SO FAR we have looked at the historical Celtic kingdoms and their underlying social, religious and political backgrounds, and at the notions of kingship revealed in Celtic myths and legends. Now, in this final chapter, we will briefly examine how these ideas have spread through space and time, and what legacy they have left, on the world in general and on the Celtic nations themselves.
There are great riches here. The Celtic spirit, so dynamic and distinctive, has continued to exert a powerful influence in the world, even though the early kingdoms in which it had its birth are long since gone. Ireland would not be a politically independent republic without that legacy. Wales and Scotland would be very different places without that legacy. Even England, which has been so enriched by Celtic culture, would not be the same without that legacy. The Celtic migrations to America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere have carried that legacy across the whole world. I have eaten a steaming, home-made Cornish pasty in Michigan as well as in Camborne or Penzance. I have listened to traditional Irish singing and fiddling in Boston as well as in Killarney and Tralee. I have had conversations in Cornish with natives of Moonta, New South Wales, Australia, and conversations in French with families of Breton extraction on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada (where there are also Scots Gaelic kirks, a Gaelic-language summer school, and Canadian Highland Games).
In 1508, the anonymous Spanish romance Amadis of Gaul was published. It captured the mediaeval imagination and became immensely popular. Jean Baptiste Lully and Johann Christian Bach both wrote opera versions of the story, as did Handel, under the title Amadigi di Gaula, also sometimes called Oriana. Jules Massenet’s opera on the same theme is called Amadis.
Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate of England, wrote an epic poem based on the story, which was published in 1803. But where does the story come from? The briefest glance at the plot and themes tells us immediately:
Amadis, called the Lion Knight for the device on his shield, also Beltenbros (‘darkly shining BeP or ‘Bel of the shadows’) for his swarthy handsomeness, is the illegitimate son of Perion, King of Gaula (Wales, rather than Gallia or Gaul) and Elizena, Princess of Brittany. At his birth, his mother conceals him in an ark and launches him in a stream which carries him to the Scottish coast. He is found by the knight Gandales and called ‘Child of the Sea*. The boy grows into a handsome youth of devastating physical prowess. He falls in love with Oriana, but to win her he has to undergo a series of tests, including the Arch of True Lovers and the Forbidden Chamber, required by King Apolidon, ruler of the magical island to which they have come to prove their love. Amadis passes the tests, and the couple produce a child of great beauty, called Esplandian.
Even without the giveaway place names, it is crystal clear that this is a Celtic royal myth, even though it appears in late mediaeval Spain. Many of the elements with which we have become familiar are obviously present: the hero’s illegitimate birth; his rite of passage by water as an infant; his raising by a kindly foster-parent; his taking of a god’s name (Bel) as an epithet; his rivalry with an older king to win his queen; the couple’s fertility after the young king has passed the tests and proved himself worthy to generate the succession.
The principal agent for this widespread dissemination of Celtic ideas and themes was the Matter of Britain, the Arthurian legends, although, as we noted earlier, there are many commonalities and connections between the Irish and Welsh material, so it would be wrong to exclude the Gaels entirely from this influence. In fact, the Fenian stories, in all probability composed quite a bit later than the other Irish cycles, appear to have influenced the development of the Arthurian material direaly. There are tales in which Arthur fights witches, or mythical beasts, or giants in almost identical fashion to Fionn Mac Cumhaill. The story of Tristan and Isolde, which, as mentioned earlier, was probably Cornish in origin, has a kind of parallel in the Irish The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Grainne. The frequent theme of the hunt or quest in wild places, deserts and empty forests is certainly also very prominent in the Fenian legends.
The migrations which brought Celts to all parts of the world belong to a later part of this chapter, but world voyaging itself begins very early in Celtic history. Many of the early voyage stories, as with so much of early Celtic material, present a mixture of fact and myth which it is very difficult to untangle.
World History
