Celtic Fairy Tales

by Joseph Jacobs

  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, section 201). (Footnote: It occurs in the same chapter as the story of La Perrette, which has been traced, after Benfey, by Prof. M. Müller 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. xxxii., "Story of Folliculus." We have thus traced it to England whence it passed 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 assume 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. Planché, 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 bloody 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 Gêlert. 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 banal verses, which were lucky enough to be copied into several reading-books, and thus became kno
wn 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 entitled "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 circumstances 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, Gêlert 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," entitled 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. Köhler'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 classical 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 Hell. 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 passed by them with their language on to the Hellenes and perhaps to the Indians, was developed in its modern form in Scandinavia (where its best representative "The Master Maid" of Asbjörnsen is still found), was passed 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 EGGSHELLS.

  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 title 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'."

  Parallels.—"The Lad with the Skin Coverings" is a popular Celtic figure, cf. MacDougall's Third Tale, MacInnes' Second, and a reference in Campbell, iii. 147. According to Mr. Nutt (Holy Grail, 134), he is the original of Parzival. But the adventures in these tales are not the "cure by laughing" incident which forms the centre of our tale, and is Indo-European in extent (cf. references in English Fairy Tales, notes to No. xxvii.). "The smith who made hell too hot for him is Sisyphus," says Mr. Lang (Introd. to Grimm, p. xiii.); in Ireland he is Billy Dawson (Carleton, Three Wishes). In the Finn-Saga, Conan harries hell, as readers of Waverley may remember "'Claw for claw, and devil take the shortest
nails,' as Conan said to the Devil" (cf. Campbell, The Fians, 73, and notes, 283). Red-haired men in Ireland and elsewhere are always rogues (see Mr. Nutt's references, MacInnes' Tales, 477; to which add the case in "Lough Neagh," Yeats, Irish Folk-Tales, p. 210).

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