An Analysis of Fairies as a Literary Device in Medieval Folklore - Essay Example

An Analysis of Fairies as a Literary Device In Medieval Folklore Medieval folk tales, or “lais” (a French term refering to the balladic form many ofthese tales used to survive until their chronicling), frequently contain elements of magic or reference to fairy powers. These otherworldly components are lingering elements of pagan beliefs and traditions, considered the “old ways” or “old religion,” that existed prior to the coming of Christianity to medieval Europe. Chrisitanity then, no matter how devoutly it was followed, remained the “new religion” as it achieved dominance (up until divisions began to occur within Christianity itself), incorporating such “old religion” activities as Halloween or the burning of the Yule log. A number of saints holidays (that happened to coincide with older holidays) help to ease the layperson’s transition from pagan beliefs into a more Christian view of the world. These beliefs in the old magic evolved into literary devices when incorporated into folk tales, frequently used to either juxtapose the new and old beliefs, to distinguish between the two, to either reconcile them or to show the superiority of the new religion, as Christianity soon became omnipresent in medieval life. These Christian elements came to be exhibited retroactively through romantic tales of chivalry, for what was once an ethos of “might makes right” soon were thought to exemplify such Christian ethics as the mighty defending the weak, or the application of mercy. The reverence of the Virgin Mary developed into a reverence of all women and the notion of courtly love. However, these patterns spread slowly. To examine these elements in an evolutionary, if not exactly chronological, orderone can focus on such examples as the lais “Bisclavret” and “Yonic” by Marie de France and the J. R. R. Tolkien translations of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and “Sir Orfeo.” Marie de France’s lais “Bisclavret,” or “The Werewolf,” approaches the notion of magic through the title character’s curse of transforming into a werewolf. A brief summary of the plot describes Bisclavaret’s curse, his wife discovering it, and then her subsequent betrayal of her husband in favor of another man… which results in Bisclavret being trapped in wolf form. As a wolf, he eventually wins the respect of the king, who allows the wolf to stay at the castle. The wolf is well behaved until he meets is betrayers, at which point his animosity is so great that the court recalls the woman’s lost husband. She confesses, Bisclavret is restored and the couple are exiled. In the context of this story, the author holds no implicit distrust of magic: it is viewed as a condition pre-dating the arrival of Christianity (paralleling evils of human nature), and while it proves a cursed inconvenience, it in no way prohibits Bisclavret from acting nobly while in wolf form: “He‘s never touched anyone, / or shown any wickedness, / except to this woman.”1 The plot instead focuses on Christian moralizing, i.e. the evils of the wife and knight’s betrayal of their lord (thereby breaking the holy covenant of marriage, as wel as the knight’s forswearing of fealty to his lord) , and their subsequent punishment. The loophole provided by magic actually provides a more satisfactory retribution than mere Christian conscience would allow, for the Church would undoubtedly promote the notion of mercy, forgiveness and leniency. The couple are allowed this to an extent, as they are merely exiled with no other pronouncement of punishment. But magic allows a more telling retribution: when the wolf attacked the woman, he bit off her nose. Not only is she nose-less for the rest of her life, but several of her daughters were also born without noses, thus continuing the medieval tradition of a flawed character revealing itself in physical defect. While Bisclavret’s condition proves the means of his eventual revenge, the father of the title character “Yonec” uses magical transformation for different reasons and with different results. This lais of Marie de France opens by describing a paranoid older husband who keeps his young wife imprisoned during his absence… except that she is visited by the knight Muldumarec, who visits her room by taking on the form of a bird. The affair grows, Muldumarec is discovered, and the husband mounts sharp spikes around the wife’s window, which mortally wound the knight while in bird form. He returns to his home to die; the wife escapes to find him on his death bed. He admonishes her to return, giving her a ring and “explained to her / that, as long as she kept it, / her lord would not remember / anything that had happened…”2 Years later the wife and husband attend the knight’s castle and come across his tomb. Upon discovering whose tomb it is, the wife give Yonec, the child born from the affair, his father’s sword. The wife dies, apparently from a broken-heart, Yonec slays his stepfather, and becomes lord of his true father’s city. In this plot, the author seeks to reconcile the conflict between harsh realities and Christian moral guidelines. As evidenced through the wife’s imprisonment (no doubt to insure authenticity of any offspring), husbands were allowed cruel measures to insure their wife’s fidelity. This reality is circumvented through the use of magic through the knight’s magical transformation into a bird. True, infidelity is a sin against the holy compact of marriage, and the knight is slain for his transgressions. The wife dies as well, yielding to the romantic notion of a broken-heart. Yet the husband has committed murder, in addition to the cruelty of imprisoning his wife, and his death at the hands of his stepson brings the retribution full circle. The husband’s evil is implied to be greater than the lover’s transgression, in that the son chooses to rule his true father’s land rather than the one in which he was reared. Thus, this story uses magic as a catalyst to provoke a moral message against domestic cruelty, freeing the maiden twice: first, through the knight’s love, and second through magically erasing the husband’s memory and distrust. Tolkien’s translation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” addresses both a testing of the new religion (which is Christianity, until a religion or derivation thereof appears to designate traditional Christianity as the “old religion by comparison) and a reconciliation of it to the traditional religion and magic preceding its arrival. Sir Gawain, as well as all of Arthur’s court, are decidedly devoted to Christianity. The court has just celebrated Christmas have moved on to New Year celebrations, which extend several weeks, when the Green Knight appears prior to a feast. When the Green Knight is first described, it is “as a fay-man fell (i.e. evil fairy man) he passed, / and green all over glowed.”3 and then as “an elvish man.”4 Combine this with the Green Knight’s survival post-decapitation and the fact that he has been given magical protection by Morgan le Fay, who is traditionally described as having fairy-blood (hence, the “le Fay” title), and the Green Knight can only be regarded as a champion of the old religion and old ways, fairy-folk and all. Likewise, the magic that keeps the Chapel Green verdant in the depth of winter represents the temerity of old magic in the face of the cleansing snow, representative of the Christ child’s birth. Through the Green Knight’s challenge, the old magic is testing the strength of the followers of the new religion, to which Sir Gawain proves almost completely worthy. Gawain’s only fault is momentarily lapsing into faith in the old religion, his belief that the green girdle’s magic will protect him not itself being a bad thing (whether or not it is magical), but rather that he breaks his Christian ethics by both breaking oath and through lying. Through Gwain’s otherwise faultless character, the old magic recognizes the power and goodness of the new religion; seeing the new religion as an equal, it therefore acts to punish Gawain for his sin through the Green Knight’s small cut on Gawain’s neck. This can be interpreted through the symbolic reference to the Holy Trinity (first exhibited in the three hunts and Gwain’s three temptations) but here is used as a mutual test by both religions, for the fairy element swings three times. Sir Gawain, as a champion of Christianity, comes away from the experience with both a healthy respect for the old magic and a newfound humbleness that he must be ever vigilant in following the path of Christianity. Likewise, the notion of the Green Knight testing Christian virtue is illustrated by the timing of his initial appearance: after Christmas, but within the parameters of two weeks revelry following. The testing seems apropos, as the court is exhibiting temperance in waiting to feast, but are only awaiting an excuse for gluttony, which is a sin. While the last story portrays a reconciliation of the old and new ways, Tolkien’s translation of “Sir Orfeo” carries the conflict into a triumph of Christian ethic over the old magic of the fairy folk. Sir Orfeo, a king and accomplished minstrel, has his wife stolen away by fairies. He then wanders mad in the wilderness for ten years, until finding his wife cavorting with other ladies. When they ride away, Orfeo follows them directly through a large rock and into the land of fairy. At the fairy lord’s castle, he finds the ladies frozen as statues. Posing as a minstrel, he plays so pleasingly that the Fairy Lord grants him a request. When Orfeo requests his wife, the lord tries to ack out of the request, calling the match foul, but Orfeo rebuts, saying “…it would be a fouler thing / from mouth of thine to hear a lie.”5 The lord then agrees. Orfeo and his wife return to their kingdom where, after Orfeo briefly tests the loyalty of the steward he had left in control, they return to the ruling of their land. While this story never directly addresses Christianity, it is inherent in the faithfulness of both Sir Orfeo and his steward, as well as the guidelines of chivalry itself. Similarly, Orfeo’s life in the wilderness is a frequent theme used in the Bible; the Fairy Lord’s acquiescence to the notion that an oath is binding implies that Christian ethics (as in faithfulness of honoring a promise) have great power, even over the fey folk, who are well known for acts of trickery. The permeation of Christianity through all aspects of chivalrous activity being understood, there is no doubt as to Sir Orfeo’s overcoming the control of the fairies. Through extension, this plot line serves to illustrate the triumph of the Christian faith over the powers of the old magic. The realities of Christianity and fairy magic socially overlapped upon initial contact. The interweaving of the two only evolved over time, although the old beliefs were gradually subordinated and largely absorbed by the growth of the church. Today, however, the acculturation of the two belief systems is more easily discernible than in medieval times, for observers are now able to discern the underlying implications of the literary devices represented through the use of fairy magic. The similarities of Christian faith and miracles is most probably an evolution in the beliefs of fairy magic; the fact that Christianity is always portrayed in a positive light and ultimately more powerful reiterates historical evidence of the early church’s growth. Note that the elements of magic in all of these stories are never intended to benefit, but only for mischief, although the Green Knight and Bisclavret are borderline examples. The first can be argued that the knight twisted the spells of Morgan le Fay to his own purposes; the latter never discusses how the protagonist’s enchantment came to be. Yet because of these antagonistic elements to the portrayal of magic, one can infer that Christianity intended to portray any beliefs counter to their own in as harsh a light as possible. Given that the Fey Folk are adverse to Cold Iron, the fact that knight encase themselves in it speaks volumes by itself. Only through analysis of the writing bequeathed from those periods are today’s historians able to understand the multiple levels of conflict people had in reconciling their traditional faiths with the new faith. Through this study, one learns more about both the use of fairy as literary devices and the attitudes of the general medieval populace. Works Cited Marie de France. “Bisclavret.” The Lais of Marie de France. Trans. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978. 92-100. Marie de France. “Yonec.” The Lais of Marie de France. Trans. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978. 137-152. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. Trans. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975. 25-88. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Sir Orfeo.” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. Trans. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975. 123-137. Read More

the evils of the wife and knight’s betrayal of their lord (thereby breaking the holy covenant of marriage, as wel as the knight’s forswearing of fealty to his lord) , and their subsequent punishment. The loophole provided by magic actually provides a more satisfactory retribution than mere Christian conscience would allow, for the Church would undoubtedly promote the notion of mercy, forgiveness and leniency. The couple are allowed this to an extent, as they are merely exiled with no other pronouncement of punishment.

But magic allows a more telling retribution: when the wolf attacked the woman, he bit off her nose. Not only is she nose-less for the rest of her life, but several of her daughters were also born without noses, thus continuing the medieval tradition of a flawed character revealing itself in physical defect. While Bisclavret’s condition proves the means of his eventual revenge, the father of the title character “Yonec” uses magical transformation for different reasons and with different results.

This lais of Marie de France opens by describing a paranoid older husband who keeps his young wife imprisoned during his absence… except that she is visited by the knight Muldumarec, who visits her room by taking on the form of a bird. The affair grows, Muldumarec is discovered, and the husband mounts sharp spikes around the wife’s window, which mortally wound the knight while in bird form. He returns to his home to die; the wife escapes to find him on his death bed. He admonishes her to return, giving her a ring and “explained to her / that, as long as she kept it, / her lord would not remember / anything that had happened…”2 Years later the wife and husband attend the knight’s castle and come across his tomb.

Upon discovering whose tomb it is, the wife give Yonec, the child born from the affair, his father’s sword. The wife dies, apparently from a broken-heart, Yonec slays his stepfather, and becomes lord of his true father’s city. In this plot, the author seeks to reconcile the conflict between harsh realities and Christian moral guidelines. As evidenced through the wife’s imprisonment (no doubt to insure authenticity of any offspring), husbands were allowed cruel measures to insure their wife’s fidelity.

This reality is circumvented through the use of magic through the knight’s magical transformation into a bird. True, infidelity is a sin against the holy compact of marriage, and the knight is slain for his transgressions. The wife dies as well, yielding to the romantic notion of a broken-heart. Yet the husband has committed murder, in addition to the cruelty of imprisoning his wife, and his death at the hands of his stepson brings the retribution full circle. The husband’s evil is implied to be greater than the lover’s transgression, in that the son chooses to rule his true father’s land rather than the one in which he was reared.

Thus, this story uses magic as a catalyst to provoke a moral message against domestic cruelty, freeing the maiden twice: first, through the knight’s love, and second through magically erasing the husband’s memory and distrust. Tolkien’s translation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” addresses both a testing of the new religion (which is Christianity, until a religion or derivation thereof appears to designate traditional Christianity as the “old religion by comparison) and a reconciliation of it to the traditional religion and magic preceding its arrival.

Sir Gawain, as well as all of Arthur’s court, are decidedly devoted to Christianity. The court has just celebrated Christmas have moved on to New Year celebrations, which extend several weeks, when the Green Knight appears prior to a feast. When the Green Knight is first described, it is “as a fay-man fell (i.e. evil fairy man) he passed, / and green all over glowed.”3 and then as “an elvish man.”4 Combine this with the Green Knight’s survival post-decapitation and the fact that he has been given magical protection by Morgan le Fay, who is traditionally described as having fairy-blood (hence, the “le Fay” title), and the Green Knight can only be regarded as a champion of the old religion and old ways, fairy-folk and all.

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