Studia Islandica - 01.07.1966, Page 34

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Fame, and the revolving castle in La Mule sanz Frain), and
the hero is often enahled to get in by the help of a friendly ani-
mal.1 The astrological motives have been lost in these stories,
but are well preserved even in such a late example as the
description of the palace in the castle of the Porte Noire in
Arthur of Little Britain.2 In this story the whirling building
is combined with the motive of the “perilous hed”, common
in the Arthurian cycle, and aoquires some of the charac-
teristics of an “otherworld” castle.3
The fifth motive (the boasting) is associated with the re-
volving building in both Irish and French stories. The Irish
Fled Bricrend and the French Le Voyage de Charlemagne
both contain descriptions of revolving buildings and boasting
episodes, although in neither case does the boasting actually
take place in the revolving building. There are many points
of resemblance between these two works. Bricriu’s hall4 is
very like the sleeping chamber assigned to Charlemagne in
King Hugue’s palace 5 : in it Conchobar’s royal couch is sur-
rounded by twelve other couches for the twelve heroes of
Ulster, just as the magnificent bed prepared for Charle-
1 The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2nd ed.
(Boston 1957), p. 300; La Mule sanz Frain, ed. Raymond Thompson
Hill (Baltimore 1911), lines 440 ff. Many examples of revolving build-
ings in romance and other literature are quoted by Wilbur Owen
Sypherd, Studies in Chaucer’s Hous of Fame (London 1907), pp. 144 ff.
2 The history of the valiant knight Arthur of Little Britain, trans.
J. Bourchier, Lord Berners, [ed. E. V. Utterson] (London 1814), pp. 139
—144. The French original, which has not yet been published, was
written in the fourteenth century and could not have been known to the
author of RauSúlfs þáttr. See R. S. Loomis, “The visit to the Perilous
Castle,” PMLA XLVIII (1933), pp. 1000—1035, esp. pp. 1015 ff.
3 Cf. also the Prose Percival, Perceval le Gallois, ed. Ch. Potvin
(Mons 1866—71), I 195 f.; the Welsh Seint Greal, in Selections from
the Hengwrt Manuscripts, ed. and tr. Robert Williams and G. H. Jones
(London 1876—92), I 325 and 649. See also Einar Ól. Sveinsson, “Celtic
Elements in Icelandic Tradition,” Béaloideas, Journal of the Folklore of
Ireland Society (1959 for 1957), pp. 11—12.
4 Fled Bricrend. The feast of Bricriu, ed. and trans. George Hender-
son, Irish Texts society II (London 1899), pp. 2—5.
5 Le Voyage de Charlemagne (see p. 10, note 2 above) lines 421 ff.