While it is highly believed that Celtic folklore was phased out in Britain through the many invasions, it is arguable that the tradition was not only around, but made its way into the popular poetry of the age of Chaucer. Britain underwent a series of invasions between the time when the Island was ruled by the Celts to the Norman invasions a thousand years later. With these invasions, the victors would bring in their own traditions and laws to govern the land, but in the ancient world of storytelling, we can clearly see the persistence of Celtic lore evident throughout the culture.

Whether Chaucer intentionally used Celtic mythology in The Book of the Duchess or if it was so persistent in English storytelling techniques remains a question, but the fact remains that uncanny resemblance’s remain. One Celtic myth that is almost a parallel with The Book of the Duchess would be found in the Welsh set of legends known as The Mabinogion, which is more of a compilation of oral Celtic traditions first written down in the early 14th-century. It is a tale called The Dream of Rhonabwy and is almost completely identical to Chaucer’s work from the beginning insomniac sleep, to the dream sequence and the meeting of the knight, all the way until the abrupt ending of the dream and the story.

The Dream of Rhonabwy chronicles the journey of the hero Rhonabwy to an unkempt stable where the party was forced to take refuge. The story goes into detail of how the men were kept from sleep because "[w]here there was a hole, a man would go to over the ankle, what with the mixture of water and cow-dung" (138). Rhonabwy decided to cure his insomnia and discomfort by taking up a yellow ox skin and finally fell into a sleep where he witnessed a dream. In the dream, Rhonabwy came upon a hunting party in the woods where he meets a chieftain who was a messenger for Arthur, the famous king of British folklore.

It is interesting to note here the similarities between Chaucer’s The Book of the Duchess and the earlier Welsh tale. The first glaring connection one will see is the episode of sleeplessness both the narrator of BD describe and that attributed to Rhonabwy. Although the narrator of BD suffers from an affliction that could either have been love or an actual illness and Rhonabwy just suffers from discomfort, it is obvious that the same motif exists in both works. Next, the dream sequence is not only similar in nature, but the opening episodes of each dream are the same.

The narrator of BD falls into a sleep and is able to describe the scene as being in a well-known area of Britain, in which he comes upon a hunting party. It is needless to point out the similarities here, but just to point out that Chaucer substituted the messenger from The Dream of Rhonabwy for a more contemporary and well-known figure in his own court. Since Chaucer was asked to write it for his friend John of Gaunt, what better way to flatter his prestigious friend than compare him with an Arthurian knight, or even Arthur himself.

The story of Rhonabwy’s dream continues in that the hero is led to a plain where he sees two hunting parties emerging on each other. The first is a party of soldiers, with the head of the party wearing all white. The hero Rhonabwy learns from his guide that this is Arthur approaching with his hunting party. The second party is lead by a figure dressed entirely in black where the hero discovers that this is Edern ap Nudd. This episode is filled with instances of men coming and going, all paying tribute to the king. Rhonabwy then notices the approach of another man who he finds out is Owein, and it is here that Arthur challenges the man to a game of gwddbwyll, and from what I discern of the description "[a]nd then the red-headed servitor brought the gwyddbwyll to Arthur and Owein: gold pieces and a board of silver" (145), the game sounds quite similar to the game of chess the Black Knight in BD describes he and Fortune as playing "At the ches with me she gan to pleye/ With hir false draughtes dyvers/She staal on me and tok my fers" (BD, 652-4).

This episode is reminiscent of a major motif in Celtic literature. The game of chess is played in many Celtic myths, and one in particular, Midir and Etaine, is incredibly similar to the game played in BD. In ME we have a game played between Midir, the Gaelic Pluto, and the mortal king. After losing the first two games, Midir finally wins the third game and chooses the wife of the king as his prize. Midir takes Etaine and they turn into swans in the final scene. There has been much speculation on the symbolism of this story as well, but it may very have been a way the storyteller alluded to the death of the King’s wife as she is taken off to the Celtic Otherworld.

Although the actual dream sequences differ immensely in both The Book of the Duchess and The Dream of Rhonabwy there is a reoccurring theme that is constant in both works. The final example I will use will be the finality of both dream sequences as both the narrator and the hero awake from their slumbers. Both emphasize the end of the hunt, where Chaucerian method uses the hunt as an allegorical mode to represent his quest of "hert-huntyng" while the teller of The Dream of Rhonabwy uses the mode as the end of an ancient reign of the great King Arthur.

When The Dream of Rhonabwy was finally written down around 1300-1325, the author, most likely a monk, mentions that the story itself was never written down because both "bards and storytellers knew the dream without a book – by reason of the number of colours that were on the horses, and all that variety of rare colours both on the arms and their trappings, and on the precious mantle, and the magic stones" (152). This passage shows the importance Celtic storytellers had on the oral tradition of stories, and it is likely that Chaucer was well aware of this ancient tradition of oral story telling.

It may never be known whether or not Chaucer was familiar with these stories, and it would take a scholar much more astute than I to show evidence of such a claim, but it is evident that Chaucer was aware of the traditions of Celtic story telling. It is also clear to the Celtic scholar that although the island of Britain was invaded numerous times in the thousand years since Caesar first set foot on the tiny island. First by the Romans, then the Saxons and Germanic tribes, and finally the Norman invasion, Celtic folk lore managed to linger throughout the literary traditions of the island.

It is apparent though, that Chaucer did use many Celtic themes in writing his Book of the Duchess, to which I pointed out above. So, while most Chaucerian scholars spend a great deal of time studying the Roman and Greek mythological themes presented in his works, Celtic mythology and structure of story telling should also be taken into further consideration.