Exactly what is a breton lay

Strictly speaking the name should apply only to the first four tales, known in Welsh as Pedair Cainc y Mabinogi — the Four Branches of the Mabinogi — but seven other medieval tales and romances have been attached to them. It may be unfortunate because of the loss of Welsh uniqueness and authenticity, but it is nevertheless most interesting from the point of view of the Breton lays, since it shows that Welsh story-tellers did not exist in a cultural vacuum, outside the Anglo-Norman domain.

Nor was the influence all one way — further evidence that Marie de France may have heard stories like these which inspired her Breton lays. A few examples will suffice to illustrate this, taken from the Four Branches, omitting most of the narrative details and retaining only the magical or marvellous elements in order to show their importance some of these episodes are paralleled in the Breton lays.

The fairy court is human-like except that everything is more magnificent than Pwyll has ever seen. To extricate them from this situation, Rhiannon gives Pwyll a magic bag, which Pwyll tricks Gwawl into entering, thereby rendering him helpless. Pwyll releases his rival from bondage in exchange for his submission and is now free to marry Rhiannon. The boy mysteriously disappears during the night and his mother is accused of murdering him. Her guilt cannot be proved but she is obliged to do penance.

No explanation is given for the strange disappearance but later events show it to be of fairy origin; it is well known that the fairies steal human babies. He has been carried off, presumably by Arawn the fairy king for whom no son was mentioned in the earlier section. But he will be returned in complex circumstances, showing signs of his sojourn in the Otherworld. He and his wife name him Gwri Golden-hair. Unlike a normal human child, he matures and grows very rapidly.

But it soon becomes obvious to them that he is the missing son of Pwyll, whom he closely resembles. He eventually succeeds his father as ruler of Dyfed South Wales. The fairy king who carries off a human being recalls Sir Orfeo , as does the love between Pwyll and his wife.

The strange origin of Pryderi, human but with Otherworldly powers gained during his fairy sojourn, recalls the demonic birth of Sir Gowther in the lay of that name. Peace is briefly restored, and the British ruler gives the Irish king a magic cauldron as a token of friendship. It came originally from Ireland, having been taken out of a lake by two Irish giants, a man and a woman.

It had the desirable property of restoring life to dead warriors who were put into it, who nevertheless remained without speech, a feature which makes them sound rather like zombies. Its first owners had been driven out of Ireland, taking refuge in Britain with King Bendigeidfran and bringing the Cauldron of Life with them.

Bendigeidfran himself is a giant of a man who can fit into neither house nor ship but who is able to wade across the Irish Sea on foot, and then to lie down across the River Liffey in order to make a human bridge for his own men to pass over. A truce is again made, but during the banquet the evil uncle, Efnisien, kills the boy Gwern by throwing him into the fire.

The Irish attempt to use the magic cauldron to restore their dead warriors to life, and Efnisien, thinking to gain some advantage from it by following their example, arranges to have himself thrown in alive; but the result is catastrophic, for the cauldron bursts apart and he is killed.

When they return to Britain they find that a usurper, Caswallan, has taken control and has been crowned king in London. Caswallan has a magic mantle which makes him invisible though not his sword , thus allowing him to kill his enemies with ease. Then they spend eighty years in a palace overlooking Cornwall in a state of bliss, listening to wondrous birdsong.

But a taboo has been laid upon them, not to open a marvellous window which would allow them to look upon Cornwall — why, is not explained, but the window may be interpreted as a portal, a passage into the Otherworld.

When one of them insists on opening it, after eighty years, normal memory returns, they lose all joy, are filled with sorrow and grief, and must set out for London to bury the head in the White Mount. They and their five sons divide the island between them and become the ancestors of the Irish people. The cauldron is just one of the sources of the Grail story, before the Grail was given a Christian interpretation and became the Holy Grail, the life-giving chalice.

Far from being an incidental adornment, magic is central to the action. But the narrator makes no attempt to interpret or explain it; as a narrative device, magic is simply a given, an integral part of the tale. This is perhaps what makes the Welsh and Irish stories seem so fantastic in the literal meaning of the word. Mysterious thunder is accompanied by a mist which portends strange events.

A fairy castle appears suddenly out of nowhere, 32 a golden bowl will not unloose the hands of anyone who touches it, and there are charms, enchantments and spells galore. Pryderi is again a central character in Math Son of Mathonwy. There are magic stallions and greyhounds, spells and enchantments sometimes short term, just lasting for a day , and golden shields made out of toadstools. There are impressive conjuring feats, such as making a ship out of seaweed which is big enough to take human passengers and sail away.

Shape-changing can happen by choice turning oneself into an eagle , but it can also be imposed as a punishment. Sex change is no obstacle. Two men struck by a magic wand are changed into animals three times, male and female by turns, for a year each time hind and stag, boar and sow, wolf and she-wolf ; following their animal nature, they couple and give birth to young; this brings great shame on them when they eventually return to human form, since each of them has had young by the other.

Like the tales already mentioned, it is full of magic, shape-shifters, beasts and talking birds. It is set in the court of King Arthur, portrayed as a British Welsh ruler. This is significant from the point of view of the Breton lays, which Marie de France says she based on songs, not on long romances. But the Celtic elements do not come from French originally, rather from Welsh, so it is hard to disentangle the threads of mutual influence.

By the twelfth century it is clear that matters Celtic were the rage in literature, and that for a variety of reasons Arthurian legend was the fashion. Nevertheless there are two details in this quotation that require comment.

Whereas the Welsh in the 12 th century had a rich fund of stories which would have appealed to the Anglo-Normans, as The Mabinogion demonstrates, there is not a shred of evidence that it was also true of the continental Bretons.

No independent Breton literature has survived, and nowhere outside the lays of Marie de France is there any significant reference to Breton minstrels or storytellers. No doubt she wants to know more about them, their origin and composition, whether there are others like them, and so on; in fact Aranrhod has intellectual literary tastes, just like Marie de France. And we need not wonder if Welsh bards were capable of learning enough French to tell their tales in the courts of the Anglo-Norman kings and the Marcher lords who controlled the frontier between Wales and England.

Gerald of Wales is a good example of a bilingual Cambro-Norman who knew and loved Welsh music, song and story, which he practiced himself as a young man. Furthermore, on his several trips to Ireland in the s, he was enchanted by the music and song of the native people which reminded him so much of his home in Wales where the culture was so similar.

The English poets therefore imitated the idea of a genre, a short romance of love and adventure, usually with a happy end. They were willing enough to call a poem a Breton lay even when it had nothing to do with ancient Britain or Brittany and without having any single, clearly defined source in French or English.

The genre seems to be very loosely conceived in the 14 th century, and hardly distinguished from romance. The story told is the important thing to these poets. In other ways his tale treats the tradition with irony, giving astronomy and astrology a more important role than fairy magic or religious miracle. Regarding this type of approach, see John B. Concerning the various adaptations of the Lanval story, see among others Mortimer J.

All references are based on the following edition: Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury, eds. The floating generic identification is addressed in exactly the same terms by R. On the interaction between literacy and orality, see especially Roy M. See A. Karl Warnke; transl. CrossRef Google Scholar. Hume argues that there are three typical features of the lay which Chaucer knew and used: 1 "a concern with love and with what the Franklin calls 'gentilesse,' 2 the frequent use of magic both fairie and other as a plot device, and 3 an a-Christian ethic" p.

Yoder, "Chaucer and the 'Breton' Lay. Although Brittany remained neutral during the war, there were claims to her sovereignty made by both England and France.

Many English garrisons were stationed there and, according to Seward, Brittany was the site of one of the most memorable events of the war. Called the "Combat of the Thirty" it was a staged event, a chivalric tournament between thirty English soldiers and thirty French soldiers. Suggested by the English garrison commander, the idea was to come to some determination of military superiority without a fullblown battle. The French won, killing nine English soldiers including the garrison commander and taking the rest prisoner.

See also John H. See The Breton Lay , p. Brewer, , p. Variations occur even among versions of the same poem. Beston, "How Much Was Known? New York: Burt Franklin, See also Carol M. Meale, ed.

Coleman argues that the extension of the "middle class" marked a corresponding increase in manuscript patronage. The newly literate were interested in "what concerned pious men of commerce, eager to establish law and order, principles of morality and peace" p.

What is a Breton lay and why is its designation in Middle English important? Without the identification of "Middle English," the Breton lay may refer to any of the poems produced between approximately and which claim to be literary versions of lays sung by ancient Bretons to the accompaniment of the harp.

Of them only Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal and the anonymous Lay le Freine may be considered translations or adaptations of Marie's poems. In an early attempt, A. Baugh offers the following: whether a given short romance is called a Breton lay or not depends mainly on whether it says it is one, has its scene laid in Brittany, contains a passing reference to Brittany, or tells a story found among the lais of Marie de France. But the poems also call themselves contes , stories, gestes , and romances, a tendency that suggests that the Middle Ages felt no clear need for generic types.

Needless to say, this has created confusion among scholars about the validity of calling Middle English Breton lay a genre at all. Most scholars see the lays as a shortened form of romance. For Finlayson, the poems constitute a "sub-genre of romance" equivalent in their relation to the longer romances as short story is to novel.

They also follow the general pattern of romance — separation and reunion — or, as Northrop Frye views it, a journey of descent followed by ascent and a corresponding resolution of the hero or heroine's identity, purpose, and place in the world. As Finlayson concludes, "the lay in Middle English is not a uniform sub-type of romance distinguishable by a manner of treatment and by particular combinations of motifs. Both varieties are emphatically metrical with rhythmic features undeniably musical, perhaps, as some scholars reckon, something analogous to folk music intended to be performed in public places by minstrels.

In Sir Orfeo , for instance, Orfeo finds pleasure and solace in his harp as he grieves the loss of his bride, while in Sir Cleges , the hero's identity is revealed in a memorable scene of minstrelsy. None of the other poems contain such overt references to music, though in some cases they provide a courtly ethos against which the drama is played out.

But since these are literary texts undoubtedly intended to be read aloud, the verbal repetitions, rhyming patterns, and exhortations to "listen," all capture the vibrant cadences of oral performance. With much critical attention turned to matters of "form," it is not surprising that other crucial generic features have been overlooked or even subtly discounted. Subject matter and its treatment, for instance, has been cast aside as having "nothing distinctive" to offer.

To define the genre then we must not only take into consideration the formal nature of these narratives, i. Sum bethe of wer and sum of wo, And sum of joie and mirth also, And sum of trecherie and of gile, Of old aventours that fel while; And sum of bourdes and ribaudy, And mani ther beth of fairy. Of al thinges that men seth, Mest o love, for sothe thai beth. These subjects are familiar to a medieval audience not only from literary narratives "they redeth oft," but from the realities of medieval life.

Difficult social problems especially within the family — incest, rape, abandonment, illegitimacy — as well as issues of the larger community — inheritance, exile, orphanage, poverty, violence, social mobility, punishment, rehabilitation, territorial disputes — are subjected to analysis and transformation.

Plausible social contexts lend the poems an air of realism, while, at the same time, infusions of the marvelous and strange cast an aura of enchantment about them.