Jessie Weston - The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac

Chap. iii.

'Morgue la Fée et Morgan Tud,' Romania , vol. xxviii. p. 327.

Professor Foerster's references to this character ( Charrette , lxxiii.) are perplexing. He prints Chrétien's description of the 'Ile' side by side with a parallel passage from Giraldus Cambrensis, Topographia Hiberniæ , informing us that both are 'ganz einfach eine naturgetreue Beschreibung von Irland.' He cannot mean us to understand that the one description is borrowed from the other; the work of Giraldus is at least thirty years later than the Erec ( circa 1186), and that chronicler would hardly go to a romancer like Chrétien for the description of a country he knew personally. But is it a ' Naturgetreue ' description of Ireland at all? Professor Foerster is compelled himself to admit naïvely, ' Gewitter und Stürme fehlen nicht ganz !' Is this not rather a description of the fabled Irish Paradise which Chrétien and Giraldus alike have borrowed from a source common to both?

Of course I here use the word Breton in a general sense as opposed to French . I do not intend to imply that Arthur is of Continental origin.

Ueber die Bedeutung von Bretagne, Breton , Zeitschrift für französische Sprache, xx. 79-162.

Cf. chap. ii.

Cf. Charrette , lxxxi. and cxli.

Cf. on this point Professor Foerster's Introductions to his editions of the Yvain , 1887 (large ed.), 1891 (small ed.).

Cf. Grisebach, Die Treulose Witwe : Wien, 1873.