RELIQUES

OF

Ancient Poetry, etc.

SERIES THE THIRD.

BOOK I.

I.

POEMS ON KING ARTHUR, &c.

The Third Volume being chiefly devoted to Romantic Subjects, may not be improperly introduced with a few slight Strictures on the old METRICAL ROMANCES: a subject the more worthy attention, as it seems not to have been known to such as have written on the nature and origin of Books of Chivalry, that the first compositions of this kind were in Verse, and usually sung to the harp.

ON THE ANCIENT METRICAL ROMANCES, &c.

I. THE first attempts at composition among all barbarous nations are ever found to be Poetry and Song. The praises of their Gods, and the achievements of their heroes, are usually chanted at their festival meetings. These are the first rudiments of History. It is in this manner that the savages of North America preserve the memory of past events:* and the same method is known to have prevailed among our Saxon Ancestors, before they quitted their German forest.t The ancient Britons had their BARDS, and the Gothic nations their SCALDS or popular poets, whose business it was to record the victories of their warriors, and the genealogies of their Princes, in a kind of narrative songs, which were committed to memory, and delivered down from one Reciter to another. So long as poetry continued a distinct profession, and while the Bard, or Scald, was a regular and stated officer in the Prince's court, these men are thought to have performed the functions of the historian pretty faithfully; for though their narrations would be apt to receive a good deal of embellishment, they are supposed to have had at the bottom so much of truth as to serve for the basis of more regular annals. At least succeeding historians have taken up with the relations of these rude

* Vid. Lasiteau Moeurs de Sauvages, T. 2. Dr. Browne's Hist. of the rise and Progress of Poetry.

Germani celebrant carminibus antiquis (quod unum apud illos memoriæ et annalium genus est) Tuistonem, &c. Tacit. Germ. c. 2.

Barth. Antiq. Dan. Lib. 1. Cap. 10. -Wormii Literatura Runica, ad finem.

men, and, for want of more authentic records, have agreed to allow them the credit of true history.*

After letters began to prevail, and history assumed a more stable form, by being committed to plain simple prose; these Songs of the Scalds or Bards beAnd in progan to be more amusing than useful. portion as it became their business chiefly to entertain and delight, they gave more and more into embellishment, and set off their recitals with such marvellous fictions as were calculated to captivate gross and ignorant minds. Thus began stories of adventures with Giants and Dragons, and Witches and Enchanters, and all the monstrous extravagances of wild imagination, unguided by judgment, and uncorrected by art.t

THIS seems to be the true origin of that species of Romance which so long celebrated feats of Chivalry, and which at first in metre, and afterwards in prose, was the entertainment of our ancestors, in common with their contemporaries on the Continent, till the satire of Cervantes, or rather the increase of knowledge and classical literature, drove them off the stage, to make room for a more refined species of fiction, under the name of French Romances, copied from the Greek.

That our old romances of Chivalry may be derived in a lineal descent from the ancient historical songs of the Gothic Bards and Scalds, will be shown below, and indeed appears the more evident, as many of those Songs are still preserved in the North, which exhibit all the seeds of Chivalry before it became a solemn institution.§ "CHIVALRY, as a distinct mili

* See "Northern Antiquities, or a description of the Man"ners, Customs, &c. of the ancient Danes and other Northern "Nations, translated from the French of M. Mallet," 1770, 2 vols. 8vo. (vol. I. p. 49, &c.)

† Vid. infra, pp. 4, 5, &c.

Viz. ASTRA, CASSANDRA, CLELIA, &C.

§ Mallet, vid. Northern Antiquities, vol. I. p. 318, &c. vol. II. p. 234, &c.

"tary order, conferred in the way of investiture, and "accompanied with the solemnity of an oath, and "other ceremonies," was of later date, and sprung out of the feudal constitution, as an elegant writer has clearly shown.* But the ideas of Chivalry prevailed long before in all the Gothic nations, and may be discovered as in embryo in the customs, manners, and opinions of every branch of that people.t That fondness of going in quest of adventures, that spirit of challenging to single combat, and that respectful complaisance shown to the fair sex (so different from the manners of the Greeks and Romans,) all are of Gothic origin, and may be traced up to the earliest times among all the Northern nations. These existed long before the feudal ages, though they were called forth and strengthened in a peculiar manner under that constitution, and at length arrived to their full maturity in the times of the Crusades, so replete with romantic adventures.§

• Letters concerning Chivalry, 8vo, 1763.

Mallet.

The seeds of Chivalry sprung up so naturally out of the original manners and opinions of the Northern nations, that it is not credible they arose so late as after the establishment of the Feudal System, much less the Crusades. Nor, again, that the Romances of Chivalry were transmitted to other nations, through the Spaniards, from the Moors and Arabians. Had this been the case, the first French Romances of Chivalry would have been on Moorish or at least Spanish subjects: whereas the most ancient stories of this kind, whether in prose or verse, whether in Italian, French, English, &c. are chiefly on the subjects of Charlemagne, and the Paladins; or of our British Arthur, and his Knights of the Round Table, &c. being evidently borrowed from the fabulous Chronicles of the supposed Archbishop Turpin, and of Jeffery of Monmouth. Not but some of the oldest and most popular French Romances are also on Norman subjects, as Richard Sans-peur, Robert Le Diable, &c.; whereas, I do not recollect so much as one in which the scene is laid in Spain, much less among the Moors, or descriptive of Mahometan manners. Even in Amadis de Gaul, said to have been the first Romance printed in Spain, the scene is laid in Gaul and Britain; and the manners are

EVEN the common arbitrary fictions of Romance were (as is hinted above) most of them familiar to the ancient Scalds of the North, long before the time of the Crusades. They believed in the existence of Giants and Dwarfs ;* they entertained opinions not unlike the more modern notion of Fairies ;t they were strongly possessed with the belief of spells and enchantment; and were fond of inventing combats with Dragons and Monsters.

The opinion therefore seems very untenable, which some learned and ingenious men have entertained, that the turn for Chivalry, and the taste for that species of romantic fiction were caught by the Spaniards from the Arabians or Moors after their invasion of Spain, and from the Spaniards transmitted to the Bards of Armorica, and thus diffused through Britain, France,

French which plainly shows from what school this species of fabling was learnt and transmitted to the southern nations of Europe.

Mallet, North. Antiquities, vol. I. p. 36; vol. II. passim. † Olaus Verel. ad Hervarer Saga, pp. 44, 45. Hickes's Thesaur. vol. II. p. 311. Northern Antiquities, vol. II. passim. Ibid. vol. I. pp. 69, 374, &c. vol. II. p. 216, &c. § Rollof's Saga. Cap. 35, &c.

It is peculiarly unfortunate that such as maintain this opinion are obliged to take their first step from the Moorish provinces in Spain, without one intermediate resting-place, to Armorica or Bretagne, the province in France from them most remote, not more in situation than in the manners, habits and language of its Welsh inhabitants, which are allowed to have been derived from this island, as must have been their traditions, songs, and fables; being doubtless all of Celtic original. See p. 3 of the "Dissertation on the origin of romantic “Fiction in Europe," prefixed to Mr. THO. WARTON'S History of English Poetry, vol. 1. 1774, 4to. If any pen could have supported this darling hypothesis of Dr. WARBURTON, that of this ingenious critic would have affected it. But under the general term ORIENTAL he seems to consider the ancient inhabitants of the North and South of Asia as having all the same manners, traditions, and fables; and because the secluded people of Arabia took the lead under the religion and empire of Mahomet