And
they baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower-Aspect.' Celtic
romance is full of exquisite touches like that, showing the delicacy
of the Celt's feeling in these matters, and how deeply nature lets
him come into her secrets. The quick dropping of blood is called
'faster than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass
upon the earth, when the dew of June is at the heaviest.' And thus
is Olwen described: 'More yellow was her hair than the flower of the
broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer
were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-anemony
amidst the spray of the meadow fountains.' For loveliness it would
be hard to beat that; and for magical clearness and nearness take the
following:-
'And in the evening Peredur entered a valley, and at the head of the
valley he came to a hermit's cell, and the hermit welcomed him
gladly, and there he spent the night. And in the morning he arose,
and when he went forth, behold, a shower of snow had fallen the night
before, and a hawk had killed a wild-fowl in front of the cell. And
the noise of the horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted
upon the bird. And Peredur stood and compared the blackness of the
raven, and the whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the blood,
to the hair of the lady whom best he loved, which was blacker than
the raven, and to her skin, which was whiter than the snow, and to
her two cheeks, which were redder than the blood upon the snow
appeared to be.
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