Chapter XXIII: Appendix: B (2)

[49] It is plain that B I is abridged in the passage dealt with, from the following fact: Joseph (v. 2,448, etc.) praying to Christ for help, reminds Him of His command, that when he (Joseph) wanted help he should come "devant ce veissel precieus Où est votre sans glorieus." Now Christ's words to Joseph in the prison say nothing whatever about any such recommendation; but E, Grand St. Graal, does contain a scene between our Lord and Joseph, in which the latter is bidden, "Et quant tu vauras à moi parler si ouuerras l'arche en quel lieu que tu soies" (I, 38-39) from which the conclusion may be drawn that B I represents an abridged and garbled form of the prototype of E.

[50] In the Mabinogi of Branwen, the daughter of Llyr, the warriors cast into the cauldron of renovation come forth on the morrow fighting men as good as they were before, except that they are not able to speak (Mab., p. 381).

[51] The version summarised by Birch-Hirschfeld.

[52] Curiously enough this very text here prints Urban as the name of the Maimed King; Urban is the antagonist of Lambar, the father of the Maimed King in the original draft of the Queste, and his mention in this place in the 1488 text seems due to a misprint. In the episode there is a direct conflict of testimony between the first and second drafts, Lambar slaving Urlain in the former, Urlain Lambar in the latter.

[53] This account agrees with that of the second draft of the Queste, in which Urlain slays Lambar.

[54] Only _one_ beholder of the Quest is alluded to, although in the Queste, from which the Grand St. Graal drew its account, _three_ behold the wonders of the Grail.

[55] This, of course, belongs to the second of the two accounts we have found in the poem respecting the Promised Knight, the one which makes him the grandson and not the son merely of Brons.

[56] The object of the Quest according to Heinrich von dem Türlin will be found dealt with in Chapter VII.

[57] This is one of a remarkable series of points of contact between Gerbert and Wolfram von Eschenbach.

[58] It almost looks as if the author of C were following here a version in which the hero only has to go once to the Grail Castle; nothing is said about Perceval's first unsuccessful visit, and Merlin addresses Perceval as if he were telling him for the first time about matters concerning which he must be already fully instructed.

[59] It is remarkable, considering the scanty material at his disposal, how accurate Schulz' analysis is, and how correct much of his argumentation.

[60] Wagner has admirably utilised this hint of Simrock's in his Parsifal, when his Kundry (the loathly damsel of Chrestien and the Mabinogi) is Herodias. _Cf._ _infra_, Ch. X.

[61] Excepting, of course, the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century Paris imprints, which represented as a rule, however, the latest and most interpolated forms, and Mons. Fr. Michel's edition of Borron's poem.

[62] Hucher's argument from v. 2817 (_supra_ p. 106) that the poem knew of the Grand St. Graal is, however, not met.

[63] _Vide_ p. 200, for Birch-Hirschfeld's summary comparison of the two works, and _cf._ _infra_ p. 127.

[64] _Cf._ _infra_ p. 128, for a criticism of this statement.

[65] Opera V. 410: Unde et vir ille eloquio clarus W. Mapus, Oxoniensis archidiaconus (cujus animae propitietur Deus) solita verborum facetia et urbanitate praecipua dicere pluris et nos in hunc modum convenire solebat: "Multa, Magister Geralde, scripsistis et multum adhue scribitis, et nos multa diximus. Vos scripta dedistis et nos verba."

[66] Printed in full, Hucher, I. 156, etc.

[67] Printed by Hucher, I. p. 35, etc.

[68] The remainder of Birch-Hirschfeld's work is devoted to proving that Chrestien was the only source of Wolfram von Eschenbach, the latter's Kiot being imagined by him to justify his departure from Chrestien's version; departures occasioned by his dissatisfaction with the French poet's treatment of the subject on its moral and spiritual side. This element in the Grail problem will be found briefly dealt with, Appendix A.

[69] I have not thought it necessary, or even advisable, to notice what the "Encyclopædia Britannica" (Part XLI, pp. 34, 35) and some other English "authorities" say about the Grail legends.

[70] They are brought together by Hucher, vol. i, p. 383, etc.

[71] In the preface to the second volume of his edition of Chrestien's works (Halle, 1887), W. Förster distinguishes Peredur from the Lady of the Fountain and from Geraint, which he looks upon as simple copies of Chrestien's poems dealing with the same subjects. Peredur has, he thinks, some Welsh features.

[72] It is perhaps only a coincidence that in Gautier the "pucelle de malaire" is named Riseut la Bloie, and that Rosette la Blonde is the name of the loathly damsel whom Perceval meets in company of the Beau Mauvais, and whom Birch-Hirschfeld supposes to have suggested to Chrestien _his_ loathly damsel, the Grail messenger. But from the three versions one gets the following:--Riseut (Gautier), loathly damsel (Didot-Perceval), Grail messenger (Chrestien), = Peredur's cousin, who in the Mabinogi is the loathly Grail messenger, and the protagonist in the stag-hunt.

[73] I have not thought it necessary to discuss seriously the hypothesis that Chrestien may have used the Mabinogi as we now have it. The foregoing statement of the facts is sufficient to negative it.

[74] THE COUNSELS. _Chrestien_ (v. 1,725, etc.): aid dames and damsels, for he who honoureth them not, his honour is dead; serve them likewise; displease them not in aught; one has much from kissing a maid if she will to lie with you, but if she forbid, leave it alone; if she have ring, or wristband, and for love or at your prayer give it, 'tis well you take it. Never have comradeship with one for long without seeking his name; speak ever to worthy men and go with them; ever pray in churches and monasteries (then follows a dissertation on churches and places of worship generally). _Mabinogi_ (p. 83): wherever a church, repeat there thy Paternoster; if thou see meat and drink, and none offer, take; if thou hear an outcry, especially of a woman, go towards it; if thou see a jewel, take and give to another to obtain praise thereby; pay thy court to a fair woman, _whether she will or no_, thus shalt thou render thyself a better man than before. (In the italicised passage the Mabinogi gives the direct opposite of Chrestien, whom he has evidently misunderstood.) _Sir Perceval_ (p. 16): "Luke thou be of mesure Bothe in haulle and boure, And fonde to be fre." "There thou meteste with a knyghte, Do thi hode off, I highte, and haylse hym in hy" (He interprets the counsel to be of measure by only taking half the food and drink he finds at the board of the lady of the tent. The kissing of the lady of the tent which follows is in no way connected with his mother's counsel.) _Wolfram_: "Follow not untrodden paths; bear thyself ever becomingly; deny no man thy greeting; accept the teaching of a greybeard; if ring and greeting of a fair woman are to be won strive thereafter, kiss her and embrace her dear body, for that gives luck and courage, if so she be chaste and worthy." Beside the mother's counsels Perceval is admonished by Gonemans or the personage corresponding to him. In _Chrestien_ (2,838, _et seq._) he is to deny mercy to no knight pleading for it; to take heed he be not over-talkful; to aid and counsel dames and damsels and all others needing his counsel; to go often to church; not to quote his mother's advice, rather to refer to him (Gonemans). In the _Mabinogi_ he is to leave the habits and discourse of his mother; if he see aught to cause him wonder not to ask its meaning. In _Wolfram_ he is not to have his mother always on his lips; to keep a modest bearing; to help all in need, but to give wisely, not heedlessly; and in especial not to ask too much; to deny no man asking mercy; when he has laid by his arms to let no traces thereof be seen, but to wash hands and face from stain of rust, thereby shall ladies be pleased; to hold women in love and honour; never to seek to deceive them (as he might do many), for false love is fleeting and men and women are one as are sun and daylight.--There seems to me an evident progression in the ethical character of these counsels. Originally they were doubtless purely practical and somewhat primitive of their nature. As it is, Chrestien's words sound very strange to modern ears.

[75] In the notes to my two articles in the "Folk-Lore Record" will be found a number of references establishing this fact.

[76] The hero renews his strength after his various combats by rubbing himself with the contents of a vessel of balsam. He has moreover to enter a house the door of which closes to of itself (like the Grail Castle Portcullis in Wolfram), and which kills him. He is brought to life by the friendly raven. The mysterious carlin also appears, "there was a turn of her nails about her elbows, and a twist of her hoary hair about her toes, and she was not joyous to look upon." She turns the hero's companions into stone, and to unspell them he must seek a bottle of living water and rub it upon them, when they will come out alive. This is like the final incident in many stories of the Two Brothers class. _Cf._ note, p. 162.

[77] O'Daly's version consists of 158 quatrains; Campbell's of 63. The correspondence between them, generally very close (frequently verbal), is shown by the following table:--

O'D., 1, 2. C., 1, 2.
-- C., 3.
O'D., 3. C., 4.
O'D., 4-15. --
O'D., 16. C., 4.
O'D., 17-24. C., 5-12.
O'D., 25. --
-- C., 13-15.
O'D., 26-47. C., 16-36.
O'D., 48-56. --
O'D., 57-61. C., 37-40.
O'D., 62. --
O'D., 63-65. C., 41-43.
O'D., 66. C., 45.
O'D., 67. C., 44.
O'D., 68, 69. C., 46, 47.
O'D., 70. C., 49.
O'D., 71. C., 48.
-- C., 50.
O'D., 72. C., 52.
O'D., 73. --
O'D., 74. C., 53.
O'D., 75. C., 54.
O'D., 76-80. C., 55-59.
O'D., 81-134. --
O'D., 135, 136. C., 60, 61.
-- C., 62.
O'D., 137. --
O'D., 138. C., 63.
O'D., 139-158. --

[78] Of this widely spread group, Grimm's No. 60, Die zwei Brüder, may be taken as a type. The brethren eat heart and liver of the gold bird and thereby get infinite riches, are schemed against by a goldsmith, who would have kept the gold bird for himself, seek their fortunes throughout the world accompanied by helping beasts, part at crossways, leaving a life token to tell each one how the other fares; the one delivers a princess from a dragon, is cheated of the fruit of the exploit by the Red Knight, whom after a year he confounds, wins the princess, and, after a while, hunting a magic hind, falls victim to a witch. His brother, learning his fate through the life token, comes to the same town, is taken for the young king even by the princess, but keeps faith to his brother by laying a bare sword twixt them twain at night. He then delivers from the witch's spells his brother, who, learning the error caused by the likeness, and thinking advantage had been taken of it, in a fit of passion slays him, but afterwards, hearing the truth, brings him back to life again. Grimm has pointed out in his notes the likeness between this story and that of Siegfried (adventures with Mimir, Fafnir, Brunhilde, and Gunnar). In India the tale figures in Somadeva's Katha Sarit Sagara (Brockhaus' translation, ii., 142, _et seq._). The one brother is transformed into a demon through accidental sprinkling from a body burning on a bier. He is in the end released from this condition by his brother's performing certain exploits, but there is no similarity of detail. Other variants are _Zingerle_ (p. 131) where the incident occurs of the hero's winning the king's favour by making his bear dance before him; this I am inclined to look upon as a weakened recollection of the incident of a hero's making a princess _laugh_, either by playing antics himself or making an animal of his play them (_see_ _supra_, p. 134, Kennedy's Irish Tale). Grimm also quotes _Meier_ 29 and 58, but these are only variants of the dragon-killing incident. In the variant of 29, given p. 306, the hero makes the king laugh, and in both stories occurs the familiar incident of the hero coming unknown into a tournament and overcoming all enemies, as in Peredur (Inc. 9). _Wolf._, p. 369, is closer, and here the hero is counselled by a grey mannikin whom he will unspell if he succeeds. _Stier_, No. I. (not p. 67, as Grimm erroneously indicates) follows almost precisely the same course as Grimm's 60, save that there are three brothers. _Graal_, p. 195, has the magic gold bird opening, but none of the subsequent adventures tally. _Schott_, No. 11, is also cited by Grimm, but mistakenly; it belongs to the faithful-servant group. Very close variants come from Sweden (Cavallius-Oberleitner, V_a_, V_b_) and Italy (Pentamerone, I. 7 and I. 9). The Swedish tales have the miraculous conception opening, which is a prominent feature in tales belonging to the Expulsion and Return group (_e.g._, Perseus, Cu-Chulaind, and Taliesin), but present otherwise very nearly the same incidents as Grimm. The second of the Italian versions has the miraculous conception opening so characteristic of this group of folk-tales, and of the allied formula group, the attainment of riches consequent upon eating the heart of a sea dragon, the tournament incident (though without the disguise of the hero), the stag hunt, wherein the stag, an inimical wizard haunting the wood, is a cannibal and keeps the captured hero for eating. In the story of the delivery by the second brother, the separating sword incident occurs. The first version opens with what is apparently a distorted and weakened form of the hero's clearing a haunted house of its diabolical inmates (_see_ _infra_ Ch. VII., Gawain) and then follows very closely Grimm's Two Brothers, save that the alluring witch is young and fair, the whole tale being made to point the moral, "more luck than wit." Straparola, _a_ 3, is a variant of the dragon fight incident alone. It is impossible not to be struck by the fact that in this widely spread group of tales are to be found some of the most characteristic incidents of the Perceval and allied Great Fool group. The only version, however, which brings the two groups into formal contact is O'Daly's form of the Great Fool.

[79] The brother feature appears likewise in Wolfram von Eschenbach, where Parzival's final and hardest struggle is against the unknown brother, as the Great Fool's is against the Gruagach. This may be added to other indications that Wolfram _did_ have some other version before him besides Chrestien's.

[80] I cannot but think that these words have connection with the incident in the English Sir Perceval of the hero's throwing into the flames and thus destroying his witch enemy.

[81] I must refer to my Mabinogion Studies, I. Branwen for a discussion of the relation of this tale with Branwen and with the Teutonic Heldensage.

[82] Another parallel is afforded by the tale of Conall Gulban (Campbell, III., 274). Conall, stretched wounded on the field, sees "when night grew dark a great Turkish carlin, and she had a white glaive of light with which she could see seven miles behind her and seven miles before her; and she had a flask of balsam carrying it." The dead men are brought to life by having three drops of balsam put into their mouths. The hero wins both flask and glaive.

[83] _Cf._ my Branwen for remarks on the mythological aspect of the ballad. It should be noted that most of the ballads traditionally current in the Highlands are of semi-literary origin, _i.e._, would seem to go back to the compositions of mediæval Irish bards, who often sprinkled over the native tradition a profusion of classical and historical names. I do not think the foreign influence went farther than the "names" of some personages, and such as it is is more at work in the ballads than in the tales.

[84] This may seem to conflict with the statement made above (p. 145), that the Mabinogi probably took over the maimed uncle from Chrestien. But there were in all probability several forms of the story; that hinted at in Chrestien and found in Manessier had its probable counterpart in Celtic tradition as well as that found in Gerbert. It is hardly possible to determine what was the form found in the proto-Mabinogi, the possibility of its having been exactly the same as that of Gerbert is in no way affected by the fact that the Mabinogi, as we now have it, has in this respect been influenced by Chrestien. Meanwhile Birch-Hirschfeld's hypothesis that Gerbert's section of the Conte du Graal is an interpolation between Gautier and Manessier is laid open to grave doubt. It is far more likely that Gerbert's work was an independent and original attempt to provide an ending for Chrestien's unfinished poem, and that he had before him a different version of the original from that used by Gautier and Manessier.

[85] It occurs also in Peredur (Inc. 16), where the hero comes to the Castle of the Youths, who, fighting every day against the Addanc of the Cave, are each day slain, and each day brought to life by being anointed in a vessel of warm water and with precious balsam.

[86] For the second time, if Gerbert's continuation be really intended for our present text of Gautier, and if Potvin's summary of Gerbert is to be relied upon; Birch-Hirschfeld seemingly differs from him here, and makes the King at once mention the flaw.

[87] It may be worth notice that v. 35,473 is the same as Chrestien, v. 4,533.

[88] It is evident that, although in the MS. in which this version is found it is followed by Manessier's section, the poem was intended by Gerbert to end here.

[89] Told at other times, and notably by Gautier himself (Inc. 21), of Perceval, where the feature of a dead knight lying on the altar is added.

[90] According to the Montpellier MS., which here agrees substantially with Potvin's text (the Mons MS.), this is Gauvain's second visit to the Grail Castle. At his first visit he had been subjected to the sword test and had slept. The mystic procession is made up as follows:--Squire with lance; maidens with plate; two squires with candlesticks; fair maiden weeping, in her hands a "graal;" four squires with the bier, on which lies the knight and the broken sword. Gauvain would fain learn about these things, but is bidden first to make the sword whole. On his failure he is told

Vous n'avez par encore tant fet
D'armes, que vous doiez savoir, etc.,

and then goes to sleep. His awakening finds him in a marsh.

[91] It may be conjectured that the magic vessel which preserves to this enchanted folk the semblance of life passes into the hero's possession when he asks about it, and that deprived of it their existence comes to an end, as would that of the Anses without the Apples of Iduna. I put this into a note, as I have no evidence in support of the theory. But read in the light of this conjecture some hitherto unnoticed legend may supply the necessary link of testimony.

[92] Nearly all the objections to the view suggested in the text may be put aside as due to insufficient recognition of the extent to which the two formulas have been mingled, but there is one which seems to me of real moment. The wasting of the land which I have looked upon as belonging to the unspelling formula, is traced by the Queste to the blow struck by King Lambar against King Urlain, a story which, as we have seen, is very similar to that which forms the groundwork of one at least of the models followed by the Conte du Graal in its version of the feud quest. It does not seem likely that the Queste story is a mere echo of that found in the Conte du Graal, nor that the fusion existed so far back as in a model common to both. But the second alternative is possible.

[93] I do not follow M. Hucher upon the (as it seems to me) very insecure ground of Gaulish numismatic art. The object which he finds figured in pre-Christian coins may be a cauldron--and it may not--and even if it is a cauldron it may have no such significance as he ascribes to it.

[94] _Cf._ as to Lug D'Arbois de Jubainville, Cycle Mythologique Irlandais; Paris, 1884, p. 178. He was revered by all Celtic races, and has left his trace in the name of several towns, chief among them Lug-dunum = Lyons. In so far as the Celts had departmental gods, he was the god of handicraft and trade; but _cf._ as to this Rhys, Hibb. Lect., p. 427-28.

[95] _Cf._ D'Arbois de Jubainville, _op. cit._, p. 269-290. The Dagda--the good god--seems to have been head of the Irish Olympus. A legend anterior to the eleventh century, and belonging probably to the oldest stratum of Celtic myth, ascribes to him power over the earth: without his aid the sons of Miledh could get neither corn nor milk. It is, therefore, no wonder to find him possessor of the magic cauldron, which may be looked upon as a symbol of fertility, and, as such, akin to similar symbols in the mythology of nearly every people.

[96] _Cf._ as to the mythic character of the Tuatha de Danann, D'Arbois de Jubainville, _op. cit._, and my review of his work, Folk-Lore Journal, June, 1884.

[97] I at one time thought that the prohibition to reveal the "secret words," which is such an important element in Robert de Borron's version, might be referred to the same myth-root as the instances in the text. There is little or no evidence to sustain such a hazardous hypothesis. Nevertheless it is worth while drawing attention in this place to that prohibition, for which I can offer no adequate explanation.

[98] Powers of darkness and death. Tethra their king reigns in an island home. It is from thence that the maiden comes to lure away Connla of the Golden Hair, as is told in the Leabhar na-h-Uidhre, even as the Grail messenger comes to seek Perceval--"'tis a land in which is neither death nor old age--a plain of never ending pleasure," the counterpart, in fact, of that Avalon to which Arthur is carried off across the lake by the fay maiden, that Avalon which, as we see in Robert de Borron, was the earliest home of the Grail-host.

[99] _Cf._ D'Arbois de Jubainville, _op. cit._ p. 188.

[100] When Cuchulainn was opposing the warriors of Ireland in their invasion of Ulster one of his feats is to make smooth chariot-poles out of rough branches of trees by passing them through his clenched hand, so that however bent and knotted they were they came from his hands even, straight, and smooth. _Tain bo Cualgne_, quoted by Windisch, Rev. Celt., Vol. V.

[101] This epithet recalls Lug, of whom it is the stock designation. Now Lug was _par excellence_ the craftsman's god; he, too, at the battle of Mag Tured acted as a sort of armourer-general to the Tuatha de Danann. A dim reminiscence of this may be traced in the words which the folk-tale applies to Ullamh l.f., "he was the one special man for taking their arms."

[102] _Cf._ my Aryan Expulsion and Return formula, pp. 8, 13, for variants of these incidents in other stories belonging to this cycle and in the allied folk-tales.

[103] This incident is only found in the living Fionn-_sage_, being absent from all the older versions, and yet, as the comparison with the allied Perceval sage shows, it is an original and essential feature. How do the advocates of the theory that the Ossianic cycle is a recent mass of legend, growing out of the lives and circumstances of historical men, account for this development along the lines of a formula with which, _ex hypothesi_, the legend has nothing to do? The Fionn-_sage_, it is said, has been doctored in imitation of the Cuchulainn-_sage_, but the assertion (which though boldly made has next to no real foundation) cannot be made in the case of the Conte du Graal. Mediæval Irish bards and unlettered Highland peasants did not conspire together to make Fionn's adventures agree with those of Perceval.

[104] In the Gawain form of the feud quest found in Gautier, the knight whose death he sets forth to avenge is slain by the cast of a dart. Can this be brought into connection with the fact that Perceval slays with a cast of his dart the Red Knight, who, according to the Thornton romance, is his father's slayer.

[105] This prose tale precedes an oral version of one of the commonest Fenian poems, which in its present shape obviously goes back to the days when the Irish were fighting against Norse invaders. The poem, which still lives in Ireland as well as in the Highlands, belongs to that later stage of development of the Fenian cycle, in which Fionn and his men are depicted as warring against the Norsemen. It is totally dissimilar from the prose story summarised above, and I am inclined to look upon the prose as belonging to a far earlier stage in the growth of the cycle, a stage in which the heroes were purely mythical and their exploits those of mythical heroes generally.

[106] The prohibition seems to be an echo of the widely-spread one which forbids the visitor to the otherworld tasting the food of the dead, which, if he break, he is forfeit to the shades. The most famous instance of this myth is that of Persephone.

[107] _Cf._ Procopius quoted by Elton, Origins of English History, p. 84.

[108] Prof. Rhys, Hibbert Lectures for 1886, looks upon him as a Celtic Zeus. He dispossessed his father of the Brug by fraud, as Zeus dispossessed Kronos by force.

[109] D'Arbois de Jubainville, _op. cit._, p. 275. Rhys, _op. cit._, p. 149.

[110] M. Duvau, Revue Celtique, Vol. IX., No. 1, has translated the varying versions of the story.

[111] Like many of the older Irish tales the present form is confused and obscure, but it is easy to arrive at the original.

[112] The part in brackets is found in one version only of the story. Of the two versions each has retained certain archaic features not to be found in the other.

[113] Summarised by D'Arbois de Jubainville, _op. cit._, p. 323.

[114] D'Arbois de Jubainville, p. 326.

[115] Otto Küpp, Z.f.D. Phil. xvii, i, 68, examining Wolfram's version sees in the branch guarded by Gramoflanz and broken by Parzival a trace of the original myth underlying the story. Gramoflanz is connected with the Magic Castle (one of the inmates of which is his sister), or with the otherworld. Küpp's conjecture derives much force from the importance given to the branch in the Irish tales as part of the gear of the otherworld.

[116] This recalls the fact that Oengus of the Brug fell in love with a swanmaid. See text and translation Revue Celtique, Vol. III., pp. 341, _et. seq._ The story is alluded to in the catalogue of epic tales (dating from the tenth century) found in the Book of Leinster.

[117] In a variant from Kashmir (Knowles' Folk-tales of Kashmir, London, 1888, p. 75, _et. seq._), Saiyid and Said, this tale is found embedded in a twin-brethren one.

[118] Frederick (I.) Barbarossa is a mistake, as old as the seventeenth century (_cf._ Koch, Sage vom Kaiser Friedrich in Kyffhäuser, Leipzig, 1886), for Frederick II., the first German Emperor of whom the legend was told. The mistake was caused by the fact that Frederick took the place of a German red-bearded god, probably Thor, hence the later identification with the _red-bearded_ Frederick, instead of with that great opponent of the Papacy whose death away in Italy the German party refused for many years to credit.

[119] Unless the passage relating to Carl the Great quoted by Grimm (D.M., III., 286) from Mon. Germ. Hist., Vol. VIII., 215, "inde fabulosum illud confictum de Carolo Magno, quasi de mortuis in id ipsum resuscitato, et alio nescio quo nihilominus redivivo," be older.

[120] Liebrecht's edition of the Otia Imperialia, Hanover, 1856, p. 12, and note p. 55.

[121] Martin Zur Gralsage, p. 31, arguing from the historical connection of Frederick II. with Sicily, thinks that the localisation of this Arthurian legend in that isle was the reason of its being associated with the Hohenstauffen; in other words, the famous German legend would be an indirect offshot of the Arthurian cycle. I cannot follow Martin here. I see no reason for doubting the genuineness of the traditions collected by Kuhn and Schwartz, or for disbelieving that Teutons had this myth as well as Celts. It is no part of my thesis to exalt Celtic tradition at the expense of German; almost all the parallels I have adduced between the romances and Celtic mythology and folk-lore could be matched from those of Germany. But the romances are historically associated with Celtic tradition, and the parallels found in the latter are closer and more numerous than those which could be recovered from German tradition. It is, therefore, the most simple course to refer the romances to the former instead of to the latter.

[122] See Grimm, D.M., Ch. XXXII.; Fitzgerald, Rev. Celt., IV., 198; and the references in Liebrecht, _op. cit._

[123] Personally communicated by the Rev. Mr. Sorby, of Sheffield.

[124] In Chrestien the part of the Magician Lord is little insisted upon. But in Wolfram he is a very important personage. It may here be noted that the effects which are to follow in Chrestien the doing away with the enchantments of this Castle, answer far more accurately to the description given by the loathly Grail-Maiden of the benefits which would have accrued had Perceval put the question at the Court of the Fisher King than to anything actually described as the effect of that question being put, either by Gautier, Manessier, or Gerbert. This castle seems, too, to be the one in which lodge the Knights, each having his lady love with him, which the loathly maiden announces to be her home.

[125] Kennedy follows in the main Oss. Soc., Vol. II, pp. 118, _et. seq._, an eighteenth century version translated by Mr. O'Kearney. This particular episode is found, pp. 147, _et. seq._ I follow the Oss. Soc. version in preference to Kennedy's where they differ.

[126] The story as found in Heinrich may be compared with the folk-tale of the Sleeping Beauty. She is a maiden sunk in a death-in-life sleep together with all her belongings until she be awakened by the kiss of the destined prince. May we not conjecture that in an older form of the story than any we now possess, the court of the princess vanished when the releasing kiss restored her to real life and left her alone with the prince? The comparison has this further interest, that the folk-tale is a variant of an old myth which figures prominently in the hero-tales of the Teutonic race (Lay of Skirni, Lay of Swipday and Menglad, Saga of Sigurd and Brunhild), and that in its most famous form Siegfried, answering in Teutonic myth to Fionn, is its hero. But Peredur is a Cymric Fionn, so that the parallel between the two heroes, Celtic and Teutonic, is closer than at first appears when Siegfried is compared only to his Gaelic counterpart.

[127] I have not examined Gawain's visit to the Magic Castle in detail, in the first place because it only bears indirectly upon the Grail-Quest, and then because I hope before very long to study the personality of Gawain in the romances, and to throw light upon it from Celtic mythic tradition in the same way that I have tried in the foregoing pages to do in the case of Perceval.

[128] Kennedy, Legendary Fictions, p. 154, _et. seq._

[129] Grimm, Vol. III., p. 9 (note to Märchen von einem der auszog das Fürchten zu lernen), gives a number of variants. It should be noted that in this story there is the same mixture of incidents of the Magic Castle and Haunted Castle forms as in the romances. Moreover, one of the trials to which the hero's courage is subjected is the bringing into the room of a coffin in which lies a dead man, just as in Gawain's visit to the Grail Castle. Again, as Grimm notes, but mistakenly refers to Perceval instead of to Gawain, the hero has to undergo the adventures of the magic bed, which, when he lays himself down in it, dashes violently about through the castle and finally turns topsy turvy. In connection with this story, and with the whole series of mythical conceptions noted in the Grail romances,