Such being the case, it is remarkable that when the chief romances
are examined, the name of many of the heroes and their scenes of
action are found to be Celtic, and those of persons and places famous
in the traditions of Wales and Brittany. Of this the romances of
Ywaine and Gawaine, Sir Perceval de Galles, Eric and Enide, Mort
d'Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Sir Tristan, the Graal, &c., may be cited as
examples. In some cases a tendency to triads, and other matters of
internal evidence, point in the same direction.

It may seem difficult to account for this. Although the ancient
dominion of the Celts over Europe is not without enduring evidence in
the names of the mountains and streams, the great features of a
country, yet the loss of their prior language by the great mass of
the Celtic nations in Southern Europe (if indeed their successors in
territory be at all of their blood), prevents us from clearly seeing,
and makes us wonder, how stories, originally embodied in the Celtic
dialects of Great Britain and France, could so influence the
literature of nations to whom the Celtic languages were utterly
unknown. Whence then came these internal marks, and these proper
names of persons and places, the features of a story usually of
earliest date and least likely to change?

These romances were found in England, France, Germany, Norway,
Sweden, and even Iceland, as early as the beginning of the thirteenth
and end of the twelfth century. The Germans, who propagated them
through the nations of the North, derived them certainly from France.
Robert Wace published his Anglo-Norman Romance of the Brut
d'Angleterre about 1155. Sir Tristan was written in French prose in
1170; and The Chevalier au Lion, Chevalier de l'Epee, and Sir