of his story which we possess amply justifies his claim to the title.

[Pg 11]

The poem of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven[18] is certainly later than either the Erec or the Charrette of Chrétien, but the tradition it embodies is anterior to the poem itself. Written in the opening years of the thirteenth century, it is, as explicitly stated in the text, the translation of 'daz welsche buoch von Lanzelete,' brought to Germany by Hugo de Morville, one of the hostages who in 1194 replaced Richard of England in the prison of Leopold of Austria.[19] The date of the original French version cannot, of course, be fixed. In any case it must have preceded its introduction into Germany; judging from internal evidence it represented an early and immature version of the Lancelot legend. The story as related in the Lanzelet is as follows: Lanzelet was son to King Pant of Genewîs and his wife Clarine. By a revolt of his people Pant was driven from his kingdom with his wife and child. In his flight he came to a stream, and there, overcome by his wounds, sank down and died. The queen had laid her child under a tree while she tended her husband, and before she could