Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

297which has since been considered the most essential motive in aromantic tale is almost entirely lacking. This is the element oflove, or rather of woman-worship. The Continental fabulist feltthat he could do nothing without this motive of action. But the“lady-love” of the English, French, or German knight, whosefavour he wore, for whose grace he endured infinite hardshipand peril, does not meet us in Gaelic literature. It would haveseemed absurd to the Irish Celt to make the plot of a seriousstory hinge on the kind of passion with which the mediaevalDulcinea inspired her faithful knight. In the two most famousand popular of Gaelic love-tales, the tale of Deirdre and “The [346]Pursuit of Dermot and Grania,” the women are the wooers, andthe men are most reluctant to commit what they know to bethe folly of yielding to them. Now this romantic, chivalric kindof love, which idealised woman into a goddess, and made theservice of his lady a sacred duty to the knight, though it neverreached in Wales the height which it did in Continental andEnglish romances, is yet clearly discernible there. We can traceit in “Kilhwch and Olwen,” which is comparatively an ancienttale. It is well developed in later stories like “Peredur” and “TheLady of the Fountain.” It is a symptom of the extent to which,in comparison with the Irish, Welsh literature had lost its pureCeltic strain and become affected—I do not, of course, say to itsloss—by foreign influences.Gaelic and Cymric Mythology: NuddThe oldest of the Welsh tales, those called “The Four Branchesof the Mabinogi,” 216 are the richest in mythological elements, butthese occur in more or less recognisable form throughout nearlyall the mediaeval tales, and even, after many transmutations,in Malory. We can clearly discern certain mythological figurescommon to all Celtica. We meet, for instance, a personage calledNudd or Lludd, evidently a solar deity. A temple dating from216 “Pwyll King of Dyfed,” “Bran and Branwen,” “Math Sor of Māthonwy,”and “Manawyddan Son of Llyr.”