The Three Days' Tournament

In his Popular Tales of the West Highlands, under the title of the Sea Maiden, Mr. Campbell gives the following story.45 An old and childless fisherman meets with persistent ill-luck in his calling, till one day a sea-maiden rises from the waves and promises him future success, if he in return will give her his firstborn son (assuring him of the birth of three). The fisher consents, and all falls out as the maiden foretells. Grown to manhood, the son, aware of the fate in store for him, resolves to go ‘where there is not a drop of sea-water.’ He sets out, and on his journey finds a lion, a wolf, and a falcon disputing over the carcase of a horse. He divides the spoil between them, and in return they promise him their aid, should he be in need of it. He becomes herdsman to a king, and we have the adventure with the three giants, in which the grateful beasts aid him, and he wins a white, a red, and a green filly ‘that will go through the skies’—obviously the winged horses of the Greek folk-tale46—and three dresses to correspond. Here he also slays the giants’ mother, and wins a comb and a basin, the use of which will make him the most beautiful man on earth. Follows the adventure with the sea-monster, a dragon apparently. The fight lasts for three days, and he appears each day in a different dress, and mounted on a different steed. The princess makes a mark on his forehead as he sleeps, and thus identifies the hero as her rescuer. They marry, but while walking by the seashore, the sea-maiden rises from the waves and carries off the hero as her property. The princess, by the advice of a soothsayer, succeeds in releasing her husband, and with the help of the grateful beasts, destroys the soul of the sea-maiden, which is in an egg. She being slain, the pair live happily ever after.

In this particular variant there is no False Claimant; but he appears in version number three of this story, and in version four we have the curious detail that the beast ‘was a fresh-water lake when he had killed her.’

Students of folk-lore will note that the tale in this form includes features not found in the majority of the versions, but representing well-recognised folk-tale formulæ. Thus the Life Token is here—incomplete—the maiden gives the fisherman ‘something’ to be given to his wife, his horse, and his dog (obviously a fisherman does not need a horse and a dog—these two features do not belong to each other); the wife has three sons, the horse three foals, and the dog three pups. Horse and dog ought rightly to play a part in the story, but in this special variant they do not appear, though in another they are mentioned in a subordinate rôle. The Grateful Beasts and the External Soul are equally well known in folk-tale, though again, as a rule, in a different connection. But the tournament is lacking; and after examining many variants of the tale, I have come to the conclusion that this feature belongs exclusively to the continental versions. Horses and dresses are found in the insular forms, but, so far, I have not found a single instance of the tournament. On the other hand, no continental variant appears to contain the sea-maiden episodes.

If we now summarise the leading incidents of the various groups, we shall find them somewhat as follows:—

1. Hero—King’s son. Herdsman or shepherd. Fisherman’s son turned herdsman.

2. Slays three giants and wins three castles in which he finds three steeds of different colours with dresses or armour to correspond. The horses are occasionally winged.

3. Appears at a Three Days’ Tournament in these dresses, and thus wins the hand of a princess.

(Incidents 1, 2, 3, which combined correspond to Le Petit Berger, form the shortest version of our story, but probably not the most primitive.)

4. Rescues the princess from an ‘Otherworld’ prison. Form of imprisonment varies, but the ‘rescue’ is most generally found in company with the tournament.

5. Rescues princess from a monster. Here the conflict generally lasts three days, the three disguises are employed, and the tournament is often absent.

6. Is robbed of the credit of his deed by a cowardly rival. This, which is most generally found in combination with 5, is also sometimes found in a modified form combined with 4, and is often lacking altogether.

7. Is carried off by a mermaid, to whom he had been promised before his birth. This appears to be confined to the Celtic group collected by Mr. Campbell.

If the reader will refer to the various examples I have given above, he will see that these seven incidents represent what we may call the perfect skeleton of our story (to use a simile often applied by Mr. Campbell), though the bones are differently placed in different versions.

But, having summarised them, we also become aware of a very curious coincidence. Out of these seven incidents, six are found, and found more than once, in the earlier forms of the Lancelot story. Thus dropping out incident 2, the winning of the armour, to which I know no good parallel, we find that Lancelot was a king’s son (incident 1), which, in itself, of course counts for little, but is of value in combination with other features (Lanzelet—Prose Lancelot); that he appears at a tournament, three days running, in different armour, the colours of which correspond with the prevailing colours of the folk-tale—green, red, white, or black, red, white (incident 3) (Lanzelet—Prose Lancelot); that he frees a princess (queen) from an Otherworld prison (incident 4) (Charrette—Prose Lancelot—Lanzelet, modified form); that he slays a monster (apparently a dragon), and is robbed by a cowardly rival (incidents 5 and 6) (Morien). A second version of the False Claimant story is found in Le cerf au pied blanc. Finally, when a child, he was carried off by a water maiden, meer-wîb (incident 7) (Lanzelet—Prose Lancelot).

Now these are characteristics which, in their ensemble, he shares with no other Arthurian hero. True, Gawain visits the Otherworld, but he does so rather in the character of lover of the queen of that world than as rescuer of one confined within its precincts. In the Dutch Walewein alone, so far as I know, is his rôle definitely that of the deliverer. But none of the other incidents belong to his story. So, too, Tristan is the hero of a very fine version of the Dragon Slayer and False Claimant story, and it is moreover probable that the Morien version has borrowed certain details from the Tristan, but he too can claim no share in the other incidents. The close correspondence, point by point, with a folk-tale of so widespread and representative a character, is, I submit, a peculiarity of the earlier Lancelot story, which is of extraordinary interest as throwing light upon the genesis and growth of Arthurian legend.

In this connection I have by no means forgotten the energetic protests which, in certain quarters, were evoked by Mr. Nutt’s attempt to show that the story of Perceval might in this way be connected with popular tales; and I am quite prepared to be told that tales collected in the nineteenth century are not to be trusted as indications of the sources of twelfth century romance. But in the instance before us the evidence, while of precisely the same nature as in the case of Perceval, exceeds it, both in bulk and extent. The story is not one story, but a large and well-marked group of tales; the folk-lore parallels affect not one, but many incidents of the romance. How large and how widely diffused is that story-group can only be appreciated by those who will examine the lists of variants appended by M. Cosquin to the four stories I have named above and those cited by Mr. Campbell under the heading of the Sea Maiden, and then compare these stories with the numerous examples given by Mr. Hartland in his exhaustive study of the Perseus legend. The incidents are, as I have shown, six out of a possible list of seven. If, further, we remember that the group, with all its varying forms, is connected with such pre-historic heroes as Perseus and Cuchullin, we have, I think, a sufficient answer to those critics who would reject the evidence en masse on the ground of modernity.

But supposing, for the sake of argument, that we accept the possible priority of the romantic over the popular form, what, with regard to the criticism of the Arthurian literary cycle, is the logical result? This: if the folk-tale be dependent upon a romance, that romance must of necessity be the Lancelot, as no other hero offers the same combination of incident. But a version of the Lancelot story, from which all these incidents could have been borrowed, must have been older than any form of the story we now possess. As we have seen above, the correspondence is sometimes with one, sometimes with another version; and a very famous incident of the tale, the False Claimant, only exists now in two romances, each of them preserved in an isolated and unique form. Therefore, if this be not a fully proven instance of the conversion of a popular folk-tale into an Arthurian romance, it must be a case of the development of a folk-tale from a fully organised and coherent Lancelot story in a form anterior to Chrétien. The adherents of the theory which ascribes independent invention to Chrétien de Troyes, and a literary origin to the Arthurian stories, can make their choice between these two solutions of the problem—one or the other it must be.

For myself, I unreservedly accept the verdict pronounced by Mr. Campbell upon the Sea Maiden as representative of the entire story-group. ‘Is it possible that a Minglay peasant and Straparola47 (or we may add Hue de Rotelande and the peasants of the Odenwald and Lorraine)—neither of whom can have seen a giant, or a flying horse, or a dragon, or a mermaid—could separately imagine all these impossible things, and, having imagined them simultaneously, invent the incidents of the story and arrange so many of them in the same order?

‘Is it on the other hand possible that all these barefooted, bareheaded, simple men, who cannot read, should yet learn the contents of one class of rare books and of no other? I cannot think so.

‘I have gone through the whole Sea Maiden story, and all its Gaelic versions, and marked and numbered each separate incident, and divided the whole into its parts, and then set the result beside the fruit of a similar dissection of Straparola’s Fortunio, and I find nearly the whole of the bones of the Italian story, and a great many bones which seem to belong to some original antediluvian Aryan tale. The Scotch (insular) is far wilder and more mythical than the Italian (continental).48 The one savours of tournaments, kings’ palaces, and the manners of Italy long ago; the other of flocks and herds, fishermen and pastoral life; but the Highland imaginary beings are further from reality and nearer to creatures of the brain. The horses of Straparola are very material and walk the earth; those of old John MacPhie are closely related to Pegasus and the horses of the Veda, and fly and soar through grimy peat-reek to the clouds.’49

Mr. Campbell continues: ‘What is true of the Gaelic and Italian versions is equally true of all others which I know. If examined, they will be found to consist of a bare tree of branching incidents common to all, and so elaborate that no minds could possibly have invented the whole seven or eight times over50 without some common model, and yet no one of these is the model, for the tree is defective in all, and its foliage has something peculiar to each country in which it grows. They are specimens of the same plant, but their common stock is nowhere to be found.’51 Were Mr. Campbell living now, may we not feel sure that to these closing words he would add: Assuredly it is not to be sought in an Arthurian romance of the twelfth century?

THE ROMANCE

So much for the present as regards our folk-tale as a whole. Let us now see what light the study of it may have thrown upon the special subject of our investigation—the Three Days’ Tournament. And first of all, I think it has definitely settled the correctness of our title. East or west, north or south, wherever we have traced our story, whatever the hero’s feat—whether the rescuing the princess from a devouring dragon, or the winning her hand at a knightly tournament—the days required to complete the task are three—neither more nor less.

Mr. Hartland, to whom I referred the point, remarks that the unvarying tendency in certain families of folk-tales, notably those of Oriental origin, is to crystallise a small but indefinite number into three. Now Mr. Campbell, as we have seen, detects a likeness between the flying horses of the Sea Maiden tales, and the horses of the Veda, and Mr. Joseph Jacobs, in a note appended to another tale,52 quotes a further remark of the same writer, to the effect that the many-coloured horses of Indian mythology may account for all the magical horses of folk-tales. So if our tale, as a whole, did not come from the east, it seems possible that this particular incident may have done so.53

Yet in so far as the tournament form is concerned, it is, of course, possible that certain literary versions of the story might have been affected by the ordinary customs of the day. Anyway there seems to be a fairly close correspondence here between fact and fancy. Niedner, in his work on Das Deutsche Turnier,54 remarks that the tourney proper was generally held on a Monday; the knights assembled on the previous Saturday; Sunday morning was spent in mustering those present and arranging the opposing factions; while the afternoon was devoted to the encounter known as the Vesper-spiel, preliminary to the grand struggle of the morrow. Thus the ordinary duration of such a meeting might be reckoned as three days.

But it is clear that there might also be three distinct encounters on as many separate days, as in the folk-tale. Professor Kittredge, in his article, ‘Who was Sir Thomas Malory?55’ notes a very remarkable and pertinent instance taken from the life of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. When that nobleman was Governor of Calais, hearing of a great gathering of knights, to be held in the neighbourhood, ‘he cast in his mynde to do sume newe poynt of chevalry’; and under the several names of The Grene Knight, Chevalier Vert, and Chevalier Attendant, sent three challenges to the French king’s court. These being accepted, he appeared the first two days in differing armour, the third ‘in face opyn,’ on each occasion overthrowing his antagonist.56 The days in question are given by Rous as January 6th, 7th, and 8th; the year he does not mention; but Professor Kittredge, by a process of elimination, arrives at the conclusion that it must have been either 1416 or 1417. It is, of course, obvious that this feat must have been suggested by the romances. It is, I think, equally obvious that the three days of the romances were not at variance with actual practice. As to the version of the folk-tale there can be no question. The correct number is three—neither more nor less.

It is, of course, also clear that the occurrence of the tournament in the folk-tale must be subsequent to the institution of tournaments as part of the ordinary chivalric and social conditions; but the tale itself must be earlier, as is witnessed both by the archaic nature of the rescue incident and the magical nature of the horses. Trials of skill in horsemanship are known to all stages of society; and the original form of this special incident was doubtless something of this kind. In the Odenwald variant referred to above, the hero has to perform the feat of carrying off on his spear a ring suspended from a beam, and to hang it up again in returning. This is here supposed to form part of the tournament; but it seems most likely that in earlier forms the trial of skill by which the hero was tested and identified was simply some such feat of skilled horsemanship.

Nor do I think that we are to see the influence of romance, rather than of custom, in this transformation. Neither of the poems in which the incident approximates most closely to the folk-tale form, the Lanzelet and the Ipomedon, appear to have been particularly popular (certainly not the former), judging from the number of manuscripts in which they have been preserved, while the ‘Tournament’ form of the folk-tale is found all over Europe. It is much more reasonable, surely, to conclude that the episode has been borrowed, as so many others have been borrowed, from the stores of popular tradition than to hold that in this case popular tradition has been modified by the influences of a literary cycle.

But is it not as clear as daylight that all this immense body of evidence absolutely and finally disposes of any claim on the part of Chrétien to be first in the field? The four days of Cligés rule that romance, as a source, out of court at once and for ever. Further, not only is that version demonstrably secondary in itself, but definitely secondary to and dependent upon the Lancelot versions. These correspond with the prevailing colours of the folk-tale—black, red, and white, or green, red, and white.57 The one is the version of the Prose Lancelot, the other of the Lanzelet. Chrétien not only gives one day too many, but manifestly does so in order to combine the two versions which he, in common with us, knew, and gives both green and black—two colours which are found together in no single version of all the dozens I have read.

There is a possible ‘clerical’ explanation of the existence of two versions of the Lancelot tale. Noir in the manuscript may have been read vair, and a copyist writing from oral dictation may thus have substituted vert. But in the face of the green, red, and white of the very primitive Celtic variant given by Mr. Campbell, and confirmed by the Greek parallel, I think it more likely that the three colours of the Lanzelet represent the older form. But inasmuch as in romances, which, like the Arthurian, were supposed to correspond in some measure to the conditions of real life, a green horse would be an impossibility, while yet horse and armour should correspond, black—perhaps under the influence of the Perceval story—would take its place. Both were represented in the folk-tale, and it may be that the version of the Prose Lancelot and of the Ipomedon simply represents ‘the survival of the fittest.’

That there were two versions a closer study will, I think, make evident. Probably those who have followed the argument and illustrations closely will have already detected what hitherto I have left unnoted, that the version of the Ipomedon stands in a much closer relation with certain forms of the folk-tale, i.e. the Petit Berger or a group, than is the case with either the Cligés or the two Lancelot versions. In the Ipomedon alone the prize of the Three Days’ Tournament is the hand of the princess. And not only is there agreement in this, the leading, feature, but there is also a curious correspondence in minor details. Thus, both in the poem and in the folk-tale, the hero, in the character of a servant, has already won the princess’s love. In both she is bitterly disappointed at his apparent failure to compete. In the folk-tale she sends each evening to ask why the shepherd-lad has taken no part in the tourney, receiving each time the answer that he was unwell, but would do his best to appear on the morrow. In the poem, each evening Ipomedon sends word to the princess that it is he who has gained the tourney, but that he is leaving the country immediately, and will not be present on the next day. Thus the heroine, in each case, is kept in uncertainty as to the intentions of her lover.

If we add to this the correspondence with the Odenwald variant already pointed out,58 and the fact that in the Ipomedon alone the hero is wounded on the third day—a feature found not only in the Odenwald story but in several variants of Le Prince et son Cheval—it becomes clear that if there be a doubt as to the source of the Cligés or the Lanzelet, the Ipomedon version must repose, directly or indirectly, upon the folk-tale.

But, as we have seen, it is precisely the evidence of the Ipomedon which leads us to connect the story with Walter Map, and the romance ascribed to him, the Lancelot. What, then, are we to conclude? I think the only satisfactory interpretation is that which I have suggested above, that there were two versions of the story; in one of which the hero was represented as winning, and probably wedding, the princess; in the other the incident, whatever its original form, had already been so far modified as simply to provide an effective setting for his first appearance at Arthur’s court. This is indeed what we find in the Lanzelet; and the general tone of that poem, wherein the hero wins the hand of no fewer than four ladies, and certainly weds three of them, shows that there would be no initial improbability in postulating another and more primitive form of the story.

To return to Cligés. The dramatis personæ of the tournament episode should be considered. The hero of the adventure does not compete with any number of knights, but is each day confronted with a chosen champion. These are, as I have already shown, Segramor, Lancelot, Perceval, and Gawain; and so far as the first three are concerned they appear here, and here only, their names, even, being otherwise unmentioned throughout the six thousand seven hundred and eighty lines of the poem.

To any one thoroughly familiar with the Arthurian romances, the juxtaposition of these three names is extremely significant. The adventure itself is elsewhere assigned to Lancelot. The hero with whom the Lancelot story in its earlier stages is most closely associated is Perceval; Chrétien himself here introduces Perceval as a famous knight, with whose renown Cligés was already familiar, and ranks him above Lancelot. One of the best-known adventures ascribed to Perceval is, as we have already shown, one in which the three colours, black, red, and white, figure, and in which he overthrows Kay in a manner curiously akin to other versions of the tournament episode. But previous to overthrowing Kay he had vanquished Segramor, who was the first to attack him. Is it not evident that Chrétien, like the authors of the Ipomedon and the original Lanzelet, was here reminded of the blood-drops adventure? If it be asked why introduce Segramor instead of Kay, we may recall the fact that while Cligés is represented as nephew to the Emperor of Constantinople, Segramor, as the Merlin tells us, was son to that potentate. Chrétien may have introduced him as less known in connection with this than Kay, who is never once named in Cligés; but I think it more likely that it was his parallelism to the hero, as well as his connection with Perceval, which determined his appearance.

But with regard to the latter, there is another point which deserves mention. In that section of the Peredur which does not correspond to any section of the Conte del Graal we find the hero, released from prison by the daughter of his jailer, attending a warlike tournament, in which each day he carries off the prizes; but there is no change of armour, and the days appear to be four instead of three. Previously to this he has also appeared three successive days at a tournament; but overcome by the beauty of the empress, of whom he is enamoured, he remains gazing at her, instead of taking part in the contest, until the third and final day. These passages are deserving of note, as they appear to me to show direct contact between the Perceval and Lancelot stories, and in this instance the borrowing appears to be on the part of the earlier story. Not only is Lancelot released from the prison of the Lady of Malehault to attend a tournament, thus corresponding with the one instance, but when he arrives on the spot he behaves in precisely the same manner at the sight of Guinevere as is recorded of Peredur with the empress. I do not feel able to accept the tournament as a real part of the Perceval story, no other feature of any version of the Perceval ‘Enfances’ corresponding with the formulæ of the group in question; yet the correspondence of detail between the two stories is so undeniable that contact of some sort, direct or indirect, there must be, and I think in this case we must hold that the Peredur has been influenced by a version of the Lancelot akin to that preserved in the prose redaction.