Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail Part 11

Another Highland tale (Campbell, lviii., The Rider of Grianaig) furnishes a fresh example of this fact. Here, also, the deeds to be done of the hero were prophesied of him. But these deeds he would never accomplish, save he were incited thereto and aided therein by a raven, who in the end comes out as a be-spelled youth, and a steed, a maiden under spells, and the spells will not go off till her head be off. Even so Peredur is urged on and helped by the bewitched youth. In other respects, there is no likeness of plan and little of detail[76] to the Mabinogi, certainly no trace of direct influence of the Welsh story upon the Highland one.

It may, however, be a.s.serted that all of these tales are derived more or less directly from the French romance. This has been confidently stated of the Breton ballad cycle of Morvan le Breiz (Barzaz Breiz) and of the Breton Marchen, Peronik l'idiot (Souvestre, Foyer Breton), and I have preferred making no use of either. In the matter of the Scotch and Irish tales a stand must be made. The romance, it is said, may have filtered down into the Celtic population, through the medium of adaptations such as the Mabinogi or Sir Perceval. Granted, for argument sake, that these two works are mere adaptations, it must yet follow that the stories derived from them will be more or less on the same lines as themselves. Is this so? Can it be reasonably argued that the folk-tale of the Great Fool is a weakened copy of certain features of the Mabinogi, which itself is a weakened copy of certain features of the French poem? Is it not the fact that the folk-tale omits much that is in the Mabinogi, and on the other hand preserves details which are wanting not alone in the Welsh tale but in Chrestien. If other proof of the independent nature of these tales were needed it would be supplied by the close similarity existing between the Great Fool opening and the Fionn legend. This is extant in several forms, one of which, still told in the Highlands (Campbell's lx.x.xii.), tells how c.u.mhall's son is reared in the wilderness, how he drowns the youth of a neighbouring hamlet, how he slays his father's slayer, and wins the magic trout the taste of which gives knowledge of past and to come, how he gets back his father's sword and regains his father's lands, all as had been prophesied of him. Another descendant of the French romance it will be said. But a very similar tale is found in a fifteenth century Irish MS.

(The Boyish Exploits of Finn Mac c.u.mhall, translated by Dr. J. O'Donovan in the Transactions of the Ossianic Society, vol. iv.); c.u.mhall, slain by Goll, leaves his wife big with a son, who when born is reared by two druidesses. He grows up fierce and stalwart, overcomes all his age-mates, overtakes wild deer he running, slays a boar, and catches the magic salmon of knowledge. An eighteenth century version given by Kennedy ("Legendary Fictions," p. 216) makes c.u.mhall offer violence to Muirrean, daughter of the druid Tadg, and his death to be chiefly due to the magic arts of the incensed father. It will hardly be contended that these stories owe their origin to adaptations of Chrestien's poem. But in any case no such contention could apply to the oldest presentment of Fionn as a formula hero, that found in the great Irish vellum, the Leabhar na h'Uidhre, written down from older materials at the beginning of the twelfth century.

The tract ent.i.tled "The cause of the battle of Cnucha" has been translated by Mr. Henessey ("Revue Celtique," vol. ii., pp. 86, _et seq._). In it we find c.u.mhall and Tadhg, the violence done to the latter's daughter, the consequent defeat and death of c.u.mhall, the lonely rearing of Fionn by his mother, and the youth's avenging of his father. I must refer to my paper in the "Folk-Lore Record" for a detailed argument in favour of the L.n.H.

account being an euhemerised version of the popular tradition, represented by the Boyish Exploits, and for a comparison of the Fionn _sage_ as a whole with the Greek, Iranian, Latin, and Germanic hero tales, which like it are modelled upon the lines of the Expulsion and Return formula. I have said enough, I trust, to show that the Fionn _sage_ is a variant (a far richer one) of the theme treated in the boyhood of Perceval, but that it, and _a fortiori_ the allied folk-tales are quite independent of the French poem. It then follows that this portion of Chrestien's poem must itself be looked upon as one of many treatments of a theme even more popular among the Celts than among any other Aryan race, and that its ultimate source is a Breton or Welsh folk-tale.

The genuine and independent nature of the Great Fool prose opening being thus established, it is in the highest degree suggestive to find in the accompanying Lay points of contact with the Grail Legend as given in Chrestien. Three versions of this Lay have been printed in English, that edited by Mr. John O'Daly (Transactions of the Ossianic Society, vol. vi., pp. 161, _et seq._); Mr. Campbell's (West Highland Tales, vol. iii. pp.

154, _et seq._) and Mr. Kennedy's prose version (Bardic Stories of Ireland, pp. 151, _et seq._). O'Daly's, as the most complete and coherent, forms the staple of the following summary, pa.s.sages found in it alone being italicised.[77]

_Summary of the Lay of the Great Fool._--(1) There was a great fool who subdued the world by strength of body; (2) _He comes to the King of Lochlin to win a fair woman, learns she is guarded by seven score heroes, overthrows them, and carries her off_; (C. and K. plunging at once _in medias res_, introduce the Great Fool and his lady love out walking); (3) The two enter a valley, are meet by a "Gruagach" (champion, sorcerer), in his hand a goblet with drink; (4) The Great Fool thirsts, and though warned by his lady love drinks deep of the proffered cup; the "Gruagach"

departs and the Great Fool finds himself minus his two legs; (5) The two go onward, and ("swifter was he at his two knees than six at their swiftness of foot;" C.) A deer nears them followed by a white hound, the Great Fool slays the deer and seizes the hound; (6) whose owner coming up claims but finally yields it, and offers the Great Fool food and drink during life; (7) The three fare together (the glen they had pa.s.sed through had ever been full of glamour) till they come to a fair city filled with the glitter of gold, dwelt in solely by the owner of the white hound and his wife, "whiter than very snow her form, gentle her eye, and her teeth like a flower"; (8) She asks concerning her husband's guests, and, learning the Great Fool's prowess, marvels he should have let himself be deprived of his legs; (9) The host departs, leaving his house, wife, and store of gold in the Great Fool's keeping, he is to let no man in, no one out should any come in, nor is he to sleep; (10) Spite his lady love's urgings the Great Fool yields to slumber, when in comes a young champion and s.n.a.t.c.hes a kiss from the host's wife, ("She was not ill pleased that he came," C.); (11) The Great Fool's love awakening him reproaches him for having slept--he arises to guard the door, in vain does the intruder offer gold, three cauldrons full and seven hundred townlands, he shall not get out; (12) _At the instigation of the host's wife_ the intruder restores the Great Fool's legs, but not then even will the hero let him go--pay for the kiss he must when the host returns; threats to deprive him of his legs are in vain, as are likewise the entreaties of the host's wife (All this is developed with great prolixity in O'Daly, but there is nothing substantial added to the account in C.); (13) Finally the intruder discloses that he himself is the host, and he was the Gruagach, whose magic cup deprived the Great Fool of his legs, and he is, "_his own gentle brother long in search of him, now that he has found him he is released from sorcery_." The two kiss (C. and K. end here). (14) The two brothers fare forth, encounter a giant with an eye larger than a moon and an iron club, wherewith he hits the Great Fool a crack that brings him to his knees, but the latter arising closes with the giant, kills him and takes his club, the two then attack four other giants, three of whom the Great Fool slays with his club, and the fourth yields to him. The brothers take possession of the giant's castle and all its wealth.

There are obvious similarities between the Lay and the story found in the Mabinogi and the Conte du Graal. A stag hunt is prominent in both, and whilst engaged in it the hero falls under "illusion," in both too the incident of the seizure of the hound appears, though in a different connection. Finally in the Lay, as in the Mabinogi, the mover in the enchantment is a kinsman whose own release from spells depends upon the hero's coming successfully out of the trials to which he exposes him. But while the general idea is the same, the way in which it is worked out is so different that it is impossible to conceive of the one story having been borrowed from the other. What can safely be claimed is that the Great Fool, counterpart of Peredur-Perceval in the adventures of his youth and up-bringing, is also, to a certain extent, his counterpart in the most prominent of his later adventures, that of the stag hunt. It is thus fairly certain that all this part of the Conte du Graal is, like the _Enfances_, a working up of Celtic folk-tales. The giant fight which concludes the Lay may be compared with that in Sir Perceval and in Morvan le Breiz, and such a comparison makes it extremely likely that the incident thus preserved by independent and widely differing offshoots from the same folk-tale stem, belongs to the oldest form of the story.

The a.n.a.logies of the Lay with the Perceval _sage_ are not yet exhausted.

In virtue of the relationship between the two chief characters, the Lay belongs to the "twin-brother cycle." This group of folk-tales, some account of which is given below,[78] is closely related on the one hand to the "dragon slayer" group of _marchen_, on the other hand to the Expulsion and Return formula tales. In many versions of the latter (the most famous being that of Romulus and Remus) the hero is one of twins, and, after sharing for a while with his brother, strife breaks out between them. In the folk-tale this strife leads to final reconciliation, or is indeed a means of unravelling the plot. In the hero-tale on the other hand the strife mostly ends with the death or defeat of the one brother. It would seem that when the folk-tale got a.s.sociated with a definite hero (generally the founder and patron of a race) and became in brief a hero-tale, the necessity of exalting the race hero brought about a modification of the plot. If this is so the folk-tale group of the "two brothers" must be looked upon as older than the corresponding portion of the Expulsion and Return hero-tales, and not as a mere weakened echo of the latter. To return to the twin-brother features. The Peredur-Perceval _sage_ has a twin-sister, and is parallel herein to the Fionn _sage_ in one of its forms ("How the Een was set up"), though curiously enough not to the Great Fool folk-tale (otherwise so similar to "How the Een was set up"), which, as in the Lay, has a brother. But beyond this formal recognition of the incident in the Perceval _sage_, I am inclined to look upon the Perceval-Gawain dualism as another form of it. This dualism has been somewhat obscured by the literary form in which the _sage_ has been preserved and the tendency to exalt and idealise _one_ hero. In the present case this tendency has not developed so far as to seriously diminish the importance of Gawain; _his_ adventures are, however, left in a much more primitive and _marchenhaft_ shape, and hence, as will be shown later on, are extremely valuable in any attempt to reach the early form of the story.[79]

If Simrock's words quoted on the t.i.tle page were indeed conclusive--"If that race among whom the 'Great Fool' folk-tale was found independent of the Grail story had the best claim to be regarded as having wrought into one these two elements"--then my task might be considered at an end. I have shown that this race was that of the Celtic dwellers in these islands, among whom this tale is found not only in a fuller and more significant form than elsewhere, but in a form that connects it with the French Grail romance. But the conclusion that the Conte du Graal is in the main a working up of Celtic popular traditions, which had cl.u.s.tered round a hero, whose fortunes bore, in part, a striking resemblance to those of Fionn, the typical representative of the Expulsion and Return formula cycle among the Celts, though hardly to be gainsaid, does not seem to help much towards settling the question of the origin of the Grail itself. The story would appear to be Celtic except just the central incident upon which the whole turns. For the English Sir Perceval, which undoubtedly follows older models, breathes no word of search for any magic talisman, let alone the Grail, whilst the Mabinogi, which is also older in parts than the Conte du Graal, gives a different turn to and a.s.signs a different _motif_ for the hero's conduct. The avenging of a kinsman's harm upon certain supernatural beings, and the consequent release from enchantment of another kinsman, supply the elements of a clear and consistent action to which parallels may easily be adduced from folk-tales, but one quite distinct from the release of a kinsman through the medium of certain talismans and certain magic formulae. Numerous as have been the points of contact hitherto established between Celtic folk belief and the French romance, the parallel would seem to break down at its most essential point, and the contention that the Grail is a foreign element in the Celtic legend would still seem to be justified. Before, however, this can be a.s.serted, what I have called the central episode of the romance requires more searching and detailed examination than it has had, and some accessory features, which, on the hypothesis of the Christian legendary origin of the Grail, remain impenetrable puzzles must be commented upon. And another instructive point of contact between romance and folk-tale must be previously noticed, connected as it is with stories already dealt with in this chapter.

In the latest portion of the Conte du Graal, the interpolation of Gerbert, the following incident occurs:--The hero meets four knights carrying their wounded father, who turns out to be Gonemans, the same who armed him knight. He vows vengeance upon Gonemans' enemies, but his efforts are at first of no avail. As fast as in the daytime he slays them, at night they are brought back to life by "Une vieille" who is thus described:--

La poitrine ot ague et seche; Ele arsist ausi come une esche Si on boutast en li le fu.[80]

La bouche avoit grant a merveilles Et fendue dusqu'as oreilles, Qu'ele avoit longues et tendans; Lons et lez et gausnes les dans Avoit. (Potvin vi., 183, 184.)

She carries with her

II. barisiax d'ivoire gent;

containing a "poison," the same whereof Christ made use in the Sepulchre, and which serves here to bring the dead back to life and to rejoin heads cut off from bodies. She goes to work thus:--

A la teste maintenant prise, Si l'a desor le bu a.s.sise;

then taking the balm

Puis en froie celui la bouche a cui la teste avoit rajointe; Sor celui n'ot vaine ne jointe Qui lues ne fust de vie plaine.

Perceval stops her when she has brought back three of her men to life; she recognises in him her conqueror:

Bien vous connois et bien savoie Que de nului garde n'avoie Fors que de vous; car, par mon chief Nus n'en peust venir a chief Se vous non ...

So long as she lives, Perceval shall be powerless to achieve his Quest.

She wars against Gonemant by order of the King of the Waste City, who ever strives against all who uphold the Christian faith, and whose chief aim it is to hinder Perceval from attaining knowledge of the Grail. Perceval gets possession of somewhat of the wonder-working balm, brings to life the most valiant of his adversaries, slays him afresh after a hard struggle, in which he himself is wounded, heals his own hurt, and likewise Gonemant's, with the balsam. Compare now Campbell's above-cited tale, the Knight of the Red Shield. The hero, left alone upon the island by his two treacherous companions, sees coming towards him "three youths, heavily, wearily, tired." They are his foster-brothers, and from the end of a day and a year they hold battle against the Son of Darkness, Son of Dimness, and a hundred of his people, and every one they kill to-day will be alive to-morrow, and spells are upon them they may not leave this (island) for ever until they kill them. The hero starts out on the morrow alone against these enemies, and he did not leave a head on a trunk of theirs, and he overcame the Son of Darkness himself. But he is so spoilt and torn he cannot leave the battle-field, and he lays himself down amongst the dead the length of the day. "There was a great strand under him below; and what should he hear but the sea coming as a blazing brand of fire, as a destroying serpent, as a bellowing bull; he looked from him, and what saw he coming on the sh.o.r.e of the strand, but a great toothy carlin ... there was the tooth that was longer than a staff in her fist, and the one that was shorter than a stocking wire in her lap." She puts her finger in the mouth of the dead, and brings them alive. She does this to the hero, and he bites off the finger at the joint, and then slays her. She is the mother of the Son of Darkness, and she has a vessel of balsam wherewith the hero's foster-brothers anoint and make him whole, and her death frees them from her spells for ever.[81] This "toothy carlin" is a favourite figure in Celtic tradition. She re-appears in the ballad of the Muilearteach (probably Muir Iarteach, _i.e._, Western Sea), Campbell, iii., pp. 122, _et seq._, and is there described as "the bald russet one,"

"her face blue black, of the l.u.s.tre of coal, her bone tufted tooth like rusted bone, one deep pool-like eye in her head, gnarled brushwood on her head like the clawed-up wood of the aspen root." In another version of the ballad, printed in the Scottish Celtic Review, No. 2, pp. 115, _et seq._, the monster is "bald red, white maned, her face dark grey, of the hue of coal, the teeth of her jaw slanting red, one flabby eye in her head, her head bristled dark and grey, like scrubwood before h.o.a.r."[82] The editor of this version, the Rev. J. G. Campbell, interprets the ballad, and correctly, no doubt, "as an inroad of the Personified Sea." There is no connection, save in the personage of the "toothy carlin," between the ballad and the folk-tale.[83]

It is impossible, I think, to compare Gerbert's description of the witch with that of the Highland "Carlin" without coming to the conclusion that the French poet drew from traditional, popular Celtic sources. The wild fantasy of the whole is foreign in the extreme to the French temperament, and is essentially Celtic in tone. But the incident, as well as one particular feature of it, admits of comparison: the three foster-brothers of the Highland tale correspond to the four sons of Gonemant, who be it recollected, represents in the Conte du Graal, Peredur-Perceval's uncle in the Mabinogi; in both, the hero goes forth alone to do battle with the mysterious enemy; the Son of Darkness answers to the King of the Waste City; the dead men are brought back to life in the same way; the release of the kinsman, from spells, or from danger of death, follows upon the witch's discomfiture. And yet greater value attaches to the incident as connected with the Mabinogi form of the story; in Gerbert, as in the Mabinogi, the hero's uncle is sick to death, his chief enemy is a monstrous witch (or witches), who foreknows that she must succ.u.mb at the hero's hands.[84] Something has obviously dropped out from the Mabinogi.

May it not be those very magic talismans, the winning of which is the chief element of the French romances, and may not one of the talismans have been the vessel of life-restoring balsam which figures in Gerbert and the Highland tales?[85] The study of subsidiary versions and incidents may thus throw upon the connection of the Grail with the Perceval romance a light which the main Celtic forms of the latter have not hitherto yielded.

The Thornton MS. Sir Perceval differs in this incident from both Manessier and Gerbert. As in Gerbert and the Highland Tale the hero meets his uncle and cousins; there is the same fight with the mother of the enemy of his kin, the hideous carlin, but it precedes, as does also the slaying of that enemy, the meeting of uncle and nephews. There is thus no room for the healing _motif_ for which the unconscious avenging of the father's death is subst.i.tuted. These differences bear witness both to the popular and shifting nature of the traditions upon which the romances are based, and to the fact that the avenging of a blood feud was the leading incident of its earliest form.

CHAPTER VII.

The various forms of the visit to the Grail Castle in the romances--Conte du Graal: Chrestien; Gautier-Manessier; Gautier-Gerbert--Didot-Perceval--Mabinogi--Conte du Graal: Gawain's visit to the Grail Castle--Heinrich von dem Turlin--Conte du Graal: Perceval's visit to the Castle of Maidens--Inconsistency of these varying accounts; their testimony to stories of different nature and origin being embodied in the romances--Two main types: feud quest and unspelling quest--Reasons for the confusion of the two types--Evidence of the confusion in older Celtic literature--The Grail in Celtic literature: the gear of the Tuatha de Danann; the cauldron in the Ultonian cycle; the Mabinogi of Branwen; vessel of balsam and glaive of light in the contemporary folk-tale--The sword in Celtic literature: Tethra; Fionn; Ma.n.u.s--Parallels to the Bespelled Castle; the Brug of Oengus, the Brug of Lug, the Brug of Manannan Mac Lir, Bran's visit to the Island of Women, Cormac Mac Art, and the Fairy Branch; Diarmaid and the Daughter of King Under the Waves--Unspelling stories: The Three Soldiers; the waiting of Arthur; Arthur in Etna; the Kyffhauser Legend, objections to Martin's views concerning it--Gawain's visit to the Magic Castle and Celtic parallels; The Son of Bad Counsel; Fionn in Giant Land; Fionn in the House of Cuana; Fionn and the Yellow Face--The Vanishing of the Bespelled Castle--Comparison with the Sleeping Beauty cycle--The "Haunted Castle" form and its influence on Heinrich's version--The Loathly Grail Messenger.

The a.n.a.lysis of the various versions has shown that the Conte du Graal is the oldest portion of the vast body of French romance which deals with the Grail, and that it presents the earliest form of the story. The examination of the theories put forward to explain the genesis and growth of the legend has shown how untenable is that hypothesis which makes the Christian legend the starting point of the cycle. The comparison of the Conte du Graal with Celtic legends and folk-tales has shown that the former is in the main a North French retelling of tales current then, as now, among the Celtic peoples of Britain, and probably of Brittany. One thing alone remains unexplained, the mysterious Grail itself. Nor has any light been thrown from Celtic sources upon the incident of the hero's visit to the Castle of Talismans, his silence, and the ensuing misfortune which overtakes him. Where this incident does appear in a Celtic version, the Mabinogi, it is not brought in connection with the Grail, and it bears obvious traces of interpolation. The utmost we have been able to do is to reconstruct from scattered indications in different Celtic tales a sequence of incidents similar to that of the French romance. Let us, then, return to what may be called the central incident of the Grail legend in its older and purer form. And let us recall the fact that the hypothesis which finds a Christian origin for the whole legend has no explanation to offer of this incident. Birch-Hirschfeld can merely suggest that Perceval's question upon which all hinges is "eine harmlose Erfindung Borron's," a meaningless invention of Borron's. It is, indeed, his failure to account for such an essential element of the story that forms one of the strongest arguments against his hypothesis.

In the first place it must be noticed that the incident of a hero's visit to a magic castle, of his omission whilst there to do certain things, and of the loss or suffering thereby caused, occurs not once, but many times; not in one, but in many forms in the vast body of Grail romance, as is seen by the following list, which likewise comprises all the occasions on which one or other of the questers has come near to or succeeded in seeing the Grail:--

(1) CHRESTIEN: (Inc. 7). Perceval's first visit to the Grail Castle.

Question omitted.

(2) GAUTIER: (Inc. 22). Perceval's second visit to the Grail Castle.

Question put--

_Incident breaks off in middle, and is continued in one version by_:--

(2A) MANESSIER, who sends off the hero on a fresh quest, which is finished in

(3) MANESSIER: (Inc. 21). Perceval's third visit to Grail Castle.

The question is not mentioned. Hero's final success.

_In another version by_:--

(4) GERBERT: (Inc. 1-3). Perceval is sent forth anew upon Quest. He has half put the question and been partially successful.

(5) GERBERT: (Inc. 21). Perceval's third visit to Grail Castle.

Question not mentioned. Hero's success.

_Besides these forms of the episode in the Conte du Graal of which Perceval is the hero, we have_:--

(6) GAUTIER: (Inc. 3). Gauvain's first visit according to one, second visit according to another version. Question half put, partial success.

_And finally a somewhat similar incident of which Perceval is the hero in_:--

(7) GAUTIER: (Inc. 12). Visit to the Castle of Maidens. Untimely sleep of hero.

So far the Conte du Graal. Of the versions closely connected with it we have:

(8 & 9) WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH: Two visits of Perceval to Grail Castle. Question omitted at first, put in second, and crowned with success.

(10 & 11) MABINOGI OF PEREDUR: (Inc. 6-25). Two visits of hero to Grail Castle. Question omitted at first. Second visit successful. No mention of question.