Book X

. we have a curious account of the origin of these strange people.

[The 'Loathly Damsel' is one of those personages that most clearly testify to the reliance of the romance-writers upon a traditional popular basis, and also in this instance to the specific Celtic origin of that popular basis. A commonplace of folk-tales of the 'task' class is that the hero is helped by a personage having private ends of his or her own to serve, as, until the hero achieves the Quest (which he never does unaided), the helper cannot be released from a spell, generally of transformation into an animal, but sometimes into a shape of surpassingly hideous ugliness. The oldest European variant of this latter type with which I am acquainted is to be found in an Irish folk-tale imbedded in the so-called Cormac's Glossary, a compilation of the tenth century. I have given this in full (_Argyllshire Tales_, M'Innes and Nutt, pp. 467, 468). In its _outré_ horror the description of the bespelled king's son strikingly recalls that of Kundrie. Such a task story, in which the hero is helped by a transformed personage, who cannot be delivered until the Quest is achieved, is one of the main staples of the Perceval cycle, but it is only in the Welsh tale of _Peredur_ that the incident appears in a straightforward and intelligible form. The sudden transformation from foulness to radiant beauty is met with in another connection earlier in Ireland than elsewhere in Europe: the incident of the Perilous Kiss, in which the embrace of a courteous knight frees a bespelled damsel from loathly disguise, an incident frequently associated with Gawain, is, as I have shown (_Academy_, April 30, 1892), of early occurrence in Ireland. Another element which goes to the complex individuality of Kundrie can be paralleled from early Irish romance. As the female messenger of the fairy dynasty of Mazadan, she corresponds to Leborcham, the female messenger of the semi-mythic King Conchobor, the head and centre of the oldest Irish cycle of heroic romance. Like Kundrie, Leborcham was of startling and unnatural hideousness, and she is brought into special connection with Cuchulainn the chief hero of the Ulster cycle, as Kundrie is with Perceval the chief hero of one group of the Arthur romances.--A.N.]

Page 181, line 697--'_Château Merveil_.' The adventure of this magic castle, achieved by Gawain, is related at length in