BRITTANY
The original of this story is in ballad form and it gives us a brief and tantalizing glimpse of the beauty of the Celtic Otherworld, as well as containing several other classic Celtic motifs.
Gwennolaik was the most beautiful maiden in the town of Treguier, but her misfortune was that she had lost her mother, her father, and her two sisters when she was very young. Her only remaining relative was her stepmother. She stood weeping at her door, nursing the faint hope that one day her foster brother might return from overseas. Often she gazed out to sea, hoping for the ship that would bring him home. But six years had passed, and when she thought of him it was as the boy she had
Played games with, not as the young man he had become.
The stepmother broke into her daydreams: “Hurry up and attend to the animals. I don’t feed you for idling.”
Though noble by birth, Gwennolaik was forced by her harsh stepmother to get up very early in the morning to light the fire and sweep the floors.
One winter evening she was at the well, breaking ice in order to draw water, when a passing knight asked if she was spoken for.
She did not answer.
“Don’t be afraid,” the horseman said. “Just answer my question.”
She said she was not betrothed to anyone.
“Good,” said the knight. “Take this gold ring and tell your stepmother you are betrothed to a knight from Nantes who has fought a great battle and lost his squire in the fighting. Tell her the knight has a sword-wound in the side. In three weeks and three days, when the wound is healed, I shall return and take you to my manor.”
Gwennolaik went back into the house. When she looked at the ring she realized it was the same as the one her foster brother used to wear.
Three weeks passed and the knight did not return. Then Gwennolaik’s stepmother said, “It’s time you married and I have found you the man you should marry.”
The maiden found the courage to speak. “Saving your grace, good stepmother, I only wish to marry my foster brother, who has returned from across the sea. He has given me a gold wedding ring and promises to come for me in a few days.”
The stepmother would hear nothing of this plan. “A fig for your gold ring! Bon gre, malgre, you’ll marry the stable boy, Job the Witless.”
Gwennolaik was distraught, but her stepmother was unmoved by her tears. “Howl out in the courtyard if you must, but you’ll be married in three days.”
Meanwhile the gravedigger was walking along the road, swinging his bell and taking news of those newly dead from one village to the next. Mournfully he chanted, “Pray for the soul of a worthy knight who was mortally wounded in the side with a stroke of sword in battle. Today he’s to be buried in the White Church.”
At the marriage feast, the bride was in tears. All the guests wept with her—all but her stepmother.
When the dancing began and it was proposed that the bride should lead the dance, she was nowhere to be found. She had fled the house.
She was slumped in the garden, feverish with despair, when she hard someone close by.
“Who is it?”
“It is I, your foster brother, Nola.”
“Can it really be you? Dear brother, you are truly welcome!”
Nola swung her up onto his white horse and they rode off into the night.
“We must have ridden 100 leagues,” she said, “but I am happy with you. I will never leave you again.”
Owls hooted and the sounds of the night filled her ears.
“Your horse is swift,” she said, “and your armor shines so brightly. How happy I am to have found you. But are we near your manor?”
“In good time,” Nola answered. “We shall be there in good time, sister.”
“But your heart is so cold, your hair is so wet! How cold your hands are!”
“Sister, listen. Do you hear the noise of the musicians who will play at our wedding?”
Gwennolaik found herself on an island where a great crowd of maidens and youths were dancing beneath green trees laden with apples. The music they danced to was heavenly; she had heard no music like it. The sun rose in the east and this strange new world was flooded with rich light. Then Gwennolaik saw her mother and her two sisters and her heart was filled with beauty and joy.„
The next morning, as the sun climbed the sky, the young women carried the body of Gwennolaik to the tomb of her foster brother in the White Church. They laid it inside.
World History
