Dermat slays the champion (Knight of the Fountain) who guards the spring.
Finn and his chiefs come to the tree.
Meeting between Finn and Dermat.
Departure of Finn and Dermat.
Dermat, after a long voyage, recaptures Taise for Finn and joins him in the Land of Promise.
Iwain (Owain) slays the champion (the red or black knight) who guards the fountain.
Arthur and his knights come to the tree.
Meeting between Arthur and Iwain (Owain).
Departure of Arthur with Iwain (Owain).
Iwain (Owain), after a long journey, regains Laudine (the Countess of the Fountain).
So closely does The Slothful Gillie approximate to the common theme of Yvain and The Lady of the Fountain, that we may venture to explain several features of the Anglo-Norman romance by means of the Celtic folk-tale. To begin with, the Knight of the Fountain in The Slothful Gillie wears a scarlet mantle and a golden crown, posing as the king of Tir-fa-tonn. We may take it, then, that Esclados le Ros ('the Red') in Yvain and the black knight in The Lady of the Fountain were usurping the position of the Otherworld king.[1] Again, the hospitable host in The Slothful Gillie, who gives his name as the Knight of Valour, explains that he is the rightful king. Probably, therefore, the hospitable host in Yvain and The Lady of the Fountain was likewise the real king.[2] Moreover, we saw reason to believe
- ↑ A. C. L. Brown Iwain p. 42 f. compares Esclados le Ros with Manannan: 'The diligent reader of Arthurian material must feel a certain probability in this parallel between Esclados le Ros and Manannán, the tricky magician and shape-shifter of the Celts. The mysterious red knight who encountered Iwain at the fountain has absolutely no character of his own. One cannot but fancy that he was, in an earlier form of the story, some one in disguise.' If I am right, his surname 'Red' is the one survival of his royalty.
- ↑ G. Baist in the Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 1897 xxi. 403 acutely observes that the hospitable host and the giant herdsman may originally have had some more intimate connexion with the adventure than any that appears in Yvain. Cp. A. C. L. Brown Iwain p. 114: 'The Giant Herdsman, and probably therefore the Hospitable Host, must originally have been different appearances of the same Other-World being, a shape-shifter commissioned by the fée to guide the hero to her land.'
