Guingamor, Lanval, Tyolet, Bisclaveret

The Were-Wolf

"Sir Marrok, the good knight that was betrayed with his wife, for she made him seven year a Werwolf." – Morte D'Arthur, book xix. chap. 11.

In the days of King Arthur there lived in Brittany a valiant knight of noble birth and fair to look upon; in high favour with his lord and much loved by all his fellows. This knight was wedded to a fair and gracious lady whom he loved tenderly, and she too loved her lord, but one thing vexed her sorely – three days in every week would her husband leave her, and none knew whither he went, or what he did while thus absent.

And every time the lady vexed herself more and more, till at last she could no longer keep silence, and when her husband came back, joyful and glad at heart after one of these journeys, she said to him: "My dear lord, there is somewhat I would fain ask thee, and yet I scarce dare, for I fear lest thou be angry with me."

Then her lord drew her to him, and kissed her tenderly. "Lady," he said, "fear not to ask me, there is nothing I would not gladly tell thee, if it be in my power."

"I' faith," she said, "now is my heart at rest. My lord, didst thou but know how terrified I am in the days I am left alone; I rise in the morning affrighted, and lie down at night in such dread of losing thee that if I be not soon reassured I think me I shall die of it. Tell me, I pray thee, where thou goest, and on what errand, that I who love thee may be at rest during thine absence."

"Lady," he answered, "for the love of God ask me no more, for indeed if I told thee evil would surely come of it; thou would'st cease to love me, and I should be lost."

When the lady heard this she was but ill-pleased, nor would she let her lord be at peace, but day by day she besought him with prayers and caresses, till at length he yielded and told her all the truth. "Lady," he said, "there is a spell cast upon me: three days in the week am I forced to become a were-wolf; and when I feel the change coming upon me I hide me in the thickest part of the forest, and there I live on prey and roots till the time has expired."

When he had told her this his wife asked him what of his garments? Did he still wear them in his wolf's shape?

"Nay," he said, "I must needs lay them aside."

"And what dost thou do with them?"

"Ah, that I may not tell thee, for if I were to lose them, or they should be stolen from me, then must I needs be a wolf all my days, nothing could aid me save that the garments be brought to me again. So for my own safety I must needs keep the matter secret."

"Ah, my dear lord, why hide it from me? Surely thou hast no fear of me who love thee above all else in the world? Little love canst thou have for me! What have I done? What sin have I committed that thou should'st withdraw thy confidence? Thou wilt do well to tell me."

Thus she wept and entreated till at length the knight yielded, and told her all.

"Wife," he said, "without the forest on the highway, at a cross road, is an old chapel wherein I have often found help and succour. Close to it, under a thick shrub, is a large stone with a hollow beneath it; under that stone I hide my garments till the enchantment hath lost its power, and I may turn me homewards."

Now when the lady had heard this story it fell out even as her husband had foretold, for her love was changed to loathing, and she was seized with a great dread and fear of him. She was terrified to be in his presence, yet he was her lord, and she knew not how she might escape from him.

Then she bethought her of a certain knight of that country, who had loved her long, and wooed her in vain ere she wedded her lord; and one time when her husband went forth, she sent for him in secret, and bade him come and give her counsel on a matter that troubled her much. When he came she bade him swear an oath to keep secret what she might tell him, and when he had sworn she told him all the story, and prayed him for the sake of the love he once bore her to free her from one who was neither beast nor man, and yet was both.

The knight, who loved her still, was ready to do all she might desire, and she said, "'Tis but to steal his clothes, for then he can no more become a man, but must dwell in the forest as a wolf all his days, and some one will assuredly slay him." So he went forth, and did after her bidding and brought her the garments, and she hid them away saying, "Now am I safe, and that monster can return no more to terrify me."

When the time went on, and her husband came not, the lady feigned to be anxious for his welfare, and she sent his men forth to seek him; they went through all the country but could find no trace of their lord, so at length they gave up the search, and all deemed he had been slain on one of his mysterious journeys. And when a year had passed, and the lady thought the wolf had surely been killed, she wedded the knight who had aided her and thought no more of the husband she had betrayed.

But the poor were-wolf roamed the forest in suffering and sorrow, for though a beast outwardly yet he had the heart and brain of a man, and knew well what had happened, and he grieved bitterly, for he had loved his wife truly and well.

Now it chanced one day that the king of that land rode a-hunting in that very forest, and the hounds came on the track of the were-wolf and roused him from his lair and gave chase to him. All day he fled before them through the woodland, and at last when they were close upon him and he was in sore peril of being overtaken and torn in pieces the king came riding after the hounds, and the wolf swerved aside and fled to him, seizing him by the stirrup, and licking his foot in sign of submission.

The king was much astonished, and called to his companions to come swiftly. "See here, my lords," he said, "what think ye of this marvel? See how this beast entreats mercy of me; he hath the sense of a man! Drive off the dogs, for I will not have him injured. Turn we homewards, I take this beast in my peace, and will hunt no more in this forest lest by chance he be slain."

With that they turned their bridles and rode homewards; but the wolf followed behind, and would not be driven back, even when they came to the royal castle. The king was greatly pleased, for he thought the matter strange and marvellous; no such tale had he ever heard before; and since he had taken a great liking for the beast he bade his knights not merely to do the wolf no harm, but to treat him with all care and kindness, on pain of losing the royal favour. So all day the wolf roamed the court, free among the knights, and at night he slept in the king's own chamber. Wherever the king went, there he would have his wolf go too, and all the courtiers made much of the beast, seeing that it pleased their lord, and finding that he did no harm to any man among them.

Now when a long time had passed the king had occasion to hold a solemn court; he summoned all his barons from far and near, and among them came the knight who had betrayed the were-wolf, and wedded his lady; he had little thought that his rival was yet in life, still less that he was so near at hand. But as soon as the wolf beheld him he sprang upon him savagely, tearing him with his teeth, and would have slain him if the king had not called him off, and even then twice again he would have seized him.

Every one in the castle was astonished at the rage shown by the beast, which had always been so tame and gentle, and a whisper went round that surely there must be something which no one knew against the knight, for the wolf would scarce have attacked him without cause. All the time the court lasted the wolf had to be kept in close guard. When at length it broke up the knight who had been attacked was one of the first to leave – and small marvel it he were. But when the knight had gone the wolf was once more as tame and friendly as he had been from the first, and all the courtiers made a pet of him as they had done aforetime, and forgot, as time went on, that he had ever shown himself so savage.

At length the king bethought him that he would make a progress through his kingdom, and at the same time hunt for a while in the forest where he had found the wolf. As his custom was he took the beast with him.

Now the lady, the were-wolf's treacherous wife, hearing that the king would abide some time in that part of the country, prayed for an audience that she might win the royal favour by presenting rich gifts, for she knew well that the king loved not her second husband as he had loved the first.

The king appointed a day and hour for the audience, but when the lady entered the presence chamber suddenly the wolf flew upon her, and before any could hinder had bitten the nose from off her face. The courtiers drew out their weapons and would have slain the beast, when a wise man, one of the king's councillors, stayed them. "Sire," he said, "hearken to me – this wolf has been long with us, there is not one of us here who has not been near to him, and caressed him, over and over again; yet not a man of us has he ever touched, or even shown ill-will to any. But two has he ever attacked, this lady here and the lord, her husband. Now, sire, bethink thee well – this lady was the wife of the knight thou didst hold dear aforetime, and who was lost long since, no man knowing what came to him. Take my counsel, put this lady in guard, and question her closely as to whether she can give any reason why the wolf should hate her. Many a marvel hath come to pass in Brittany, and methinks there is something stranger than we wot of here."

The king thought the old lord's counsel good; he caused the lady and her husband to be put in prison apart, and questioned separately with threats if they kept silence; till at length the lady, terrified, confessed how she had betrayed her first husband, by causing his garments to be stolen from him when he was in a wolf's shape. Since that time he had disappeared; she knew not whether he were alive or dead, but she thought that perchance this wolf was he. When the king heard this he commanded them to fetch the garments belonging to the lost knight, whether it were pleasing to the lady or no; and when they were brought he laid them before the wolf and waited to see what would chance.

But the wolf made as if he saw them not, and the wise councillor said, "Sire, if this beast be indeed a were-wolf he will not change shapes while there are any to behold him; since it is only with great pain and difficulty he can do so. Bid them take wolf and garments into thine own chamber, and fasten the doors upon him; then leave him for a while, and we shall see if he become man."

The king thought this counsel good, and he himself took the beast into his chamber and made the doors fast.

Then they waited for a space that seemed long enough to the king, and when the old lord told him he might well do so, he took two nobles with him, and unlocked the doors, and entered, and lo, on the king's couch lay the long lost knight in a deep slumber!

The king ran to him and embraced him warmly; and when the first wonder had somewhat passed, he bade him take back all the lands of which he had been robbed, and over and above he bestowed upon him many rich gifts.

The treacherous wife and her second husband were banished from the country; many years they lived in a strange land, and had children and grand-children – but all their descendants might be known by this, that the maidens were born without noses, so that they won the surname of énasées.

And the old books say that this adventure was verily true, and that it was in order that the memory of it should be preserved to all time that the Bretons put it in verse, and called it "The Lai of the Were-Wolf."

Notes

This charming lay was first published by M. Gaston Paris (Romania VIII.) from the same MS. collection as the Lay of Tyolet. The author is unnamed, but the general consensus of critical opinion has attributed it to Marie de France, the famous Anglo-Norman poetess. Certainly both in manner and matter it is a remarkably favourable specimen of the Breton lay.

The story of Guingamor evidently represents a very favourite class of tales; setting aside the numerous parallels cited by Dr. Schofield in his study of the lay (The Lay of Guingamor, "Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature," vol. v.), we have among the French translations of Breton lays which have descended to us no fewer than three which closely correspond in subject and treatment, the lays of Guingamor, Graalent, and Lanval. In each of these the hero is tempted by a queen; rejects her proffered love; wins a fairy bride, and departs to dwell with her in her own land. Guingamor and Graalent agree in the circumstances under which the knight meets the fairy maiden (a feature in which Dr. Schofield sees the influence of the Wayland story —cf. The Lays of Graalent and Lanval, and the Story of Wayland, W. H. Schofield); while Lanval and Graalent agree in the subsequent development of the story.

Of the three, Guingamor is distinctly the most tragic. The knight who after two days spent in the delights of love and the festivities of the wondrous palace returns on the third day to his own land to find that kinsmen and friends have passed away, and his own name and fate but a folk-tale centuries old, is a really pathetic figure. We need not wonder that the story was a popular one; not only does Chrétien de Troyes in the quotation prefixed to my translation mention it, but it is again referred to as a well-known tale by Gautier de Doulens, one of the continuators of Chrétien's unfinished Conte del Graal. The knight who is coupled with Guingamor in our extract, Graislemiers de Fine Posterne, is by Prof. Foerster and other scholars identified with Graalent mor, and it seems probable that it was the close resemblance between their stories, noted above, which led the French poet to represent them as brothers.

Page 6. —He knew how to promise and how to give. "Bien sot promestre et bien doner." This should be compared with Wace's description of Gawain, "plus volt faire que il ne dist, Et plus doner qu'il ne promist." It is impossible not to feel that Arthur's gallant nephew, who had a fairy for his love, and who according to Chaucer found his final home in fairy-land, stands in very close connection with these heroes of the earlier stratum of Arthurian legend.

Page 18. —Taking her robes set them high in the fork of a great oak. This apparently unknightly proceeding on the part of the hero was doubtless originally connected with the supernatural character of the lady, and seems to have taken its rise in a confusion between a fay and a swan-maiden. As we know from Northern tradition (Brynhild's Hell-reid and the Wieland-saga) to steal the "swan-shift" of such a maiden was the recognised means of effecting her capture. This has been well discussed by Dr. Schofield in the study quoted above.

Page 22. —I charge thee – that thou neither eat nor drink.

This is evidently a somewhat confused introduction of the well-known feature that partaking of food in any land brings the eater under the operation of the laws of that land, but we generally find the incident of reverse application, as in the case of Persephone, who having tasted of the pomegranate seeds must needs continue an inhabitant of the other world. Guingamor having already eaten of the food of faëry, would, one would think, be incapable of returning to the other world. Such a fate as befalls him is, however, often brought about by coming in contact with the earth; thus in the Voyage of Bran, when the hero and his companions return from the Magic Isles, they are warned not to set foot on the shore of Ireland; one of the company disobeys the injunction and immediately falls to ashes, as one many years dead. Mr. Hartland, in his work on The Science of Fairy-tales, gives other instances of this belief. From the references made to the story by later writers, however, it is quite clear that Guingamor was supposed to have regained his youth on his return to Fairyland, and to enjoy practical immortality as the lord of its queen.

This is a translation of the Lai de Lanval, by Marie de France, the original source being, as in the case of all the other stories, a Breton lai which the Anglo-Norman poetess translated into French.

The English poem of the same name, by Thomas of Chester, is not, strictly speaking, a translation of Marie's lai, but an adaptation, into which features borrowed from other sources have been worked. Thus the author evidently knew the lay of Graalent, which, as I have stated in the note to Guingamor, recites precisely the same story as Lanval, only with certain variations in the incidents. Dr. Schofield, in the study to which I have previously referred, decides that the original hero is Lanval.

The Graalent version contains a weirdly pathetic feature which was either unknown to Marie or disregarded by her. The hero rides off, not on the lady's steed, but on his own; crossing the river he is swept from the saddle, and only saved from drowning by his mistress, who takes him up behind her on her palfrey. The knight's charger, reaching the shore, vainly seeks for his master, and the Bretons tell how yearly, on the anniversary of Graalent's disappearance, the horse may be heard neighing loudly for the vanished knight. Thomas of Chester refers to this story evidently, but appears to think that the steed had rejoined its master, as after telling how "every yer, upon a certayn day, Men may here Launfale's stede nay," he goes on to tell how any who desires a joust to keep his arms from rusting "may fynde justes anow wyth Syr Launfal the knyght."

This lay is the translation of one published by M. Gaston Paris (Romania VIII. 1879) from a MS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and previously unknown. It will be seen that it really consists of two distinct stories: (a) Tyolet's Enfances; (b) his achieving of the adventure of the white-footed stag. Whether these two stories originally related to the same hero is doubtful, but both are of considerable importance for the criticism of the Arthurian legend.

(a) Tyolet's Enfances. – This story certainly bears a strong resemblance to the "Perceval" story as related by Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach; but while in some points it seems to have preserved more archaic features, in others it is distinctly more modern. Thus the lad's confusion of the knight with a beast seems a primitive trait, as does also his fairy gift of attracting beasts by whistling, and the curious transformation of the stag, while his behaviour on arriving at court, on the other hand, is far more civilised than that of Perceval. One naturally asks where had he learnt of tourneys and joustings and the knightly duty of "largesse"? The probability is that we have here a revised, and independent, version of the popular folk-tale which under the hands of certain twelfth-century poets developed into the Perceval romance.

(b) Le cerf au pied blanc. This story is also found in the vast compilation of Arthurian romance known as the Dutch Lancelot. There the adventure is attributed to Lancelot, but with certain variants —e. g., Kay, and not Lodoer, is the first to attempt the adventure, and to fail through cowardice (a trait entirely in accord with the rôle played by Kay in the later Arthurian story); Lancelot slays the lions before cutting off the foot of the stag; and he does not marry the lady, who in this version has not herself visited Arthur's court but has sent a messenger. This at once points to a later redaction of the story; the hero certainly ought to marry the maiden at whose instigation he undertakes the adventure.

The part played by the traitor knight did not, I venture to think, originally belong to the story; it is part of a very widely spread Aryan folk-tale, generally relating to the slaying of a dragon or similar monster. Mr. Hartland has given a long list of the variants of this in The Legend of Perseus, vol. iii. A very fine specimen is contained in the early Tristan poems, notably that of Gottfried von Strassburg, and another version, that contained in the poem of Morien ascribes the adventure to Lancelot. It may be remarked that in both the "Lancelot" versions, as in this lai of Tyolet, it is Gawain who seeks the hero, and chivalrously defends his claim against that of the traitor. The story certainly must have become connected with the Arthurian legend at a time when Gawain was still the beau-ideal of knightly courtesy.