The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' by Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
page 38 of 169 (22%)
page 38 of 169 (22%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
Chaucer called the fairy-king Pluto and the queen Proserpina.
Again, to hark back to the other romances, we have found the word _fay_ attached to the name of King Arthur's sister Morgan. Nothing is more remarkably certain than the close and constant association in mediaeval lore of the fairies and the fairy-world with the Arthurian cycle of romance;[74] King Arthur's sister was Morgan le Fay, whose son by Ogier was Merlin; and the romance of _Huon of Bordeaux_, which relates these facts, though strictly belonging to the Charlemagne cycle, contains the account of Oberon's bequest of his realm to King Arthur. Chaucer, whatever other doubts he may have had, was convinced on this point:--[75] "In th' olde daiès of the King Arthoure, Of which that Bretons speken gret honoure, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye; The elfqueen with hir joly companye Dauncèd ful ofte in many a grenè mede; This was the olde opinion as I rede." Now the Arthurian legends ultimately derive from Celtic tales, which must be supposed to have travelled from Wales into France by way of Brittany--Little Britain, or Armorica--in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; for there are Welsh versions independent of the Breton forms, though closely akin. Students of early Celtic literature have not as yet agreed about the historical relations between Welsh and Irish stories--whether the Welsh imposed their mythology and heroic legends on the Irish, or _vice versa_; but the general similarity between them is undeniable, and easily explicable by a common Celtic source. Everything, then, points to the Celtic legends as the chief origin of the |
|