Classical Threads in "Orfeo"
[Footnotes moved to the end- needs proofing]
Classical Threads in "Orfeo"
by Constance Davies
The Modern Language Review, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Apr., 1961), pp. 161-166
CLASSICAL THREADS IN 'ORFEO'
Although the tree under which Queen Heurodis fell asleep was an ordinary garden ympe tre, the consequences of her action imply that the tree and the circumstances had special significance. According to what we know of fairy lore, such significance
is not hard to discover. To fall asleep under a 'magic' tree at noontide in the beginning of May was fraught with danger; old pagan rites, rendered innocuous by their transference into fairy story, underlie the apparently normal conditions
described in the opening of Orfeo. The ympe tre, together with the vndertide, the
comessing of May and the fairy king's threat that Heurodis would be torn to pieces
if she failed to return to the same place at the same hour the following day, are
reminiscent of the ritual sacrifice demanded of those who, in older times, had
committed sacrilege by entering the sacred grove at forbidden times. The first part
of Orfeo, despite the classical names of the hero and heroine, seems to be fairy or
Celtic in origin.
But when the ympe tre appears again in Fairyland itself, if we subject the details
of the plot to analysis, it becomes clear that the ympe tre has subtly assumed a
different role or significance, one which cannot be explained in terms of fairy. It is
ostensibly the same ympe tre under which she slept in her own garden, a phantasmagoric
reminder of the way in which she was snatched away to Fairyland. Even
so, it still cannot be just a garden ympe, if it is to mean anything at all, for it appears
in the courtyard of the fairy king's castle among a heterogeneous collection of the
sick and the maimed and this peculiar passage has no known counterpart in fairy
lore, in spite of the poet's assertion that these people were 'wilp fairi pider y-come'.
Perhaps the difficulty may be resolved by reference to the classical strain in Orfeo;
the ympe tre may be found to have momentarily changed its symbolism.
As it stands, the abduction of Heurodis is unmotivated:
pou schalt wip ous go
And liue wip ous evermo (167-8)
This is the only reason the fairy king offered and, later on, when Orfeo came before him in the castle, he marvelled at his temerity:
Ich no non pat is wip me
No sent neuer after pe.
Seppen pat ich here regni gan
Y no fond neuer so fole hardi man
pat hider to ous durst wende
Bot pat ichim wald of sende (423-8)
so that we must understand that people were 'sent for' without any apparent reason other than the king's wish, which seems to imply that he is, for the moment, not so much the king of Fairyland as the king of the Dead, who is the only king who sends for us without stipulating his reason.
From the point of view of the Orpheus-Eurydice story, the going away of
Heurodis, as Eurydice, meant her death; from the point of view of fairy belief, it
meant that she was not really dead, but had gone to live with the fairies in their
underground kingdom. It is worth remembering at this juncture Map's story of the
Filii Mortue, [1]which bears a curious resemblance to Orfeo in this mingling of the
kingdom of the Dead with the kingdom of Fairy. The wife, in this story, was dead
and buried and yet her husband found her 'in magno feminarum cetu de nocte' and
snatched her away and brought her back home to human life once more. Whether
this old Breton tale had already been' contaminated with the classical legend of
Orpheus and Eurydice we cannot say, but the strange oscillation between contrary
concepts is characteristic of Orfeo as well.
The motive for abduction in fairy tales is usually love, as, for example, in
Guingamor, Lanval and Graelent; but Heurodis was not snatched away for love;
the fairy king had his own queen; besides, to have introduced the love motive
in this fashion would have cut across the theme of marital love and loyalty upon
which the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice hinges. If the king of Fairy is not to be
entirely identified with the king of the Dead, what reason can be offered for his
behaviour?
It is at this point, when Orfeo saw his wife lying under the ympe tre in the castle
courtyard, that the interlacing of the classical and Celtic stories appears at its most
intricate.
Heurodis was abducted in 'pe comessing of May'. In a vague, imperceptible way,
the fairy king, who was also the god of an underworld, since Orfeo had to go 'In at
a roche' to reach him, seems here to have taken on some of the attributes of Dis,
who stole Proserpina away as she was gathering spring flowers in the meadow;
and Heurodis also seems to take the place of Proserpina, for Eurydice was not
abducted, but killed by the poisonous fangs of a snake. In classical legend, Dis or
Pluto was the king of the underworld and the dead; but, according to Caesar,[2] the
Celts also had a god of the underworld similar to Dis, from whom all the Gauls
claimed to be descended: 'Galli se omnes ab Dite patre prognatos praedicant', and
in later fairy lore he or the classical Dis or both became identified with the king
of Fairy, if Chaucer is to believed: 'Pluto that is the kyng of fairye' (Merchant's
Tale, 983). Again, in the classical legend, the two attributes of Dis fell together;
he was not only the power of winter in seasonal myth, he was also the god of Hades,
the ruler in the kingdom of the Dead. In Celtic legend also, there existed a seasonal
myth similar to that of Dis and Proserpina; it took the form of an abduction story,
closely resembling the abduction of Heurodis in some of the details to which the
classical versions offer no similarity. Traces of this myth are to be found in Culhwch
and Olwen[3] a nd the Vita Gildae,[4] said to have been written by Caradoco f Llancarvon:
(a) Creiddylad daughter of Lludd Silver-hand (the maiden of most majesty that was
ever in the Island of Britain and its three adjacent islands). And for her Gwythyr son
of Greidawl and Gwyn son of Nudd fight for ever each May-calends till the day of
doom ....
Creiddylad daughter of Lludd Silver-hand went with Gwythyr son of Greidawl; and
before he had slept with her there came Gwyn son of Nudd and carried her off by force.
Gwythyr son of Greidawl gathered a host and he came to fight with Gwyn son of Nudd.
And Gwyn prevailed.... Arthur heard tell of this and he came into the North and
summoned to him Gwyn son of Nudd and set free his noblemen from his prison and
peace was made between Gwyn son of Nudd and Gwythyr son of Greidawl. This is the
peace that was made: the maiden should remain in her father's house unmolested by
either side, and there should be battle between Gwyn and Gwythyr each May-calends
for ever and ever, from that day till doomsday; and the one of them that should be
victor on doomsday, let him have the maiden.
(b) Glastonia.. .obsessa est itaque ab Arturo tyranno cum innumerabile multitudine
propter Guennuvar uxorem suam violatam et raptam a praedicto iniquo (i.e.
Melvas, rege regnante in aestiva regione) et ibi ductam propter refugium inviolati loci
propter munitiones arundineti et fluminis ac paludis causa tutelae. quaesiverat rex
rebellis reginam per unius anni circulum, audivit tandem illam remanentem. illico
commovit exercitus totius Cornubiae et Dibneniae; paratum est bellum inter inimicos.
hoc viso abbas Glastoniae comitante clero et Gilda Sapiente intravit medias acies,
consuluit Melvas regi suo pacifice, ut redderet raptam. reddita ergo fuit, quae reddenda
fuerat, per pacem et benevolentiam. his peractis, duo reges largiti sunt abbati multa
territoria.
The details worth noting in relation to Orfeo are: the abduction had reference to
the May-calends or 'pe comessing of May' in (a) and there is an implication of
seasonal cycle in 'per unius anni circulum' in (b); the husband was a king and the
stolen wife a queen in (b); the ravisher was also a king in both (a) and (b), but
whereas in Culhwch and Olwen he was undoubtedly the king of the underworld,
Gwyn ap Nudd, king of Annwn, Melvas was made king of the 'summer region' or
Somerset, since it was to his castle in Glastonbury that he carried the queen.
Possibly the roles of Arthur and Melvas have been exchanged, for Gwythyr ap
Greidawl seems to be equated with the sun or summer, if the elements in his name
are any guide, Gwythyr, Victor and Greid-, Old Irish? .greid, to scorch. Melvas
ought to be the equivalent of Gwyn ap Nudd. However, as the version in the Vita
Gildae was obviously altered to boost Glastonbury abbey and Gildas, these differences
may be bits of local colour. Finally, in both (a) and (b), an attempt was
made to recapture the woman with the help of armed knights, and in (b) Guinevere
was restored to her husband just as Heurodis was given back to Orfeo.
Why Orfeo was a 'king' might now appear to be more reasonable; and the fact
that he was successful in bringing his wife safely out of Fairyland becomes something
more than a mere romantic and neo-fairy ending to an old, tragic story. Yet,
to understand Orfeo completely, we must turn again to the classical tale of Orpheus
and Eurydice, for it is this alone which can explain why Heurodis was abducted for
no apparent reason. Eurydice, like the dead mother in the Breton tale, Filii Mortue,
was the beloved wife who died; Heurodis, her nominal counterpart, was at the same
time semi-Proserpina, semi-Creiddylad-Guinevere, and was abducted; the reason
for her abduction is omitted because, as Eurydice, she should have died, and, as
Proserpina-Creiddylad-Guinevere, she should have been stolen for love; either
reason is incompatible with the theme of Orfeo.
When Orfeo arrived in the fairy underworld, he saw his queen, not in the palace
among the ladies with whom he had met her in the forest, but in the outer courtyard,
among a collection of sick, mad, crippled and headless people, who were
lying there exactly as they had been on earth when they had been snatched away
in their noontide sleep. In the forest she had been 'alive'; she had recognized him
and had wept; yet, when he followed the fairy company and came to find her in
Fairyland, she is pictured as being in her first condition, not as she was the day
she was abducted, for then she was not asleep, but as she was when the fairy king
first appeared to her-asleep under the ympe tre.
The poet says that all the people who were lying there, and that includes
Heurodis, 'puou3td ede and nare nou3t'. Even when full allowance has been made
for the marvellous things which could happen in Fairyland, it is difficult to believe
that a person without a head was not 'dead' in the first instance. And are we to
understand that these headless, armless, burnt and choked people, to say nothing of
the mothers in childbed, also 'arose' as Heurodis evidently did, and took part in
the dancing and hunting in the forest ? Analysis of this kind emphasizes the slight
inconsistencies in the narrative and serves to show up the seams in the joining of the
Celtic and classical tales. At the same time, we can scour Georgics, iv and Metamorphoses,
x in vain for any hint or detail which might help to throw light on this
odd picture. The bodiless phantoms that came in their thousands from the depths
of Erebus at the sound of Orpheus's lyre (Georgics, iv, 475-7) and the bloodless
spirits who wept at the strain (Metamorphosesx, , 41) cannot honestly be considered
as in any way comparable to the folk 'liggeand wipin ]e wal', for Orfeo had not
yet entered the king's palace nor had he touched the strings of his harp nor did
these people outside come in later on to listen to him.
If it be remembered that not only the legend of Orpheus, but the whole of
Virgil's work was widely known in the Middle Ages, a clue may be found in another
Virgilian description of the classical underworld, the one in Aeneid, Bk. vi.
Aeneas, when he prayed to be allowed to visit his father's shade in Hades, made
use of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice to strengthen his petition; if Orpheus
could call up his wife's shade in Erebus, could not he, Aeneas, also a descendant of
the gods, make the same journey? He was allowed to do so and when he reached
the entrance to Hades he is pictured as approaching it across the vestibulum or
forecourt, with the limen and fores, the main door, at the far side; that is, Virgil has
imagined the entrance to Hades in contemporary terms, those of the Roman house,
just as the poet of Orfeo has visualized the entrance to the fairy underworld in
terms of a medieval castle:
Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci
Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae
pallentesque habitant Morbi tristisque Senectus
et Metus et malesuada Fames ac turpis Egestas,
terribiles visu formae, Letumque Labosque,
tun consanguineus Leti Sopor et mala mentis
Gaudia, mortiferumque adverso in limine Bellum
ferreique Eumenidum thalami et Discordia demens
vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.
In medio ramos annosaque bracchia pandit
ulmus opaca, ingens, quam sedem Somnia volgo
vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus haerent.
Multaque praeterea variarum monstra ferarum
Centauri in foribus stabulant Scyllaeque biformis. (273-86)
What Aeneas saw in the forecourt of Orcus was very similar to that which Orfeo
saw in the courtyard of the fairy king's castle; all kinds of horrors had 'made their
beds' there, but where Virgil has enumerated abstractions and the customary
grisly inhabitants of Tartarus, the author of Orfeo has presented a picture of
examples, an oddly assorted gathering of people, most of whom would have been
found, in the Middle Ages, in Purgatory, because they had died suddenly and
unshriven-the burnt, the drowned, women who had died mad in labour, soldiers
killed in battle and those who, like Hamlet's father, had been taken, 'grossly, full
of bread' and had died choking. None of them has a right to a home in Fairyland,
at least, not according to the ancient tradition concerning that place; all who go
there are either stolen or lured from earth on account of their beauty or desirability.
That Heurodis should be there is intelligible, but the rest seem to belong to
the Christian otherworld of punishment, which, in the Middle Ages, owed many of
its features to the pagan conception of Tartarus; both were places in which the
wicked or the unassoiled found themselves after death and every traveller who had
the temerity to visit them, were he an Orpheus, an Aeneas or a Knight Owen had
his sight seared with visions of human agony. Orpheus descended into Hades,
Orfeo tunnelled into Fairyland; the two stories which are so successfully merged in
other parts of Orfeo are just here a little divergent, or perhaps it is that the classical
element is for the moment uppermost and has, in its detail, been partly overlaid
with contemporary notions. In any case, the similarity between the settings is very
close.
Another interesting point of comparison lies in the linking of sleep with the idea
of Death's kingdom. Virgil has used the word sopor, which has an intensive force,
implying a torpor akin to the sleep of death, 'consanguineus Leti Sopor'. Sleep,
in classical legend, was associated with Hades. According to Hesiod (Theogony,
I, 211 ff.), Erebus and Night were the children of Chaos; and Night, the mother of
Doom, Fate and Death, also gave birth to Sleep and the tribe of Dreams and
'painful Woe'. Cicero echoes this in his De Natura Deorum, 3, 17: 'Amor Dolus
Metus...Mors Tenebrae Miseria...Somnia quos omnes Erebo et Nocte natos
ferunt.' In Orfeo the same idea is present, for, in the fairy otherworld, which is also
an underworld, the miseries, exemplified by the folk 'liggeand wi]in pe wal', are
definitely related to sleep: 'rijt as pai slepe her vndertides'.
Next, there is the tree, the great Elm of Dreams. No true parallel to it has yet
been found in classical legend. One wonders whether Virgil, remembering his early
home, might not have added something here from his own knowledge of barbarian
tree-worship; he was of Celtic stock and in the words of Macrobius (Saturnaliorum,
lib. v, cap. 2), 'rusticis parentibus nato, inter silvas et frutices educto'. But what
is valuable in his description for us is the fact that there is a tree in Hades at all.
It fits in with his setting; a tree was a common feature in the forecourt of a Roman
house just as an ympe tre was a common feature in a medieval garden. Like
the ympe tre, the elm need not signify more than its presence in the scene implied;
but, as in the case of the ympe tre, it meant something more. Virgil has made it
perfectly clear to the reader that the elm carried supernatural significance; it was
the abode of delusive visions or dreams; they clung under every leaf, and it is
interesting to observe that Virgil qualifies his statement with volgo, intimating that
it was a common belief. This elm was the only tree in the forecourt of Hades and
its presence there was due to the fact that it was connected with sleep: only one
tree was to be seen in the courtyard of the fairy king's castle, the ympe tre, and
it, too, was connected with sleep and carried supernatural significance.
Perhaps one further similarity between the two passages deserves to be emphasized.
Virgil rounds off his description of the forecourt with a picture of the huge
doors of Hell, through which Aeneas finally rushed. He crossed the forecourt, as
Orfeo crossed the courtyard to enter the castle. The horrors and the elm tree had
already been described; was there anything more? Virgil adds, 'multaque praeterea
variarum monstra ferarum', and, although he goes on to enumerate all the wellknown
denizens of Tartarus, the commencing phrase forcibly reminds us of 'and
wonder fele per lay bisides' in Orfeo.
These similarities may be fortuitous, yet, in Orfeo, the tale of Orpheus and
Eurydice, although forming a definite part of the structure of the story, seems to
be pervasive rather than particular. It cannot be said that the details of the
classical tale, as it appears in Orfeo, resemble either Virgil's or Ovid's or even
Boethius' versions. On the other hand, some of the details in Orfeo, which are
inexplicable in terms of Celtic legend or fairy belief, may find a slightly more
intelligible explanation if this other Virgilian description of Hades is borne in mind.
Superimposed on the classical and Celtic tales is the medieval social setting. The
scene for the initial adventure was changed from what was probably originally a
forest or grove to an ordinary garden; Eurydice's dryads became ladies-in-waiting;
some of the aspects of the baleful realm of Dis crept into the courtyard of the fairy
king's castle; the garden ympe tre, already confused with the sacred grove, conveniently
identified itself for a brief moment with the ominous Elm of Dreams, and
Orfeo himself became one of the oddest, most naive of all these little anomalies and
anachronisms. 'His fader was comen of king Pluto', that is, Dis, or his early Gallic
equivalent; so that, when Orfeo went into the underworld in search of Heurodis,
he was, in one sense, returning to his ancestral home, the otherworld of Gaulish
Celts who claimed descent from Dis. Ought we to understand that Orfeo was of
supernatural origin ? This would tally with the fact that in the Celtic seasonal myth
both royal combatants were supernatural. 'His moder [was comen] of king Juno.'
If we allow a scribal error here and read quen, we are still left very much in the dark
as to his ancestry on the distaff side. If we do not allow king to be a scribal error,
but postulate that Juno may be an error for Jove, then we find that Orfeo's ancestry
is as truly Celtic-classical as the tale in which he figures, since Jove was the ancestor
of Orpheus through his mother, Calliope.
The author of the Auchinleck version goes one step further, he identified Thrace
with Winchester, a shameless, happy and original thought, for, after Orfeo rescued
his queen, they returned, not to Thrace but to Winchester and were crowned anew
in the place in which kings of England had been wont to be crowned in not too
remote times and in which they still kept court at Christmas, Easter or Pentecost;
from which, if we are foolish enough to be rational in a world of fairy, we ought to
deduce that, when all is said and done, Orfeo was a king of England.
BANGOR
CONSTANCE DAVIES
1 De Nugis Curialium. Anecdota Oxoniensia, xiv, ed. M. R. James. Dist. ii, cap. 13, Dist. LII
cap. 8. For a possible connexion between this tale and Orfeo, see R. S. Loomis, M.L.N. v
(1936), pp. 28-30 and Constance Davies, M.L.R. xxxI (1936), pp. 354-7.
2 De Bell. Gall. VI, 18. See also, concerning this god and a goddess Adaegina, equivalent to
Proserpina among the Celts, A. Grenier, Les Gaulois (Paris, 1945), p. 337; J. Vendryes, Les
Religions des Celtes (Paris, 1948), p. 267.
3 Quoted from Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, The Mabinogion (1949), pp. 107, 128.
4 Monumenta Germ. Hist. Gildae Sapientis, iv. Vita Gildae auctore Caradoco Lancarbanensi,
ed. Mommsen, p. 109.