Celtic versus Christian

It is well known that medieval romance is rich in both Celtic and Christian elements, but it is common to assume they are separate, even opposed. Yet while some texts follow a Celtic inspiration and others pursue a Christian path, in some of the finest achievements of romance, from Robert de Boron's Merlin-focused Grail story to Malory's presentation of Arthur's end, the Celtic and the Christian are potently condensed.

The notional hostility of Celticity and Christianity in romance derives in part from ignorance, sometimes amounting to prejudice. Remarkably few analyses of Chrétien refer to the Welsh Mabinogion stories, and Guyer's summary is cumulatively dismissive: ‘Such faint Celtic influences as may have existed are so elusive, so difficult to establish or explain as to be negligible.’ Equally, however, the separation of Celtic and Christian origins can have a secularist origin, as in the determined efforts of R. S. Loomis to displace the religious thrust of the Grail stories in favour of Celtic mythic origins, a move taken to international lengths, and extremes, by Jessie L. Weston. This approach was criticized by J. D. Bruce, who offered a strongly Christian reading of the Grail story, but the idea of mythic substructures proved memorable, being in the spirit of modernism as well as scholarly excitement: Loomis's speculations included a prolepsis of Lévi-Straussian structuralism as well as seductive references to Irish figures far from romance like Curoi the rogue shape-shifter and Scathach the woman warrior.

But while the modernists as artists can be forgiven their distortions, Loomis's quasi-scholarly Celticism contained debilitating errors. Speaking from a transatlantic distance, he (like some modern authors of historical fiction) saw the Irish and Welsh traditions as an interchangeable pool of materials: Curoi can stride from Old Irish into the north British ambience of Yvain with no difficulties; Lancelot shares origins with Irish Lug (the alleged Celtic Apollo), Welsh Llwch (not necessarily related) as well as the French or perhaps Breton King Lac. But Welsh and Irish traditions had long been separate, especially linguistically, and the Franco-Normans had no direct contact with secular Irish story: consequently, if elements of medieval romance do not show links to Welsh or Breton tradition they can hardly be deemed Celtic at all.