Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

295Conqueror into England. 212 The introducers of the saga intoWales found, however, a considerable body of Arthurian matterof a very different character already in existence there. Besidesthe traditions of the historical Arthur, the dux bellorum ofNennius, there was the Celtic deity, Artaius. It is probably areminiscence of this deity whom we meet with under the nameof Arthur in the only genuine Welsh Arthurian story we possess,the story of Kilhwch and Olwen in the “Mabinogion.” Much ofthe Arthurian saga derived from Chrestien and other Continentalwriters was translated and adapted in Wales as in other Europeancountries, but as a matter of fact it made a later and a lesserimpression in Wales than almost anywhere else. It conflictedwith existing Welsh traditions, both historical and mythological;it was full of matter entirely foreign to the Welsh spirit, and itremained always in Wales something alien and unassimilated.Into Ireland it never entered at all.These few introductory remarks do not, of course, professto contain a discussion of the Arthurian saga—a vast subjectwith myriad ramifications, historical, mythological, mystical, [344]and what not—but are merely intended to indicate the relation ofthat saga to genuine Celtic literature and to explain why we shallhear so little of it in the following accounts of Cymric mythsand legends. It was a great spiritual myth which, arising fromthe composite source above described, overran all the Continent,as its hero was supposed to have done in armed conquest, butit cannot be regarded as a special possession of the Celtic race,nor is it at present extant, except in the form of translation oradaptation, in any Celtic tongue.Gaelic and Cymric Legend ComparedThe myths and legends of the Celtic race which have comedown to us in the Welsh language are in some respects of adifferent character from those which we possess in Gaelic. The212 A list of them is given in Lobineau's “Histoire de Bretagne.”