Del cigne firent messager: Swan as Llatai in Marie de France's Milun

Abstract

This article revisits the swan love-messenger in Marie de France's Milun —a topic of much critical attention— to posit a new analogue and consider its implications. While scholars have widely praised the uniqueness of Marie's swan, they have overlooked a similar cygnine envoy in the fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Welsh poem Yr Alarch ("The Swan") and generally ignored the broader Welsh llatai ("love-messenger") tradition. Since Marie frequently claims to have drawn on Breton tales for her Lais, we will explore the possibility that she might have adopted her love-messenger from Brittonic sources that reach their pinnacle with Dafydd ap Gwilym.