Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail Part 14

Thus, in "How the Great Tuairsgeul was put to Death" (Scot. Celt. Rev. I., p. 70) the magician "lays it as crosses and charms that water leave not your shoe until you found out how the Great Tuairsgeul was put to death."

The hero retorts by laying the same charms that the magician leave not the hillock until he return. In Campbell, No. XLVII., Mac Iain Direach, the stepmother, "sets it as crosses, and as spells, and as the decay of the year upon thee; that thou be not without a pool of water in thy shoe, and that thou be wet, cold, and soiled until, etc.;" and the hero bespells her, "that thou be standing with the one foot on the great house and the other foot on the castle: and that thy face be to the tempest whatever wind blows, until I return back." The formula in Campbell, No. LI, the Fair Gruagach is very archaic. "I lay thee under spells, and under crosses, under holy herdsmen of quiet travelling, wandering woman, the little calf, most feeble and powerless, to take thy head and thine ear and thy wearing of life from off thee if thou takest rest by night or day; where thou takest thy breakfast that thou take not thy dinner, and where thou takest thy dinner that thou take not thy supper, in whatsoever place thou be, until thou findest out in what place I may be under the four brown quarters of the globe."

These instances will suffice to show the nature of the _gess_ in Celtic folk-lore, but some references to older Irish literature are necessary to show its great importance in the social and religious life of the race.

O'Donovan (Book of Rights, p. xlv.) explains the word _geasa_ as "any thing or act forbidden because of the ill luck that would result from its doing;" also "a spell, a charm, a prohibition, an interdiction or hindrance." This explanation occurs in the introduction to a poem on the restrictions (_geasa_) and prerogatives (_buada_) of the Kings of Eire, found in the Book of Ballymote (late fourteenth century) and Book of Lecan (early fifteenth century). The poem is ascribed to Cuan O'Lochain (A.D.

1024), and, from the historical allusions contained in it, O'Donovan looks upon it as in substance due to that poet, and as embodying much older traditions. Some of these _geasa_ may be quoted. For the King of Eire, "that the sun should rise upon him on his bed in Magh Teamhrach;" for the King of Leinster, "to go round Tuath Laighean left hand-wise on Wednesday;" for the King of Munster, "to remain, to enjoy the feast of Loch Lein from one Monday to another;" for the King of Connaught, "to go in a speckled garment on a grey speckled steed to the heath of Luchaid;"

for the King of Ulster, "to listen to the fluttering of the flocks of birds of Luin Saileach after sunset."[135] Even these instances do not exhaust the force or adequately connote the nature of this curious inst.i.tution. In the Irish hero-tales _geasa_ attach themselves to the hero from his birth up, and are the means by which fate compa.s.ses the downfall of the otherwise invincible champion; thus it is a _gess_ of Diarmaid that he never hunt a swine, and when he is artfully trapped into doing it by Fionn he meets his death; it is a _gess_ of Cuchulainn's that he never refuse food offered him by women, and as he goes to his last fight he accepts the poisoned meal of the witches though he full well knows it will be fatal to him.[136] But, besides this, _geasa_ may also be an appeal to the hero's honour as well as a magic charm laid upon him, and it is sometimes difficult to see by which of the two motives the hero is moved.

Thus Graine, wife of Fionn, lays _geasa_ upon Diarmaid that he carry her off from her husband, and though he is in the last degree unwilling he must comply.[137]

Enough has been said to show that we have in the _geasa_ a cause quite sufficient to explain the mysterious prohibition to ask questions laid upon Perceval, if the first explanation I have offered of this prohibition be thought inadequate.

CHAPTER IX.

Summing up of the elements of the older portion of the cycle--Parallelism with Celtic tradition--The Christian element in the cycle: the two forms of the Early History; Brons form older--Brons and Bran--The Bran conversion legend--The Joseph conversion legend: Joseph in apocryphal literature--Glas...o...b..ry--The head in the platter and the Veronica portrait--The Bran legend the starting point of the Christian transformation of the legend--Subst.i.tution of Joseph for Bran--Objections to this hypothesis--Hypothetical sketch of the growth of the legend.

I have now finished the examination of all those incidents in the Grail Quest romances which are obviously derived from some other sources than Christian legend, and which are, indeed, referred by p.r.o.nounced adherents of the Christian-origin hypothesis to Celtic tradition. I have also claimed a Celtic origin for features. .h.i.therto referred to Christian legend. This examination will, I trust, convince many that nearly all the incidents connected with the Quest of the Grail are Celtic in their origin, and that thus alone can we account for the way in which they appear in the romances. The latter are, as we have seen, in the highest degree inconsistent in their account of the mystic vessel and its fortunes; the most cursory examination shows the legend to be composed of two parts, which have no real connection with each other; the older of these parts, the Quest, can easily be freed from the traces of Christian symbolism; this older part is itself no h.o.m.ogeneous or consistent tale, but a complex of incidents diverse in origin and character. These incidents are: the rearing of the hero in ignorance of the world and of men; his visit to the court of the King, his uncle; his slaying of his father's murderer, the trial made of him by means of the broken sword; his service with the Fisher King; his quest in search of the sword and of the vessel by means of which he is to avenge the death or wounding of his kinsman; his accomplishment of this task by the aid of a kinsman who is under spells from which he will not be loosed until the quest be ended; the adventure of the stag-hunt, in which the bespelled kinsman tests the hero's skill and courage; the hero's visit to the Castle of Talismans; the prohibition under which he labours; his failure to accomplish certain acts; the effects of his failure; his visit to the Magic Castle, the lord of which is under the enchantment of death-in-life; his visit to the Castle of Maidens; his visit to the Castle Perillous; and his deliverance of the captive damsels by means of the trials which he successfully undergoes. To one and all of these incidents Celtic parallels have been adduced; these have in each case been drawn from stories which present a general similarity of outline with the Grail romances, or share with them similar guiding conceptions, whilst at the same time they are so far disconnected with them that no hypothesis of borrowing can account for the features they have in common. The inconsistencies of the romances have been explained by the fusion into one of two originally distinct groups of stories, and this explanation is confirmed by the fact that traces of this fusion may readily be found in the parallel Celtic tales. These latter, when studied by scholars who never thought of comparing them with the Grail romances, have been found to contain mythical elements which other scholars had detected independently in the romances. Those features of the romances which have perplexed previous students, the Fisher King and the omitted question, have been explained from the same group of Celtic traditions, and in accordance with the same scheme of mythical interpretation which have been used to throw light upon the remainder of the cycle. Finally, the one Celtic version of the Grail Quest, the Mabinogi, which presents no admixture of Christian symbolism, has been shown, when cleared of certain easily distinguishable interpolations, to be genuine in character, and to present the oldest form of one of the stories which enters into the romances.

I have tried not to force these parallels, nor to go one step beyond what the facts warrant. I have also tried to bear in mind that a parallel is of no real value unless it throws light upon the puzzling features in the development of the romances. I thus rest my case, not so much upon the acc.u.mulative effect of the similarities which I have pointed out between the romances and Celtic tradition, as upon the fact that this reference of the romances to certain definite cycles of Celtic myth and legend makes us understand, what otherwise we cannot do, how they came by their present shape. It now remains to be seen if this reference, can in any way explain the Christian element in the legend, which I have hitherto left almost entirely out of account. Birch-Hirschfeld's hypothesis is condemned, in my opinion, by its failure to account for the Celtic element; although I do not think an explanation of a late and intruding feature is as inc.u.mbent upon me as that of the original Celtic basis of the legend is upon him, I yet feel that an hypothesis which has nothing to say on such a vital point can hardly be considered satisfactory. It is the Christian transformation of the old Celtic myths and folk-tales which gave them their wide vogue in the Middle Ages, which endowed the theme with such fascination for the preachers and philosophers who used it as a vehicle for their teaching, and which has endeared it to all lovers of mystic symbolism. The question how and why the Celtic tales which I have tried, not unsuccessfully I trust, to disentangle from the romances were ever brought into contact with Christ and His disciples, and how the old mystic vessel of healing, increase, and knowledge became at last the sacramental cup, must, therefore, be faced. The hypotheses set forth in the preceding page might be accepted in their entirety, and the merit of this transformation still be claimed, as Birch-Hirschfeld claims it, for the North French poets, to whom we owe the present versions of the romances. On first reading Birch-Hirschfeld's book, I thought this claim one of the flaws in his argument, and, as will be seen by reference to Chapter IV., other investigators, who accept the Christian origin of the larger part of the legend, hold that it has been shaped in these islands, or in accordance with Celtic traditions now lost. I think we can go a step farther. A number of myths and tales have been used to ill.u.s.trate the romances. In them may be found the personages through whom probably took place the first contact between Celtic mythic tradition and Christian legend.

We must revert for one moment to the results obtained in Chapter III. by an examination of the way in which the Grail and its fortunes are mentioned in the romances. We there distinguished two forms of the distinctively Christian portion of the legend, the Early History. In both Joseph is the first possessor and user of the holy vessel, but in one its farther fortunes are likewise bound up with him or with his seed. He, or his son, it is who leads the Grail host to Britain, who converts the island, and by whom the precious vessel is handed down through a chosen line of kings in antic.i.p.ation of the promised Knight's coming. In the other form, on the contrary, Joseph has nothing to do with Britain, which is converted by Brons and his son, Alain; Brons is the guardian of the holy vessel, and, in one version, the fisher of the mystic fish, whilst in another his son takes this part. There is repeated insistence upon the connection between the Grail host and Avalon. Finally Brons is the possessor of "secret words," and may not die until he has revealed them to his grandson.

This account is, we saw, later in form than the Joseph one. As we have it, it was written after the greater portion of the Conte du Graal, after that redaction of the Early History made use of by the author of the Queste and of the first draft of the Grand St. Graal. Its influence only makes itself felt in the later stages of development of the legend. But none the less it clearly represents an older and purer form of the Early History than that of the Queste and of Chrestien's continuators. It has not been doctored into harmony with the full-blown Arthurian legend as the Joseph Early History has. It is still chiefly, if not wholly, a legend, the main purport of which is to recount the conversion of Britain.

Such a legend is surely more likely to have been shaped by Welsh or Breton monks than by North French _trouveres_. And when we notice the Celtic names of the personages, and their connection with the Celtic paradise, Avalon, there can remain little, if any, doubt respecting the first home of the story. We may thus look upon Brons, owner of a mystic vessel, fisher of a mystic fish, as the hero of an early conversion legend. But the name Brons has at once suggested to most students of the cycle that of Bran. The latter is, as we saw in the last Chapter, the representative of an old Celtic G.o.d of the otherworld. He is the owner of the cauldron of renovation. He is also the hero in Welsh tradition of a conversion legend, and is commonly known as Bran the Blessed. Unfortunately the only explanation we have of this epithet occurs in a late triad, to which it is not safe to a.s.sign an earlier date than the fourteenth century. He is described therein as son of Llyr Llediath, "as one of the three blissful Rulers of the Island of Britain, who first brought the faith of Christ to the nation of the Cymry from Rome, where he was seven years a hostage for his son Caradawc."[138] But if late in form this triad may well embody an old tradition. It gives the significant descent of Bran from Llyr, and thereby equates him with Mannanan Mac Lir, with whom he presents otherwise so many points of contact. It is quite true that the Bran legend, as is pointed out to me by Professor Rhys, is mentioned neither in the earliest genealogies nor in Geoffrey. But it should be noted that the Grand St.

Graal does bring one member of the Brons group, Petrus, into contact with King Luces, the Lucius to whom Geoffrey ascribes the conversion. Again, the epithet "blessed" is applied to Bran in the Mabinogi of Branwen, daughter of Llyr. I have placed this tale as a whole as far back as the eleventh-tenth centuries, and my arguments have met with no opposition, and have won the approval of such authorities as Professor Windisch and Monsieur Gaidoz. But the Mabinogi, as we have it, was written down in the fourteenth century; the last transcriber abridged it, and at times did not apparently understand what he was transcribing. By his time the full-blown Bran legend of the triad was in existence, and it may be contended that the epithet was due to him and did not figure in his model. On the other hand, Stephens (Lit. of the Cymry, p. 425) quotes a triad of Kynddelw, a poet of the twelfth century, referring to the three blessed families of the Isle of Britain, one of which is declared by a later tradition to be that of Bran.[139] Again, the triads of Arthur and his Warriors, printed by Mr. Skene, Four Ancient Books, Vol. II., p. 457, from MS. Hengwrt, 566, of the beginning of the fourteenth century, and probably at least fifty years older, mentions the "blessed head of Bran."[140] On the whole, in spite of the silence of older sources, I look upon the epithet and the legend which it presupposes as old, and I see in a confusion between Bran, Lord of the Cauldron, and Bran the Blessed, the first step of the transformation of the Peredur _sage_ into the Quest of the Holy Grail. In the first capacity Bran corresponds to the Lord of the Castle of Talismans. From the way in which the fish is dwelt upon in his legend, it may, indeed, be conjectured that he stood to Peredur in some such relation as Finn-eges to Fionn. As hero of a conversion legend he came into contact with Joseph. We do not know how or at what date the legend of the conversion of Britain by Joseph originated. It is found enjoying wide popularity in the latter half of the twelfth century, the very time in which the romances were a.s.suming their present shape. Wulcker (Das Evangelium Nicodemi in der abendlandischen Literatur, Paderborn, 1872) shows that the legend is not met with before William of Malmesbury; and Zarncke, as already stated (_supra_, p. 107), has argued that the pa.s.sage in William is a late interpolation due to the popularity of the romances.[141] But to accept Zarncke's contention merely shifts back the difficulty. If William did not first note and give currency to the tradition, the unknown predecessor of Robert de Borron and of the authors of the Queste and Grand St. Graal did so; and the question still remains how did he come by the tradition, and what led him to a.s.sociate it with Glas...o...b..ry. Birch-Hirschfeld, it is true, makes short work of this difficulty. The fact that there is no earlier legend in which Joseph figures as the Apostle of Britain is to him proof that Borron evolved the conception of the Grail out of the canonical and apocryphal writings in which Joseph appears, and then devised the pa.s.sage to Britain in order to incorporate the Arthurian romances with the legend he had invented. It is needless to repeat that this theory, unacceptable on _a priori_ grounds, is still more so when tested by facts.

But Joseph under other aspects than that of Apostle of Britain is worthy of notice. The main source whence the legend writers drew their knowledge of him was the Evangelium Nicodemi, the history of which has been investigated by Wulcker. The earliest allusion in western literature to this apocryphal gospel is that of Gregory of Tours (Wulcker, p. 23), but no other trace of its influence is to be met with in France until we come to the Grail romances, and to mystery-plays which relate Christ's Harrowing of h.e.l.l. In Provence, Italy, and Germany the thirteenth and twelfth centuries are the earliest to which this gospel can be traced. In England, on the contrary, it was known as far back as the latter quarter of the eighth century; Cynewulf based upon it a poem on the Harrowing of h.e.l.l, and alludes to it in the Crist; the ninth century poem, "Christ and Satan," likewise shows knowledge of it, and there is a West-Saxon translation dating from the early eleventh century.

Whence this knowledge and popularity of the gospel in England several centuries before it entered prominently into the literature of any other European people? Wulcker can only point by way of answer to the early spread of Christianity in these Islands, and to the possibility of this gospel having reached England before it did France or Germany. He also insists upon the early development of Anglo-Saxon literature.

Whether the fact that the apocryphal writings which told of Joseph were known here when they were unknown on the Continent be held to warrant or no the existence of a specifically British Joseph legend, they at all events prove that he was a familiar and favourite legendary figure on British soil. It would be rash to go any farther, and to argue from the inadequacy of the reasons by which Wulcker seeks to account for the early knowledge of the Evangelium Nicodemi in England, that Joseph enjoyed particular favour among the British Christians, and that it was from them the tidings of him spread among their Saxon conquerors.

The legendary popularity of Joseph in these islands, though not in any special capacity of Apostle of Britain, is thus attested. Let us admit for argument's sake that the conversion legend did first take shape in the twelfth century, is it not more likely to have done so here, where the apocryphal writings about him were widely spread, than in France, where they were practically unknown? And why if Borron, or any other French poet, wanted to connect the Holy Vessel legend which he had imagined with Arthur, should he go out of his way to invent the personages of Brons and Alain? The story as found in the Queste would surely have been a far more natural one for him. And why the insistence upon Avalon? We have plain proof that Borron did not understand the word, as he explains it by a ridiculous pun (_supra_, p. 78).[142]

These difficulties are met in a large measure if we look upon Bran (Brons) as the starting point of the Christian transformation of the legend. In any case we may say that a conversion legend, whether a.s.sociated with Joseph or anyone else, would almost inevitably have gravitated towards Glas...o...b..ry, but there are special reasons why this should be the case with a Bran legend. Avalon is certainly the Welsh equivalent of the Irish Tir na n-Og, the land of youth, the land beyond the waves, the Celtic paradise. When or how this Cymric myth was localised at Glas...o...b..ry we know not.[143] We only know that Glas...o...b..ry was one of the first places in the island to be devoted to Christian worship. Is it too rash a conjecture that the Christian church may have taken the place of some Celtic temple or holy spot specially dedicated to the cult of the dead, and of that Lord of the Shades from which the Celts feigned their descent? The position of Glas...o...b..ry, not far from that western sea beyond which lie the happy isles of the dead, would favour such an hypothesis.

Although direct proof is wanting, I believe that the localisation is old and genuine: Bran, ruler of the otherworld, of Avalon, would thus come into natural contact with Glas...o...b..ry; and if, as I a.s.sume, Joseph took his place in the conversion legend the a.s.sociation would extend to him.

The after development of the legend would then be almost a matter of course. Bran, the ruler in Avalon, would pa.s.s on his magic gear (cauldron, spear, and sword, as in the case of the Tuatha de Dannan) to Bran the Blessed, who would in his turn transfer them to Joseph. And once the latter had entered into the legend, he would not fail to recall that last scene of the Lord's life with which he was so closely a.s.sociated, not by any pseudo-gospel but by the canonical writings themselves, and thus the gear of the old Celtic G.o.ds became transformed into such objects as were most prominent in the story of the Pa.s.sion and of the scene that immediately preceded it. The spear became that one wherewith Christ's side was pierced. As for the vessel, the sacramental nature is the last stage of its Christian development; its original object was merely to explain the sustenance of Joseph in prison, and to provide a miraculous refreshment for the Grail host, as is shown by the Early History portion of the Conte du Graal and by the Queste. In a dim and confused way the circ.u.mstances of the Resurrection helped to effect the change of the pagan resuscitation-cauldron into a symbol of the risen Lord. And some now lost feature of the original legend--some insistence upon the _contents_ of the vessel, some a.s.similation of them to blood--may have suggested the use to which the vessel was first put.

This hypothesis a.s.sumes many things. It a.s.sumes a Bran conversion legend, of which the only evidence of anything like the same date as the romances is a single epithet; it a.s.sumes that the hero of this legend was originally an old Celtic divinity; it a.s.sumes a Joseph conversion legend, for which there is really no other evidence than that of the romances; it a.s.sumes the amalgamation of the two legends, and that Joseph took over in a large measure the _role_ and characteristics of Brons. And when it is recollected that the primary a.s.sumption, the identification of the two Brans, rests in a large measure upon the appearance of the fish in the Brons legend, that this fish is nowhere in Celtic tradition a.s.sociated with Bran, that it is a.s.sociated on the other hand with a being, Fionn, whom we have compared with Peredur, but that it is absent from the Peredur-saga, the hypothesis must be admitted to be of a tentative nature.

I fully appreciate the force of the objections that can be urged against it; at the same time it has the merit of accounting for many puzzling features in the legend. When in the same story two personages can be distinguished whose _role_ is more or less of the same nature, when the one personage is subordinated in one version and has disappeared altogether from the other, it is quite legitimate to conclude that two originally independent accounts have become blended, and that one has absorbed the other. The hypothesis is on safe ground so far. It thus explains the presence of Brons in the legend, as well as his absence from some versions of it; it has something to say in explanation of the connection with Glas...o...b..ry; it explains in what way the Celtic traditions were started on their path of transformation; and it provides for that transformation taking the very course it did. There is nothing to be urged against it on _a priori_ grounds; once admit the premisses, and the rest follows easily and naturally. Its conjectural character (the main objection to it) is shared in an even higher degree by the other hypotheses, which have essayed to account for the growth and origin of the legend, and _they_ have the disadvantage of being inherently impossible.

In the light of the foregoing investigations and hypotheses we may now amplify the sketch history of the whole cycle given in Chapter III. The Peredur-saga probably came into existence in much its later form at an early date in the Middle Ages. A number of older mythical tales centered in a, perhaps, historical personage. The circ.u.mstances of his life and adventures may have given them not only cohesion, but may also have coloured and distorted them; nevertheless they remained, in the main, mythical tales of the same kind as those found all over the world. One of these tales was undoubtedly a Cymric variant of the Celtic form of the Expulsion and Return formula; another dealt with the hero's journey to the Land of Shades; traces of many others are to be found in the Mabinogi.

Another Celtic worthy, Gwalchmai, was early a.s.sociated with Peredur, and the two stood in some such relation to each other as the twin brethren of a widely spread folk-tale group. Curiously enough, whilst comparatively few incidents in the Peredur-saga were worked up into the version which served as immediate model to the North French romances, that version contained many adventures of Gwalchmai's which have not been preserved in Welsh. We can trace three main crystallizations of the original saga-ma.s.s; one represented by the Proto-Mabinogi contained the feud quest, and, probably, some only of the other adventures found in the present Mabinogi; the second, based more on the lines of the Expulsion and Return formula, is represented by the Thornton MS. romance; in the third the feud quest was mixed up with the hero's visit to the Bespelled Castle, and those portions of the Gwalchmai-saga which told of his visit to Castle Perillous as well as to the Bespelled Castle. Whilst the Proto-Mabinogi was probably in prose, the Proto-Conte du Graal was probably in verse, a collection of short _lais_ like those of Marie de France. Meanwhile, one of the chief personages of the older mythic world which appear in the Peredur-saga, Bran, the Lord of the Land of Shades, of the Bespelled Castle, of the cauldron of healing, increase and wisdom, and of the knowledge-giving salmon, had become the Apostle of Britain, his pagan attributes thus suffering a Christian change, which was perfected when Joseph took the place of Brons, bringing with him his gospel a.s.sociations and the apocryphal legends that had cl.u.s.tered round his name. Thus a portion of the saga was Christianised, whilst the other portion lost its old, fixed popular character, owing to the fusion of originally distinct elements, and the consequent unsettling both of the outlines and of the details of the story. Incidents and features which in the earlier folk-tale stage were sharply defined and intelligible became vague and mysterious. In this state, and bearing upon it the peculiarly weird and fantastic impress of Celtic mythic tradition, the story, or story-ma.s.s rather, lay ready to the hand of courtly poet or of clerical mystic. At first Christian symbolism was introduced in a slight and meagre way--the Brons-Joseph legend supplied the Christian meaning of the talismans, and that was all. But the Joseph legend was soon vigorously developed by the author of the work which underlies the Queste and the Grand St. Graal. He may either not have known or have deliberately discarded Brons, the old Celtic hero of the conversion, as he certainly deliberately thrust down from his place of pre-eminence Perceval, the Celtic hero of the Quest, subst.i.tuting for him a new hero, Galahad, and for the adventures of the Conte du Graal, based as they were upon no guiding conceptions, fresh adventures intended to glorify physical chast.i.ty. With all his mystic fervour he failed to see the full capacities of the theme, his presentment of the Grail itself being in especial either over-material or over-spiritual. But his work exercised a profound influence, as is seen in the case of Chrestien's continuators. Robert de Borron, on the other hand, if to him the merit must be a.s.signed, if he was not simply transcribing an older, forgotten version, was a more original thinker, if a less gifted writer. Although he was not able to entirely harmonise the conflicting accounts of which he made use, he yet succeeded in keeping close to the old lines of the legend whilst giving a consistent symbolical meaning to all its details. His work came too late, however, to exercise the influence it should have done upon the development of the legend; the writers who knew it were mere heapers together of adventures, and the very man who composed a sequel to it abandoned Robert's main conception.

The history of the Legend of the Holy Grail is, thus, the history of the gradual transformation of old Celtic folk-tales into a poem charged with Christian symbolism and mysticism. This transformation, at first the inevitable outcome of its pre-Christian development, was hastened later by the perception that it was a fitting vehicle for certain moral and spiritual ideas. These have been touched upon incidentally in the course of these studies, but they and their manifestation in modern as well as in mediaeval literature deserve fuller notice.

CHAPTER X.

Popularity of the Arthurian Romance--Reasons for that Popularity--Affinities of the Mediaeval Romances with early Celtic Literature; Importance of the Individual Hero; Knighthood; the _role_ of Woman; the Celtic Fairy and the Mediaeval Lady; the Supernatural--M.

Renan's views--The Quest in English Literature, Malory--The earliest form of the Legend, Chrestien, his continuators--The Queste and its Ideal--The s.e.x-Relations in the Middle Ages--Criticism of Mr.

Furnivall's estimate of the moral import of the Queste--The Merits of the Queste--The Chast.i.ty Ideal in the later versions--Modern English Treatments: Tennyson, Hawker--Possible Source of the Chast.i.ty Ideal in Popular Tradition--The Perceval Quest in Wolfram; his Moral Conception; the Question; Parzival and Conduiramur--The Parzival Quest and Faust--Wagner's Parsifal--The Christian element in the Legend--Ethical Ideas in the folk-tale originals of the Grail Romances: the Great Fool, the Sleeping Beauty--Conclusion.

Few legends have attained such wide celebrity, or been accepted as so thoroughly symbolical of one master conception, as that of the Holy Grail.

Poets and thinkers from mediaeval times to our own days have used it as a type of the loftiest goal of man's effort. There must be something in the romances which first embodied this conception to account for the enduring favour it has enjoyed. Nor is it that we read into the old legend meanings and teachings undreamt of before our day. At a comparatively early stage in the legend's existence its capacities were perceived, and the works which were the outcome of that perception became the breviary and the exemplar of their age. There are reasons, both general and special, why the Celtic mythic tales grew as they did, and had such overwhelming vogue in their new shapes. In no portion of the vast Arthurian cycle is it more needful or more instructive to see what these reasons were than in that which recounts the fortunes of the Grail.

The tales of Peredur and Gwalchmai, bound up with the Arthurian romance, shared its success, than which nothing in all literary history is more marvellous. It was in the year 1145 that Geoffrey of Monmouth first made the legendary history of Britain accessible to the lettered cla.s.s of England and Continent. He thereby opened up to the world at large a new continent of romantic story, and exercised upon the development of literature an influence comparable in its kind to that of Columbus'

achievement upon the course of geographical discovery and political effort. Twenty years had not pa.s.sed before the British heroes were household names throughout Europe, and by the close of the century nearly every existing literature had a.s.similated and reproduced the story of Arthur and his Knights. Charlemagne and Alexander, the sagas of Teutonic tribes, the tale of Imperial Rome itself, though still affording subject matter to the wandering jongleur or monkish annalist, paled before the fame of the British King. The instinct which led the twelfth and thirteenth centuries thus to place the Arthurian story above all others was a true one. It was charged with the spirit of romance, and they were pre-eminently the ages of the romantic temper. The West had turned back towards the East, and, although the intent was hostile, the minds of the western men had been fecundated, their imagination fired by contact with the mother of all religions and all cultures. The achievements of the Crusaders became the standard of attainment to the loftiest and boldest minds of Western Christendom. For these men Alexander himself lacked courage and Roland daring. The fathers had stormed Jerusalem, and the sons' youth had been nourished on tales of Araby the Blest and Ophir the Golden of strife with the Paynim, of the sorceries and devilries of the East. Nothing seemed impossible to a generation which knew of toils and quests greater than any minstrel had sung, which had beheld in the East sights as wondrous and fearful as any the jongleur could tell of.

Moreover, the age was that of Knight Errantry, and of that phase of love in which every Knight must qualify himself for the reception of his lady's favours by the performance of some feat of skill and daring. Such an age and such men demanded a special literature, and they found it in adaptations of Celtic tales.

The mythic heroic literature of all races is in many respects alike. The sagas not only of Greek or Persian, of Celt or Hindu, of Slav or Teuton, but also of Algonquin or j.a.panese, are largely made up of the same incidents set in the same framework. But each race shapes this common material in its own way, sets upon it its own stamp. And no race has done this more unmistakably than the Celtic. Stories which go back to the first century, stories taken down from the lips of living peasants, have a kinship of tone and style, a common ring which no one who has studied this literature can fail to recognise. What stamps the whole of it is the prevailing and abiding spirit of romance. To rightly urge the Celtic character of the Arthurian romances would require the minute a.n.a.lysis of many hundred pa.s.sages, and it would only be proving a case admitted by everyone who knows all the facts. It will be more to the point to dwell briefly upon those outward features which early (_i.e._, pre-eleventh century) Celtic heroic literature has in common with the North French romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially as we thus gain a clue to much that is problematic in the formal and moral growth of the Arthurian cycle in general and of the Grail cycle in particular.

In Celtic tradition, as little as in mediaeval romance, do we find a record of race-struggles such as meets us in the Nibelungenlied, in the Dietrich saga, or the Carolingian cycle.[144] In its place we have a glorification of the individual hero. The reason is not far to seek. The Celtic tribes, whether of Ireland or Britain, were surrounded by men of their own speech, of like inst.i.tutions and manners. The shock of opposing nations, of rival civilisations, could not enter into their race-tradition. The story-teller had as his chief theme the prowess and skill of the individual "brave," the part he took in the conflicts which clan incessantly waged with clan, or his encounters with those powers of an older mythic world which lived on in the folk-fancy. To borrow Mr.

Fitzgerald's convenient terminology, the "constants" of this tradition may be the same as in that of other Aryan races, the "resultants" are not. To give one instance: the conception of a chief surrounded by a picked band of warriors is common to all heroic tradition, but nowhere is it of such marked importance, nowhere does it so mould and shape the story as in the cycles of Conchobor and the Knights of the Red Branch, of Fionn and the Fianna, and of Arthur and his Knights. The careers of any of the early Irish heroes, the single-handed raids of Cet mac Magach or Conall Cearnach, above all the fortunes of Cuchullain, his hero's training in the Amazon-isle, his strife with Curoi mac Daire, his expeditions to fairy-land, his final holding of the ford against all the warriors of Erinn, breathe the same spirit of adventure for its own sake, manifest the same subordination of all else in the story to the one hero, that are such marked characteristics of the Arthurian romance.

Again, in the bands of picked braves who surround Conchobor or Fionn, in the rules by which they are governed, the trials which precede and determine admission into them, the duties and privileges which attach to them, we have, it seems to me, a far closer a.n.a.logue to the knighthood of mediaeval romance than may be found either in the Peers of Carolingian saga or in the chosen warriors who throng the halls of Walhalla.

In the present connection the part played by woman in Celtic tradition is perhaps of most import to us. In no respect is the difference more marked than in this between the twelfth century romances, whether French or German, and the earlier heroic literature of either nation. The absence of feminine interest in the earlier _chansons de geste_ has often been noted.

The case is different with Teutonic heroic literature, in which woman's _role_ is always great, sometimes pre-eminently so. But a comparison of the two strains of traditions, Celtic and Teutonic, one with the other, and again with the romances, may help to account for much that is otherwise inexplicable to us in the mediaeval presentment of the s.e.x-feelings and s.e.x-relations.

The love of man, and immortal, or, if mortal, semi-divine maid is a "constant" of heroic tradition. Teuton and Celt have handled this theme, however, in a very different spirit. In the legends of the former the man plays the chief part; he woos, sometimes he forces the fairy maiden to become the mistress of his hearth. As a rule, overmastered by the prowess and beauty of the hero, she is nothing loth. But sometimes, as does Brunhild, she feels the change a degradation and resents it. It is otherwise with the fairy mistresses of the Celtic hero; they abide in their own place, and they allure or compel the mortal lover to resort to them. Connla and Bran and Oisin must all leave this earth and sail across ocean or lake before they can rejoin their lady love; even Cuchullain, mightiest of all the heroes, is constrained, struggle as he may, to go and dwell with the fairy queen Fand, who has woed him. Throughout, the immortal mistress retains her superiority; when the mortal tires and returns to earth she remains, ever wise and fair, ready to welcome and enchant a new generation of heroes. She chooses whom she will, and is no man's slave; herself she offers freely, but she abandons neither her liberty nor her divine nature. This type of womanhood, capricious, independent, severed from ordinary domestic life, is a.s.suredly the original of the Vivians, the Orgueilleuses, the Ladies of the Fountain of the romances; it is also one which must have commended itself to the knightly devotees of mediaeval romantic love. Their "_dame d'amour_" was, as a rule, another man's wife; she raised in their minds no thought of home or child. In the tone of their feelings towards her, in the character of their intercourse with her, they were closer akin to Oisin and Neave, to Cuchullain and Fand, than to Siegfried and Brunhild, or to Roland and Aude. Even where the love-story pa.s.ses wholly among mortals, the woman's _role_ is more accentuated than in the Teutonic sagas. She is no mere lay-figure upon a fire-bound rock like Brunhild or Menglad, ready, when the destined hero appears, to fall straightway into his arms. Emer, the one maiden of Erinn whom Cuchullain condescends to woo, is eager to show herself in all things worthy of him; she tests his wit as well as his courage, she makes him accept her conditions.[145] In the great tragic tale of ancient Ireland, the Fate of the Sons of Usnech, Deirdre--born like Helen or Gudrun, to be a cause of strife among men, of sorrow and ruin to whomsoever she loves--Deirdre takes her fate into her own hands, and woos Noisi with outspoken pa.s.sionate frankness. The whole story is conceived and told in a far more "romantic" strain than is the case with parallel stories from Norse tradition, the loves of Helgi and Sigrun, or those of Sigurd and Brunhild-Gudrun. And if the lament of Deirdre over her slain love lacks the grandeur and the intensity with which the Norse heroines bewail their dead lords, it has, on the other hand, an intimate, a personal touch we should hardly have looked for in an eleventh century Irish epic.[146]

Another link between the Celtic sagas and the romances is their treatment of the supernatural. Heroic-traditional literature is made up of mythical elements, of scenes, incidents, and formulas which have done service in that account of man's dealings with and conceptions of the visible world which we call mythology. All such literature derives ultimately from an early, wholly animistic stage of culture. Small marvel, then, if in the hero-tales of every race there figure wonder-working talismans and bespelled weapons, if almost every great saga has, as part of its _dramatis personae_, objects belonging to what we should now call the inanimate world. Upon these a species of life is conferred, most often by power of magic, but at times, it would seem, in virtue of the older conception which held all things to be endowed with like life. All heroic literatures do not, however, accentuate equally and similarly this magic side of their common stock. Celtic tradition is not only rich and varied beyond all others in this respect, it often thus secures its chief artistic effects. The talismans of Celtic romance, the fairy branch of Cormac, the Ga-bulg of Cuchullain, the sounding-hammer of Fionn, the treasures of the Boar Trwyth after which Prince Kilhwch sought, the glaives of light of the living folk-tale, have one and all a weird, fantastic, half-human existence, which haunts and thrills the imagination.

No Celtic story-teller could have "mulled" the Nibelung-h.o.a.rd as the poet of the Nibelungenlied has done. How different in this respect the twelfth century romances are from the earlier German or French sagas, how close to the Irish tales is apparent to whomsoever reads them with attention.[147]

I do not for one moment imply that the romantic literature of the Middle Ages was what it was, wholly or even mainly in virtue of its Celtic affinities. That literature was the outcome of the age, and something akin to it would have sprung up had Celtic tradition remained unknown to the Continent. The conception of feudal knighthood as a favoured cla.s.s, in which men of different nations met on a common footing; the conception of knightly love as something altogether disa.s.sociated from domestic life, must in any case have led to the const.i.tution of such a society as we find portrayed in the romances. What is claimed is that the spirit of the age, akin to the Celtic, recognised in Celtic tales the food it was hungering for. It transformed them to suit its own needs and ideas, but it carried out the transformation on the whole in essential agreement with tradition.

In some cases a radical change is made; such a one is presented to us in the Grail cycle.

The legend thus started with the advantages of belonging to the popular literature of the time, and of a.s.sociation through Brons with Christian tradition. Its incidents were varied, and owing to the blending of diverse strains of story vague enough to be plastic. The formal development of the cycle has been traced in the earlier chapters of these studies; that of its ideal conceptions will be found to follow similar lines. Various ethical intentions can be distinguished, and there is not more difference between the versions in the conduct of the story than in the ideals they set forth.

To some readers it may have seemed well nigh sacrilegious to trace that

... vanished Vase of Heaven That held like Christ's own Heart an Hin of Blood,

to the magic vessels of pagan deities. In England the Grail-legend is hardly known save in that form which it has a.s.sumed in the Queste. This French romance was one of those which Malory embodied in his _rifacimento_ of the Arthurian cycle, and, thanks to Malory, it has become a portion of English speech and thought.[148] In our own days our greatest poet has expressed the quintessence of what is best and purest in the old romance in lines of imperishable beauty. As we follow Sir Galahad by secret shrine and lonely mountain mere until

Ah, blessed vision! Blood of G.o.d, The spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And star-like mingles with the stars.

we are under a spell that may not be resisted. And yet of the two main paths which the legend has trodden that of Galahad is the least fruitful and the least beautiful. Compared with the Perceval Quest in its highest literary embodiment the Galahad Quest is false and antiquated on the ethical side, lifeless on the aesthetic side.

As it first meets us in literature the legend has barely emerged from its pure and simple narrative stage. There is a temptation to exaggerate Chrestien's skill of conception when speculating how he would have finished his work, but we know enough, probably, to correctly gauge his intentions. It has been said he meant to portray the ideal knight in Perceval. As was formerly the wont of authors he presents his hero in a good light, and he may be credited with a perception of the opportunity afforded him by his subject for placing that hero in positions wherein a knight could best distinguish himself. In so far his work may be accepted as his picture of a worthy knight. But I can discover in it no scheme of a quest after the highest good to be set forth by means of the incidents at his command. Perceval is brave as a matter of course, punctual in obeying the counsels of his mother and of his teachers, Gonemans and the hermit-uncle, unaffectedly repentant when he is convicted of having neglected his religious duties. But it cannot be said that the hermit's exhortations or the hero's repentance, confession, and absolution mark, or are intended to mark, a definite stage in a progress towards spiritual perfection. The explanation of the hero's silence as a consequence of his sin in leaving his mother, shows how little real thought has been bestowed upon the subject. This explanation, whether wholly Chrestien's, as I am tempted to think, or complacently reproduced from his model, gives the measure of his skill in constructing an allegory. Beyond insistence upon such points (the hero's docility) as were indicated to him by his model, or, as in the case of his religious opinions, were a matter of course in a work of the time, Chrestien gives Perceval no higher morality, no loftier aims than those of the day. The ideal of chast.i.ty, soon to become of such importance in the development of the legend, is nowhere set forth.

Perceval, like Gawain, takes full advantage of what _bonnes fortunes_ come in his way. And if the Quest connotes no spiritual ideal, still less does it one of temporal sovereignty. Had Chrestien finished his story he would have made Perceval heal the Maimed King and win his kingdom, but that kingdom would not have been a type of the highest earthly magnificence. We have seen reason to hold that Chrestien made one great change in the story as he found it in his model; he a.s.signs the Fisher-King's illness to a wound received in battle. This he did, I think, simply with a view to shortening the story by leaving out the whole of the Partinal episode. No mystical conception was floating in his mind. Yet, as we shall see, the shape which he gave to this incident strongly influenced some of the later versions, and gave the hint for the most philosophical _motif_ to be found in the whole cycle.