the dark
sisterhood of the island of the Loire. The learning she received from
her gifted lover had been her undoing in Breton eyes, for the simple
folk of the duchy at the period the ballad gained currency could
scarcely be expected to discriminate between a training in rhetoric
and philosophy and a schooling in the _grimoires_ and other
accomplishments of the pit.

FOOTNOTES:

[50] Rice Holmes, _Caesar's Conquest_, pp. 532-536.

[51] See Rolleston, _Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race_, p. 66.

[52] See Gomme, _Ethnology in Folk-lore_, p. 94.

[53] It is of interest to recall the fact that Abelard was born near
Nantes, in 1079.

CHAPTER X: ARTHURIAN ROMANCE IN BRITTANY

Fierce and prolonged has been the debate as to the original birthplace
of Arthurian legend, authorities of the first rank, the 'Senior
Wranglers' of the study, as Nutt has called them, hotly advancing the
several claims of Wales, England, Scotland, and Brittany. In this
place it would be neither fitting nor necessary to traverse the whole
ground of argument, and we must content ourselves with the examination
of Brittany's claim to the invention of Arthurian story--and this we
will do briefly, passing on to some of the tales which relate the
deeds of the King or his knights on Breton soil.

Confining ourselves, then, to the proof of the existence of a body of
Arthurian legend in Brittany, we are, perhaps, a little alarmed at the
outset to find that our manuscript sources are scanty. "It had to be
acknowledged," says Professor Saintsbury, "that Brittany could supply
_no ancient texts whatever_, and hardly any ancient traditions."[54]
But are either of these conditions essential to a belief in the Breton
origin of Arthurian romance?

The two great hypotheses regarding Arthurian origins have been dubbed
the 'Continental' and the 'Insular' theories. The first has as its
leading protagonist Professor Wendelin Foerster of Bonn, who believes
that the immigrant Britons brought the Arthur legend with them to
Brittany and that the Normans of Normandy received it from their
descendants and gave it wider territorial scope. The second school,
headed by the brilliant M. Gaston Paris, believes that it originated
in Wales.

If we consider the first theory, then, we can readily see that ancient
_texts_ are not essential to its acceptance. In any case the entire
body of Arthurian texts prior to the twelfth century is so small as to