The Dog and the Wolf (72 page)

Rotomagus:
Rouen.

Beltane:
We use this variant spelling to indicate a difference between the languages of the insular and the Continental Celts.

Infantry:
There was no possibility of re-creating anything like the old Roman legions, and the military future for almost the next thousand years belonged to the heavy cavalryman. The independent Gauls could scarcely raise such a corps either; at best, they may have developed some reasonably good light horse. The bulk of their forces must have been foot. Still, given training and equipment, these could meet the Germans and the seaborne raiders on equal terms.

The Gallic revolt:
One should beware of identifying the many different rebellions in the ancient world with any revolution in the modern, such as the American, French, Russian, or Philippine, to name just four widely divergent examples. Each case in the period of our story and earlier was probably unique too. Nothing is really known about the Gallic instance. By analogy with events in Britain, we suppose that ancient tribalism awoke and asserted itself among people who had despaired of Rome. In both countries there appears also to have been a
certain amount of nascent nationalism, though it never developed into anything as strong as the modern form.

West Island:
Ushant (hypothetical; its name in Roman times is unknown).

XXV

Wotan:
This god appears to have been originally a conductor of the dead like Hermes or Mercury, with whom the Romans therefore identified him. We suppose that in the fifth century he had not yet gained those other, overshadowing attributes we know of in his late version, Odin of the viking era.

The moon:
It was full on 30 December 407 (Gregorian calendar).

The exorcism:
This is not the present-day formula, which is of rather recent origin. There does not seem to have been a standard one in the fifth century; ours is conjectural.

The aftermath:
In 408 Stilicho married his daughter Thermantia to Honorius, but soon afterward the machinations of his rivals achieved their purpose. He was accused of treasonous dealings with Alaric the Visigoth, his troops mutinied, and he was assassinated in August of that year. There followed such a wave of anti-German feeling and persecution that the soldiers of that origin and their families went over to Alaric. He marched on Rome, and only an exorbitant payment turned him from it. The next year he came back and set up a puppet emperor whom the Senate perforce acknowledged but quickly thereafter disowned. Alaric returned in 410, captured and sacked Rome, and was on his way through Italy to invade North Africa when he died.

Meanwhile Constantine III established himself in Arles and, defeating forces sent against him by Honorius, wrung from the government the consulship of 409 and recogni
tion as an Imperial colleague; he and his older son proclaimed themselves Augusti. He defended the Rhine frontier rather ably and brought the Germans who had invaded Gaul under a measure of control. Intrigues and attacks led to his overthrow in 411. He surrendered to Honorius, who, repudiating a guarantee of safety, had him executed.

The year 410 was also when Honorius sent his famous rescript to the Britons, granting them the right to organize their own defenses because the help for which they appealed would not be forthcoming. It appears they were temporarily victorious about the middle of the century and this is the seed from which the Arthurian legend sprang. Germans continued to enter Roman territory on the Continent and founded independent kingdoms in it, the Burgundians as early as 413. The Huns, sometimes allies of the Empire, became more and more often its ravishers.

Nevertheless a chronicle declares that in or about 417 the Romans regained Armorica and other secessionist parts of Gaul. No details are given. It seems probable to us that, if this did happen, the submission was nominal, the result of a mutually advantageous compromise, and that the Armoricans retained essential autonomy. Honorius could not very well punish an uprising which had, after all, been against the usurper Constantine; nor could he have spared troops to occupy the region and compel subservience. (He died unlamented in
423.)
There is mention of later revolts of “Bacaudae” in various areas, but these may have been incidents of jacquerie.

According to the Breton accounts, Salaun (Salomon) reigned as king from 421 to 435; he abolished the Roman practice of selling children into slavery to pay taxes, but was killed by pagans who resented his efforts to Christianize the country. If this can be trusted, and it looks no more unreliable than the Mediterranean sources, it bears out the idea of a free Armorica. Still more does an extant roll of the nations that sent men to join Aetius in his historic battle against the Huns, 451. “The Armoricans” are listed like any others, implying that they were sovereign allies.

Equally suggestive is the heavy immigration from Brit
ain in this and the subsequent century. It would scarcely have gone in the direction of more oppression and less security. Of course, it resulted in the flooding of the small native population. Armorica became known as Breizh (Bretagne in French, Brittany in English) and the Celtic language still spoken there is of southwestern British origin. A few traditions survive from ancient times—among mem, perhaps, the story of Ys.

The Breton folk tell many different tales about the sunken city of Ys, its king, and his daughter. Bearing in mind that these often disagree, let us give a synopsis of the basic medieval story.

Grallon (sometimes rendered “Gradlon”) was ruler of Cornouaille, along the southwestern shore of Brittany, with his seat at Quimper, which some say he helped found. Once he took a great fleet overseas and made war on Malgven, Queen of the North. In conquering her country he also won her heart, as she did his. They started off together for his home, but terrible weather kept them at sea for a year. During this time Malgven bore a girl child, and died in so doing. When the heartbroken Grallon finally returned, he could deny nothing to his daughter Dahut (in some versions, Ahes). She grew up beautiful and evil.

While hunting, Grallon met a hermit, Corentin, who lived in the forest. This man was miraculously nourished; each day he drew a fish from the water, ate half, and threw the other half back, whereupon it became whole and alive again. However, it was his wisdom that most impressed the king. Grallon persuaded Corentin to join him in Quimper, and there the holy man won the people
over to righteous ways. Other legends maintain that he was the actual founder or co-founder of the city, and its first bishop.

Dahut felt oppressed by the piety all around her, and begged her father to give her a place of her own. He built Ys on the shore—Ys of the hundred towers, walled against the waters that forever threatened its splendor. Hung upon his breast, Grallon kept the silver key that alone could unlock the sea gate. Otherwise he gave Dahut free rein and turned a blind eye to her wickedness.

Led by her, Ys became altogether iniquitous. The rich ground down the poor, gave themselves to licentious pleasures, forgot their duty to God, and even blasphemed Him. Dahut herself took a different lover every night, and in the morning had him cast to his death in the sea.

Another holy man, St. Guénolé, was stirred to enter the city and plead with the people to mend their ways. For a while he did succeed in frightening many into reform; but the baneful influence of Dahut was too strong, and they drifted back into sin.

At last God determined to destroy Ys, and gave the Devil leave to carry out the mission. Taking the guise of a handsome young man, he sought Dahut in her palace and was soon welcomed into her bed. Him she did not have killed. Rather, she fell wildly in love. He demanded, as a sign of her affection, that she bring him the key Grallon bore. Dahut stole it while the king was asleep and gave it to her lover. The night was wild with storm. He slipped out and unlocked the gate. The sea raged in and overwhelmed Ys.

It had no power over St. Guénolé, who awakened innocent Grallon and warned him to flee. Barely did the king’s great charger carry him through the waters as they surged in between the city walls. Dahut screamed in terror. Her father saw, and tried to save her. The saint told him he must not, for the weight of her sins would drag him down too; and she was swept away from his grasp. None but Grallon and Guénolé escaped, as Ys went under the waves.

Guénolé laid the doom on the city that it would remain sunken until a Mass was said in it upon a Good Friday. Dahut became a siren, haunting the coast, luring sailors to
shipwreck among the many rocks thereabouts. Grallon gave up his crown and ended his days in the abbey of Landévennec which Guénolé had founded.

A later story relates how one mariner was borne beneath the water by certain strange swimmers. Somehow he did not drown, and they led him to the sunken city and into a church where a service was going on. He was afraid to give the responses, when no one else did. Afterward his guides brought him ashore and let him go; but first they asked sadly, “Why did you not say what you should have at the Mass? Then we would all have been released.”

Ys is still there under the sea.

Thus far the tradition. As for its origin, the prosaic fect is that stories about submerged towns are common along the Welsh and Cornish coasts. Folk from those parts could well have carried the idea with them during their massive emigration to Armorica in the fifth and sixth centuries. In the course of time it came to be associated with Grallon and with several of the host of Breton saints. On the other hand, the tale could conceivably have been a native one which the Bretons found when they arrived, and this we have assumed for our purposes.

Among the disagreements between versions of the legend, conspicuous is that concerning the site. Some accounts put Ys on the Baie de Douarnenez, others on the Baie d’Audierne, still others on the Baie des Trépassés. We have chosen the last of these.

Obviously we have made a good many more choices! First and foremost, we have imagined that there really was an Ys.

If so, when did it perish? Saints Corentin and Guénolé are assigned to the fifth and sixth centuries respectively; therefore they could not both have been involved. We picked the earlier era. (If nothing else, the farther back in time, the more plausible it is that no record would survive of the city and its destruction. At that, we have had to offer some explanation of why the Romans left none.) Therefore Corentin must needs assume the role that folklore gives to Guénolé. Besides, legend associates him with the founding of Quimper and makes St. Martin consecrate him its bishop.

Since no kingdom of Cornouaille existed at this time, our Grallon would have had to begin as the ruler of Ys, which must thus have been flourishing long before his birth. He in turn would have had no reason to start a settlement at what was to become Quimper until after the loss of his realm. The need for a new stronghold, in the chaos that was spreading through Gaul, would be clear to him if he was himself a Roman, as we have supposed.

From the first-century geographer Pomponius Mela we have adopted and adapted the Gallicenae. True, he describes them as vestal virgins, but with his own sources all being indirect, he was not necessarily right about this. The sixth-century historian Procopius gives an account of the Ferriers of the Dead; he says they took their unseen passengers from Gaul to Britain, but we depict men so engaged between Ys and the Île de Sein. The king who must win and defend his crown in mortal combat is best known from Lake Nemi, as described by Sir James Frazer in
The Golden Bough.
However, the practice has occurred elsewhere too, in various guises, around the world, so we could reasonably attribute it to Ys.

Aside from such modifications, logically required, we have stayed as close as possible to the legends. After all, this is a fantasy. Yet we have at the same time tried to keep it within the framework of facts that are well established.

For us it all began one day in 1979, when we were staying on a farm near Médréac in Brittany and Karen, on impulse, wrote the poem with which our story ends. Earlier in the same trip we had visited a number of Roman remains in England and stood on Hadrian’s Wall. Now somehow this came together with Ys, of which our surroundings reminded us, and the first dim outlines of the tale appeared. At home we thought and talked about it more and more often, until by 1982 our ideas were clear enough that we returned to Brittany for a look at sites we had not examined before. There followed about a year’s worth of book research, and then the actual writing—occasionally interrupted to meet other commitments—lasted into the spring of 1987. The whole business has been a strange and rewarding experience. We hope readers will enjoy what has come out of it.

These equivalents are for the most part only approximations. For further details, see the Notes.

Abonae
: Sea Mills.

Alba
: Scotic name of what is now Scotland, sometimes including England and Wales.

Aquilo
: Locmaria, now a district at the south end of Quimper.

Arelate
: Aries.

Armorica
: Brittany.

Audiarna
: Audierne (hypothetical).

Augusta Treverorum
: Trier.

Boand’s River
: The River Boyne.

Bridge of Sena
: Pont de Sein.

Britannic Sea (Oceanus Britannicus)
: The English Channel.

Britannia
: The Roman part of Britain, essentially England and Wales.

Burdigala
: Bordeaux.

Caesarodunum Turonum
: Tours.

Caledonia
: Roman name of Scotland.

Cape Rack
: Pointe du Raz (hypothetical).

Cassel
: Cashel.

Cimbrian peninsula
: Jutland.

Clón Tarui
: Clontarf, now a district of Dublin.

Condacht
: Connaught.

Condate Redonum
: Rennes.