And if the motive was not always clearly understood, still less so was the character of the fairy. In fact she seems to have considerably puzzled the mediæval romancers. In the first instance the story would be excessively simple, she would probably be such a water-fairy as we find in _Tidorel_, and Ulrich seems to have retained this idea when he calls her a _Merfeine_ or _Merminne_, but as the _lai_ gained popularity, and it became necessary to supply details as to her kingdom, etc., it would be supplemented from other legendary sources. Ulrich's own description, the land of ten thousand maidens where no man penetrates, is manifestly the _Meide-land_ which in _Diu Krône_ Gawain visits, and which is universally admitted to be a remembrance of the 'Isle of Women' of old Celtic tradition. It may have touched the Lancelot _lai_ through the medium of the Gawain's story, but as a 'property' of old Celtic belief it may well have been known independently. I think it probable that this identification may explain a very curious passage in _Diu Krône_, where Kei reproaches Lancelot who has failed in the glove test in the following terms: '_er hât daz vil rehte erspeht, daz iz di gotinne verkurt an ir minne, diu iu zôch in dem sê_.'--ll. 24517-20. Certain it is that while the queen of the 'Isle of Women' does not appear to be addicted to child-stealing, she does entice, or abduct, earthly knights to be her lovers. It is not impossible that a version of the _Lancelot_ story, redacted by some one familiar with the real character of the kingdom, may have represented him as the queen's lover. It is also not impossible, were this the case, that the story of the imprisonment of Guinevere in the other world, a story which, as we shall presently see, must have existed at a very early date, may have led to her being confused with the queen of that kingdom, and to the transfer of Lancelot's affections from the one to the other. The prose _Lancelot_ version is entirely different, and far less archaic: there is no real lake, the appearance is but a _mirage_; men are admitted; Lancelot has not only his cousins for companions, but other knights as well. The lady herself is conceived of more as a mortal versed in enchantment than as a fairy proper. In the _Suite de Merlin_ she is identified with the Demoiselle Chaceresse, daughter of the King of Northumberland;[28] and in both these romances, the _Lancelot_ and the _Merlin Suite_, she is the lover and the betrayer of Merlin. It may not be out of place to remark here that the tendency of later romances, as exhibited in the _Suite_ and notably in Malory, is to connect the Lady of the Lake rather with Arthur than with Lancelot.