Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail Part 31

[138] Mr. Elton (Origins, pp. 291, 292) looks upon Bran and Caradoc as original war G.o.ds. Caradoc, he thinks, was confounded with Caractacus, Bran with Brennus, and hence the two personages were sent to Rome in imitation of the presumed historical prototypes.

[139] Kynddelw's triad does not really refer to the "blessed" families at all, but to the "faithful" or "loyal" families. Stephen's mistake arose from the fact of the name Madawc occurring in two sets of triads, one relating to the "lordly" families of Britain in which the family of Llyr Llediath also figures, and one to the faithful families. In both triads the name is probably a mistake for Mabon. (Note communicated by Professor Rhys.)

I let the statement in the text stand, to exhort myself and others to that fear of trusting authorities which in scholarship is the beginning of wisdom.

[140] Professor Rhys tells me this pa.s.sage can only mean "Blessed Bran's head."

[141] Mr. Ward endorses Zarncke's contention. According to him there is no trace of any connection between Joseph and the evangelisation of Britain which can be said to be older than the romances. The statements of the "De ant. eccl. Glast." are, he thinks, no guide to the knowledge or opinions of William of Malmesbury.

[142] I may here notice a theory to which my attention has only just been called. It is found cited in a work of great research, _Die Fronica_, by Professor Karl Pearson, Stra.s.sburg, 1887. The author quotes an opinion of Mr. Jenner, of the British Museum, that the head in the platter of the Mabinogi may be derived from a Veronica portrait. Professor Pearson expresses doubt, because such a procession of the Veronica portrait and the Pa.s.sion Instruments as the scene in the Mabinogi would, _ex hypothesi_, imply is not known to him before the fourteenth century, whereas the Mabinogi must be attributed, at latest, to the middle of the thirteenth century. Mr. H. L. D. Ward informs me that the suggestion was his. Noting the connection of the Veronica and Grail legends, testified to by Borron, it occurred to him that the whole scene at the Wounded King's might be derived from the former legends. The Wounded King, healed by the Grail, would thus be a counterpart of the leprous Vespasian healed by the Veronica portrait, which some wandering "jongleur" turned boldly into an actual head. But it must be noted that in Borron, our authority for the connection of the two legends, there is no Wounded King at all; in the Conte du Graal the Maimed King is not healed by any special talisman, but by the death of his enemy, the visible sign of which is that enemy's head, whilst in the "procession" (which Mr. Ward thinks to have been intended as a vision), the Grail is certainly a vessel, and has no connection whatever with any head or portrait. The theory thus requires that the version which gives the oldest form of the hypothetical remodelled Veronica legend omitted the very feature which was its sole _raison d'etre_.

[143] Mr. Ward thinks the localisation a late one, and that practically there is no authority for it of an older date than the romances. He points out in especial that Geoffrey's Vita Merlini, which has so much to say about the "insula pomorum" in no way connects it with Glas...o...b..ry. There is considerable doubt as the etymology of Glas...o...b..ry, but there is substantial unanimity of opinion among Celtic scholars of the present day in referring it to a Celtic rather than to a Saxon source. Be this as it may, the fact remains that at sometime in the course of the twelfth century the old Christian site of Glas...o...b..ry took, as it were, the place of the Celtic paradise, and it seems far more likely that the transformation was effected in virtue of some local tradition than wholly through the medium of foreign romances.

[144] The pre-Christian Irish annals, which are for the most part euhemerised mythology, contain also a certain amount of race history; thus the struggle between the powers of light and darkness typified by the antagonism between Tuatha de Danann and Fomori, is doubled by that between the fair invading Celts and the short dark aborigines. But the latter has only left the barest trace of its existence in the national sagas. Not until we come to that secondary stage of the Fenian saga, which must have been shaped in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and which represents the Fenians as warring against the harrying Northmen, does the foreign element reappear in Irish tradition.

[145] The Tochmarc Emer, or the Wooing of Emer by Cuchullain, has been translated by Professor Kuno Meyer in the Archaeological Review, Nos. 1-4 (London, 1888). The original text is found partly in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, partly in later MSS.

[146] The fate of the Sons of Usnech is known to us in two main redactions, one found in the Book of Leinster (compiled in the middle of the twelfth century from older MS.) printed by Windisch, Irische Texte (first series) pp. 67-82, and translated by M. Poinsignon, Revue des Traditions Populaires, III, pp. 201-207. A text printed and translated by J. O'Flanagan (Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, 1808, pp.

146-177), agrees substantially with this. The second redaction has only been found in later MSS. Mr. Whitley Stokes has given text and translation from a fifteenth century MS. (Irische Texte, II. 2, pp. 109-178), and O'Flanagan has edited a very similar version (_loc. cit._ pp. 16-135).

This second version is fuller and more romantic; in it alone is to be found Deirdre's lament on leaving Scotland, one of the earliest instances in post-cla.s.sic literature of personal sympathy with Nature.

But the earlier version, though it bear like so much else in the oldest Irish MS. obvious traces of abridgment and euhemerism, is also full of the most delicate romantic touches. Part of Deirdre's lament over the slain Noisi may be paraphrased thus:--"Fair one, loved one, flower of beauty; beloved, upright and strong; beloved, n.o.ble and modest warrior. When we wandered through the woods of Ireland, sweet with thee was the night's sleep! Fair one, blue-eyed, beloved of thy wife, lovely to me at the trysting place came thy clear voice through the woods. I cannot sleep; half the night my spirit wanders far among throngs of men. I cannot eat or smile. Break not to-day my heart; soon enough shall I lie within my grave.

Strong are the waves of the sea, but stronger is sorrow, Conchobor."

[147] M. Renan's article "De la Poesie des Races Celtiques" (Revue des Deux Mondes, 1854, pp. 473-506) only came into my hands after the bulk of this chapter was printed, or I should hardly have dared to state in my own words those conclusions in which we agree. It may be useful to indicate those points in which I think this suggestive essay no longer represents the present state of knowledge. When M. Renan wrote, the nature of popular tradition had been little investigated in France--hence a tendency to attribute solely to the Celtic genius what is common to all popular tradition. Little or nothing was then known in France of early Irish history or literature--hence the wild, primitive character of Celtic civilization is ignored. The "bardic" literature of Wales was still a.s.signed wholesale to the age of its alleged authors--hence a false estimate of the relations between the profane and ecclesiastical writings of the Welsh. Finally the three Mabinogion (The Lady of the Fountain, Geraint, Peredur), which correspond to poems of Chrestien's, are unhesitatingly accepted as their originals. The influence of Welsh fiction in determining the courtly and refined nature of mediaeval romance is, in consequence, greatly exaggerated. It is much to be wished that M. Renan would give us another review of Celtic literature based on the work of the last thirty years. His lucid and sympathetic criticism would be most welcome in a department of study which has been rather too exclusively left to the specialist.

[148] Malory is a wonderful example of the power of style. He is a most unintelligent compiler. He frequently chooses out of the many versions of the legend, the longest, most wearisome, and least beautiful; his own contributions to the story are beneath contempt as a rule. But his language is exactly what it ought to be, and his has remained in consequence the cla.s.sic English version of the Arthur story.

[149] See p. 112 for a brief summary of Borron's conception; Sin the cause of want among the people; the separation of the pure from the impure by means of the fish (symbol of Christ); punishment of the self-willed false disciple; reward of Brons by charge of the Grail; symbolising of the Trinity by the three tables and three Grail Keepers.

[150] The greater delicacy of the Welsh tale has already been noted. "To make him such a offer before I am wooed by him, that, truly, can I not do," says the counterpart of Blanchefleur in the Mabinogi. "Go my sister and sleep," answers Peredur, "nor will I depart from thee until I do that which thou requirest." I cannot help looking upon the prominence which the Welsh story-teller has given to this scene as his protest against the strange and to him repulsive ways of knightly love. The older, mythic nature of Peredur's beloved, who might woo without forfeiting womanly modesty, in virtue of her G.o.ddesshood, had died away in the narrator's mind, the new ideal of courtly pa.s.sion had not won acceptance from him.

[151] The perplexities which beset the modern reader of the Queste are reflected in the Laureate's retelling of the legend. Nowhere else in the Idylls has he departed so widely from his model. Much of the incident is due to him, and replaces with advantage the nauseous disquisitions upon chast.i.ty which occupy so large a s.p.a.ce in the Queste. The artist's instinct, rather than the scholar's respect for the oldest form of the story, led him to practically restore Perceval to his rightful place as hero of the quest. _His_ fortunes we can follow with an interest that pa.s.sing shadow, Galahad, wholly fails to evoke. Nor, as may easily be seen, is the fundamental conception of the twelfth century romance to the Laureate's taste. Arthur is his ideal of manhood, and Arthur's energies are practical and human in aim and in execution. What the "blameless king"

speaks when he first learns of the quest represents, we may guess, the author's real att.i.tude towards the whole fantastic business.

It is much to be regretted by all lovers of English poetry that Hawker's Quest of the Sangraal was never completed. The first and only chant is a magnificent fragment; with the exception of the Laureate's Sir Galahad, the finest piece of pure literature in the cycle. Hawker, alone, perhaps of moderns, could have kept the mediaeval tone and spirit, and yet brought the Quest into contact with the needs and ideas of to-day.

[152] _Cf._ Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, II, 811, and his references.

[153] The ideas held by many peoples in a primitive stage of culture respecting virginity are worthy careful study. Some physiological basis may be found for them in the phenomena of hysteria, which must necessarily have appeared to such peoples evidences of divine or demoniac possession, and at that stage are hardly likely to have been met with save among unmarried women. In the French witch trials these phenomena are often presented by nuns, in whose case they were probably the outcome of a life at once celibate and inactive. On the other hand the persons accused of witchcraft were as a rule of the most abandoned character, and it is a, morally speaking, degraded cla.s.s which has furnished Professor Charcot and his pupils with the subjects in whom they have identified all the phenomena that confront the student of witch trials.

[154] Domanig, Parzival-Studien, I, II, 1878-80.

[155] San-Marte, Parzival-Studien, I-III, 1861-63.

[156] Some readers may be anxious to read Wolfram's work to whom twelfth-century German would offer great difficulties. A few words on the translation into modern German may, therefore, not be out of place.

San-Marte's original translation (1839-41) is full of gross blunders and mistranslations, and, what is worse, of pa.s.sages foisted into the text to support the translator's own interpretation of the poem as a whole.

Simrock's, which followed, is extremely close, but difficult and unpleasing. San Marte's second edition, corrected from Simrock, is a great advance upon the first; but even here the translator has too often allowed his own gloss to replace Wolfram's statement. A thoroughly faithful yet pleasing rendering is a desideratum.

[157] J. Van Santen, Zur Beurtheilung Wolfram von Eschenbach, Wesel, 1882, has attacked Wolfram for his acceptance of the morality of the day, and has, on that ground, denied him any ethical or philosophic merit. The pamphlet is useful for its references, but otherwise worthless. The fact that Wolfram does accept _Minnedienst_ only gives greater value to his picture of a n.o.bler and purer ideal of love, whilst to refuse recognition of his other qualities on this account is much as who should deny Dante's claim to be regarded as a teacher and thinker because of his acceptance of the hideous mediaeval h.e.l.l.

[158] In the Geheimnisse Goethe shows some slight trace of the Parzival legend, and the words in which the teaching of the poem are summed up: "Von der Gewalt, die alle Wesen bindet, Befreit _der_ Mensch sich der sich uberwindet," may be looked upon as an eighteenth century rendering of Wolfram's conception.

[159] We may here note an admirable example of the inevitable, spontaneous character of the growth of certain conceptions, especially of such as have been partly shaped by the folk-mind. There is nothing in Wolfram or in the French romances to show that the fortunes of the loathly damsel (Wagner's Kundry) are in any way bound up with the success of the Quest. But we have seen that the Celtic folk-tales represent the loathly damsel as the real protagonist of the story. She cannot be freed unless the hero do his task.

Precisely the same situation as in Wagner, who was thus led back to the primitive _donnee_, although he can only have known intermediary stages in which its signification had been quite lost.

[160] _Cf._ the reproaches addressed to Potter Thompson (_supra_, p. 198).

That the visitor to the Bespelled Castle should be reproached, at once, for his failure to do as he ought, seems to be a feature of the earliest forms of the story. _Cf._ Campbell's Three Soldiers (_supra_, p. 196). If Wolfram had another source than Chrestien it was one which partook more of the unspelling than of the feud quest formula. Hence the presence of the feature here.

[161] In Wolfram's work there is a much closer connection between the Gawain quest and the remainder of the poem than in Chrestien.

Orgueilleuse, to win whose love Gawain accomplishes his feats, is a former love of Amfortas, the Grail King, who won for her a rich treasure and was wounded in her service. Klinschor, too, the lord of the Magic Castle, is brought into contact with Orgueilleuse, whom he helps against Gramoflanz.

It is difficult to say whether this testifies to an earlier or later stage of growth of the legend. The winning of Orgueilleuse as the consequence of accomplishing the feat of the Ford Perillous and plucking the branch is strongly insisted upon by Wolfram and not mentioned by Chrestien, though it is possible he might have intended to wed the two had he finished his poem. In this respect, however, and taking these two works as they stand, Wolfram's account seems decidedly the earlier. In another point, too, he seems to have preserved the older form. Besides his Kundrie la Sorciere (the loathly damsel) he has a Kundrie la Belle, whom I take to be the loathly damsel released from the transforming spell.