Читать книгу Legends & Romances of Brittany - Льюис Спенс - Страница 41

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Of all the many localities celebrated in the fairy lore of Brittany none is so famous as Broceliande. Broceliande! “The sound is like a bell,” a far, faëry chime in a twilit forest. In the name Broceliande there seems to be gathered all the tender charm, the rich and haunting mystery, the remote magic of Brittany and Breton lore. It is, indeed, the title to the rarest book in the library of poetic and traditional romance.

“I went to seek out marvels,” said old Wace. “The forest I saw, the land I saw. I sought marvels, but I found none. A fool I came back, a fool I went; a fool 55 I went, a fool I came back; foolishness I sought; a fool I hold myself.”[20]

Our age, even less sceptical than his, sees no folly in questing for the beautiful, and if we expect no marvels, nor any sleight of faëry, however desirous we are, we do not hold it time lost to plunge into the enchanted forest and in its magic half-gloom grope for, and perchance grasp, dryad draperies, or be trapped in the filmy webs of fancy which are spun in these shadows for unwary mortals.

Standing in dream-girt Broceliande of a hundred legends, its shadows mirrored by dim meres that may never reflect the stars, one feels the lure of Brittany more keenly even than when walking by its fierce and jagged coasts menaced by savage grey seas, or when wandering on its vast moors where the monuments of its pagan past stand in gigantic disarray. For in the forest is the heart of Arthurian story, the shrine of that wonder which has drawn thousands to this land of legend, who, like old Wace, trusted to have found, if not elfin marvels, at least matter of phantasy conjured up by the legendary associations of Broceliande.

But we must beware of each step in these twilit recesses, for the fays of Brittany are not as those of other lands. Harsh things are spoken of them. They are malignant, say the forest folk. The note of Brittany is scarce a joyous one. It is bitter-sweet as a sad chord struck on an ancient harp.

The fays of Brittany are not the friends of man. They are not ‘the good people,’ ‘the wee folk’; they have no endearing names, the gift of a grateful peasantry. Cold and hostile, they hold aloof from human converse, and, 56 should they encounter man, vent their displeasure at the interruption in the most vindictive manner.

Whether the fairies of Brittany be the late representatives of the gods of an elder day or merely animistic spirits who have haunted these glades since man first sheltered in them, certain it is that in no other region in Europe has Mother Church laid such a heavy ban upon all the things of faëry as in this strange and isolated peninsula. A more tolerant ecclesiastical rule might have weaned them to a timid friendship, but all overtures have been discouraged, and to-day they are enemies, active, malignant, swift to inflict evil upon the pious peasant because he is pious and on the energetic because of his industry.