by Doré Ripley, ©2003
Lyre
song of music’s power,
Soars
above Fairy towers.
Immortals bow to minstrel king,
Unsleeping
love, slow blood run cold,
Undoing failure of knight’s bold.
Gut
vibrates and hero sings.
The medieval Sir Orfeo (Orfeo)
proclaims itself the poetic dictation of a Breton lay, a narrative musical
composition. Sir Orfeo combines
the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice handed down by, among others, Ovid, with
Celtic and Christian traditions to tell the story of a king whose authority
ultimately rests on his power over music.
King Orfeo’s love for his wife makes him the unwitting participant
of a heroic journey where his musical virtuosity changes him from a mere mortal
to the dominant nobleman of magical and earthly kingdoms. However, unlike the ancient Orpheus, his power
is not an illusion vanishing at first glance, it remains with him through
his trials and wanderings culminating in a successful quest. Courtly love, coupled with a hero’s wild quest,
takes a rash promise, and a classic tale of devotion, to form the Breton lay
Sir Orfeo, a medieval fairy tale of many traditions.
Breton lays are musical compositions
that arose in France during the twelfth and thirteenth century (Murfin 187),
but Sir Orfeo is not French; its dialect suggests roots in the Westminster-Middlesex
area of England (Drabble 718). Sir Orfeo’s author consciously replicates an earlier art
form, writing his lay at the end of the medieval period, during the first
half of the fourteenth century (Shepherd 174).
Furthermore, no medieval Breton lay has survived into the modern era.
Our only knowledge of them comes from imbedded references in different
texts, like the one occurring in the self-proclaimed lay Sir Orfeo,
In Breteyne, bi hold time,
This layes were wrought (so seith this rime)]
[Of aventures that fallen by dayes—
Wherof Brytouns made her layes;] (13-16).
Another
medieval verse composed in the form of a Breton lay is Geoffrey Chaucer’s
Franklin’s Tale (CT 5.709-1624).
He, like the author of Sir Orfeo, felt it necessary to specifically
identify the work as a lay:
Thise olde gentil Britouns in hir
dayes
Of diverse aventures made layes,
Rymeyed in hir first Briton tonge,
Whiche layes with hir instrumentz they songe (CT 5.709-712).
One
of the most popular self-proclaimed lays of the medieval period is Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight who tells the reader (or listener):
If you
will listen to this lay but a little while,
I shall
tell it as truly as it was told in town,
As
it is fastened strong
In
measure neatly sprung,
Its
letter locked in song,
When
formerly sweetly sung (Sir Gawain Pro.30-36).
Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight also
takes place in “Bretayn” and is a romantic tale of Arthur, “who breathed here,
among Britain’s kings, / Arthur was the hardiest” (Sir Gawain Pro.
25-26). The poet is going to tell
the audience of “a miraculous sight, / And an amazing adventure among Arthur’s
wonders” (Sir Gawain Pro. 28-29).
But, why did the authors’ feel
compelled to identify their works as lays, specifically Breton lays?
While it alludes to a musical connotation, especially in relation to
its usual performance by a harper, the identification “Breton lay” conveys
a compositional convention and expectation as well. The Franklin’s Tale,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo describe themselves
as old-fashioned, and can be predicated by once upon a time, and ended
with they lived happily ever after; in what modern critics call fairy
tales or fables. These lays incorporate
fading spiritual elements from Celtic and Irish mythologies, including changelings,
fairies, gnomes, magicians, giants and magic (Campbell 198).
The author’s announcement of a “Breton lay” prepares the audience for
a fantastic story of adventure and romance, a make-believe fairy tale, not
a moralizing sermon. As Chaucer says Breton lays are “redden hem
for hir pleasaunce” (CT 5.712).
In Chaucer’s imaginary Breton lay,
the beautiful Dorigen rashly pledges her courtly love to the squire Aurelius,
on the condition that he rid Britain’s coastline of rocks: a ridiculously
impossible task. However, with the
help of a magician, Aurelius unexpectedly accomplishes his task. Dorigen agrees to live up to her promise, but
the squire proves himself to be of a noble turn by releasing her. Sir Orfeo also contains a rash promise
but, instead of a rock banishing Celtic magician, Sir Orfeo includes
fairies while borrowing its plot and the power of music from the ancient story
of Orpheus, creating a fantasy tale or, Breton lay, for the “modern” audience
of the middle ages.
Sir Orfeo’s
author clearly has a classical education which, during the early Renaissance,
integrated training in Latin, theology, and music, along with the Roman classics
including, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Virgil and Homer (Crow xiv).
Medieval and later Renaissance writers recycled Biblical, mythic and
Celtic works for story lines and plots to supplement their repertoire.
Sir Orfeo’s popular style blending Greek and Roman mythology,
Celtic tradition and Biblical motifs continued well into the Renaissance and
is exemplified by Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Spenser’s Fairy Queen.
The Roman, Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, records
the story line used in Sir Orfeo.
Ovid’s Classical Orpheus, the semi-divine harp player, marries Eurydice
who immediately dies. Orpheus descends
into the underworld to retrieve her and the reader observes a noble court
of macabre “phantom dwellers, / The buried ghosts” (Ovid Met. 10.14-15),
ruled over by Hades and Persephone. Orpheus
charms Hades’ court with his beautiful music, not only making “the pale phantoms
weep” (Ovid Met. 10.40), but stopping, for a few brief moments, the
labors of the damned.
…Ixion’s wheel
Was
still, Tityos’ vultures left the liver,
Tantalus
tried no more to reach for the water,
And
Belus’ daughters rested from their urns,
And
Sisyphus climbed on his rock to listen.
That
was the first time ever in all the world
The
Furies wept. (Ovid
Met. 10.40-47)
Orpheus’
power over the harp compels Hades to release Eurydice to Orpheus, under one
condition, that Orpheus not gaze upon her until they are free from Hades’
confines. But temptation is too strong,
and before Orpheus escapes to the land of the living, he turns and views his
wife, who fades away forever. Orpheus’
grief sends him on a trip through the wilderness, where the Maenads catch
up with him. Orpheus gets ripped apart
by “mad Ciconian women” (Ovid Met. 11.3) who make enough noise to drown
Orpheus’ enchanted music so “at last the stones / Reddened with blood” (Ovid
Met. 11.18-19) hit their mark and kill him. In spite of his power,
Orpheus’ command over his harp does not save Eurydice, or even himself. Ovid’s tale of Orpheus is turned on its head
in Sir Orfeo. Even though King
Orfeo is mortal, his command over song makes him more powerful than the semi-divine
Orpheus, and the magical Fairy King. His enchanting music is not undone by a backward glance, as he successfully
completes Orpehus’ classic quest in pursuit of the love of his life.
Sir Orfeo’s
adoption of Orpheus’ musical genius, and other-world journey, is paralleled
in Celtic and Biblical traditions. The
Irish Celts believed the god, Dagda, or Father of All, held the power of death
and resurrection and was portrayed as an accomplished harpist (Parker 34). Power over the harp is exhibited by the biblical
King David who “took an harp, and played with his hand: so [King] Saul was refreshed, and was well,
and the evil spirit departed from him” (I Sam 16:23). In Christian tradition, the most frequent players
of the harp are the divine celestial beings closest to God, the angels.
Sir Orfeo pretends to come from a time when society depended
on the bard to communicate relevant moral, and/or political and social conventions,
to an illiterate society. Subsequently, he held a position that commanded
great respect and power. King Orfeo
not only maintains the monarchial power but the semi-divine power associated
with the wielder of the harp. The harp is the bard’s instrument of power,
and as the central icon in Sir Orfeo, it is the receptacle of King
Orfeo’s power. His command over the
harp will not only save his kingdom but his life and wife.
The lost wife and the wild man roaming the wilderness
found in Sir Orfeo are analogous with other cultures. Sir Orfeo closely emulates the story
of the Irish King Airem, who in spite of his army’s protection loses his wife
to a fairy king. King Airem roams
Ireland digging up fairy mounds, eventually finding and recovering his queen
(Shepherd 346). The wild man roams
through English and German tradition (Frazer i.243, 244, 247) while the classical
Orpheus becomes this feral figure when he goes crazy with grief, shunning
his community to ramble the wasteland for three years (Ovid Met. 10.76-81). Biblical tradition presents two roving men;
one, in Christ who, during his wandering in the wilderness, faces Satan’s
temptations (Mat. 4:1-11) and the other, John the Baptist, whose preaching
takes him to the wilderness where he ends up baptizing God’s son, Jesus (Mat.3:1-16).
As the reader discovers, the writer of Sir Orfeo blends Celtic,
English, Classical and Biblical traditions creating a Middle English Romance
fit for the “intelligent” medieval reader.
The unwitting hero, Sir Orfeo, is identified as a “…kinge,
/ In Inglond” (40-41) who lives in “Traciens” (Orfeo 47) or, Thrace,
the Ovidian Orpheus’ hometown. However,
as the author transports Orfeo from Greece to England, Thrace has become “Winchester”
(Orfeo 49). The medieval King Orfeo’s
genealogy makes him a descendant of the classical gods, King Pluto and King
Juno (Orfeo 43-44) while in Roman tradition Orpheus is the son of the
Muse Calliope. Being the son of a
pantheonic Muse, Orpheus’ talent appears inherited; his background makes him
a natural harp player and enchanter, while Sir Orfeo, even with his divine
roots, “layde theron his wittes sharpe; / He lerned so, ther nothing was /
A better harper in no plas” (30-32). Orfeo
spent many hours perfecting his talent and his command over the harp displays
fortitude and scholarship, two kingly qualities. In the future, his fortitude, along with his
music, will have to sustain him through his trials in the lonely backwood
forests.
The classic Eurydice finds herself
replaced by Orfeo’s, Queen Heurodis.
Queen Heurodis relates to King Orfeo the foreboding dream she had during
the enchanted Fairy hour of midday, under the unnaturally grafted “ympe tree”
(Orfeo 166). Further, she knows
she is condemned to be captured by the Fairy King (Orfeo 120-174), even after
King Orfeo arrays his knights in battle order around her. There is no saving Heurodis from the Fairy King’s enchanted kidnapping.
She simply vanishes from the company’s midst (Orfeo 185-194).
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, after losing Eurydice, the classic
Orpheus puts a three-year time limit on his self-imposed exile, however in
Sir Orfeo, after losing Heurodis, King Orfeo abandons his kingdom. “Into wilderness Ichil te / A live ther evermore
/ With wilde bestes, in holtes hore!” (212-214). Orfeo believes his wife, Heurodis, is lost
to him forever; therefore he deserts his kingdom and seeks the dark forests
in anticipation of death. His meandering
eventually takes him on a journey that becomes a quest for redemption and
self-discovery. Like Christ, he has
to wander in order to find himself and the power he controls. His tests are not Christ’s battles between
good and evil, heaven and earth. They
are small tests about food and water, heat and cold, and loneliness. Orfeo enters the forests with only his “harp,
wheron was al his gle” (267). He does
not realize it, but his power ultimately rests in his command of that harp
which can charm “[…] alle the wilde bestes that ther beth […] / And all the foules that ther were” (Orfeo
273; 276). Orfeo’s dominion over the
harp and his music gives him the power to do what his armed knights cannot,
what the semi-divine Orpheus cannot, his harp will save his wife from the
King of the Fairies.
King Orfeo knows fairies are about;
he often glimpses them in the wilderness.
Their royal outings resemble a medieval noble court and they engage
in activities he once enjoyed with his queen.
Unexpectedly, Orfeo spies Queen Heurodis among a hunting party of fairy
ladies (Orfeo 303-322) and follows them; where “In a roche the levedis rideth—“
(Orfeo 347). Upon exiting the rock,
he discovers fairyland, “a fair cuntray / As bright so sonne on somers day,
/ Smothe and plain and al grene” (351-353).
This is a far cry from Orpheus’ Hades where he is greeted by “the triple
throated monster / Medusa’s offspring, rough with snakes’ (Ovid Met.
10.21-22). Even so, after making it
past the gatekeeper, reminiscent of Hades’ Charon, England’s King Orfeo must
pass through fairy purgatory where kidnapped human victims are held in suspended
animation frozen in their state of capture. Queen Heurodis is there “Slepe under an ympe-tre—“ (Orfeo
407). Like Ovid’s semi-divine Orpheus
who charms Hades in order to obtain Eurydice, King Orfeo presents himself
to the Fairy King as a “menstrel” (430) who, whether he is welcome or not,
“yete we mot proferi forth our gle!” (Orfeo 434). The Fairy King is so enchanted by Orfeo’s song that he impulsively
tells Orfeo to “aske of me what it be--- / Largelich Ichil the pay---“ (450-451).
The Fairy King falls prey to the rash promise, a compensatory device
popular from the time of classical Greece and Rome to Medieval France and
England.
The rash promise is exhibited in many
of Ovid’s tales from Metamorphoses and usually turns out disastrously
for the requester. Phaeton’s wish
to drive his father’s sun chariot results in his demise, and Semele’s desire
to see Jove in his divine form results in her fiery death.
However, the rash promise of the Fairy King in Sir Orfeo works
out well. He promises to give the
minstrel anything he wants, and Orfeo promptly requests “Thatow woldest yive
me / That ich levedi, bright on ble, / That slepeth under the ympe-tre” (454-456).
The Fairy King, at first refuses, but soon relinquishes, rather then
be labeled a liar (465), an ignoble quality.
Orfeo, “His wiif he tok bi the hond / And dede him swithe out of that
lond” (473-374). His power over the
harp, and ultimately the Fairy King, had accomplished what his knights could
not, the recovery of his queen.
Orfeo’s journey through the fairy kingdom
to rescue his queen leads him to the final stage of the hero’s quest:
the recouping of his kingdom. Disguised
as a poor traveling minstrel Orfeo arrives at this court and seeks out his
steward. He plays the harp for his unsuspecting vassal
who recognizes the instrument, “Menstrel!” [the steward] seyd, “so mot thou
thrive / Where hadestow this harp, and hou?” (Orfeo 532-533); only
his king could command the harp in the minstrel’s hands. Lying, Orfeo relays a sad tale of his own death
to the steward who, “A-doun he fel a-swon to ground” (549) making Sir Orfeo
realize, “His Steward was a trewe man” (554). Like any good fairy tale, the king is newly crowned (593), along
with his queen, and they “lived long afterward” (595). Orfeo makes the hero’s journey by overcoming
obstacles and regaining his queen and kingdom, to arrive an older and wiser
monarch at his newly regained court.
Sir Orfeo’s quest for his queen can also be called a
tale of courtly love. This tradition,
popular during the Middle Ages, usually portrayed an unconsummated love affair
between two noble, or quasi-noble persons, who were not married or, at least
not to each other. In spite of that
popular medieval belief, the author of the rules of courtly love, Andreas
Capellanus did say, “Marriage is no real excuse for not loving” (Ross 115). Even so, Orfeo’s love for Heurodis does appear
to retain the medieval definition of courtly love because the marriage is
unconsummated; King Orfeo and Queen Heurodis have no children. Producing children is one of the chief requisites
of a medieval king and queen. Upon
the death of the monarch, an unheired court leaves a kingdom open to civil
war, a sin no king dare commit. However
in this case, when King Orfeo dies his kingdom is placed in the faithful hands
of the steward who has already proven himself a worthy candidate. In this way, courtly love blends with a classic
tale of devotion to illustrate the love of a man for his wife.
The fairy tale quality of the self
declared Breton lay Sir Orfeo is consistent with other examples of
this style from the Middle Ages. More
than just a song these compositions convey a sense of style and narrative
expectations blending fantasy, folklore and religion. Sir Orfeo’s author deftly combines Celtic, Christian and
classic traditions creating a story rich in allusion. However, Sir Orfeo’s plot line parallels that of the classic
myth of Orpheus and Eurydice recorded by the Roman, Ovid. The harp becomes Sir Orfeo’s central
symbol. It is a powerful, divine instrument
used by bards, Biblical kings, Celtic gods, and angels. On the other hand, King Orfeo’s command over
the harp does not exempt him from the hero’s quest. Like other heroic journeyers, Orfeo must leave his realm to encounter
the shadowy fairies that have kidnapped his wife, enter their enchanted otherworld
and overpower the Fairy King with his music in order to regain his prize,
the beloved Heurodis. Only then can
Orfeo return to his country and regain his kingdom. Sir Orfeo adopts the genre of Breton
lay to combine a classic love story with courtly love and a rash promise on
a hero’s journey through Celtic and Irish traditions for a medieval fairy
tale spanning many cultures.
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Martin M. and Leland, Virginia E. “Chaucer’s Life.” The Canterbury Tales Complete.
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Margaret, ed. The Oxford Companion to English
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