vault of heaven, the tapestried walls become
the ivied screens of great forest trees, the princely furnishings
are transformed into mossy banks and mounds, and the rugs and carpets
beneath Roland's mailed feet are now merged in the forest ways.

But the lady? Sir Roland, glancing down, beholds a hag hideous as sin,
whose malicious and distorted countenance betrays baffled hate and
rage. At the sound of a bugle she hurries away with a discordant
shriek. Into the glade ride Roland's men, to see their lord clasping
his rosary and kneeling in thanksgiving for his deliverance from the
evils which beset him. He had been saved from breaking his vow!

The nine attendant maidens of the Korrigan bring to mind a passage in
Pomponius Mela[24]: "Sena [the Ile de Sein, not far from Brest], in
the British Sea, opposite the Ofismician coast, is remarkable for an
oracle of the Gallic god. Its priestesses, holy in perpetual
virginity, are said to be nine in number. They are called Gallicenae,
and are thought to be endowed with singular powers. By their charms
they are able to raise the winds and seas, to turn themselves into
what animals they will, to cure wounds and diseases incurable by
others, to know and predict the future. But this they do only for
navigators, who go thither purposely to consult them."

Like the sylphs and salamanders so humorously described by the Abbe de
Villars in _Le Comte de Gabalis_,[25] the Korrigans desired union with
humanity in order that they might thus gain immortality. Such, at
least, is the current peasant belief in Brittany. "For this end they
violate all the laws of modesty." This belief is common to all lands,
and is typical of the fay, the Lorelei, countless well and water
sprites, and that enchantress who rode off with Thomas the Rhymer:

For if you dare to kiss my lips
Sure of your bodie I shall be.

Unlike the colder Sir Roland, 'True Thomas' dared, and was wafted to a
realm wondrously described by the old balladeer in the vivid phrase
that marks the poetry of vision.

_Merlin and Vivien_

It was in this same verdant Broceliande that Vivien, another fairy,
that crafty dame of the enchanted lake, the instructress of Lancelot,
bound wise Merlin so that he might no more go to Camelot with oracular
lips to counsel British Arthur.

But what say the folk of Broceliande themselves of this? Let us hear
their version of a tale which has been so battered by modern
criticism, and which has