gate, where Nature claimed and absorbed all my attention.
I let the conversation drop, and soon we glided through the narrow entrance into the cave, whose noble dome—looking, in the wonderfully blue light, as if it were built of sapphires—rose suddenly upon the astonished and bewildered sight. This cave certainly surpasses the so much more widely famed blue Grotto of Capri; and this particular point, as well as the whole coast indeed, possesses, in a much higher degree than those southern shores, the charm of ancient local traditions and national songs.
These are for the most part connected, in this district, with the mythic King Grallon-Mawr (Grallon the Great), and with the magic Princess Morgane, or Morgate, who, as is well known, occupies so prominent a position in the legends and lays of Arthur's Round Table.
Nothing was wanting but a hint on my part to induce my companion, who had been hitherto so monosyllabic, to set off fluently upon these subjects.
His favorite tradition—the scene of which, moreover, was, he asserted, this very grotto—appeared to be the story of the fair Genossa, which is also preserved in an old national song (Guerz) of Brittany.[1]
- ↑ It is well known that the distinguished Villemarque has published a collection, in two volumes, of similar
