# Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail/Chapter VII

CHAPTER VII.
The analysis of the various versions has shown that the Conte du Graal is the oldest portion of the vast body of French romance which deals with the Grail, and that it presents the earliest form of the story. The examination of the theories put forward to explain the genesis and growth of the legend has shown how untenable is that hypothesis which makes the Christian legend the starting point of the cycle. The comparison of the Conte du Graal with Celtic legends and folk-tales has shown that the former is in the main a North French retelling of tales current then, as now, among the Celtic peoples of Britain, and probably of Brittany. ​One thing alone remains unexplained, the mysterious Grail itself. Nor has any light been thrown from Celtic sources upon the incident of the hero's visit to the Castle of Talismans, his silence, and the ensuing misfortune which overtakes him. Where this incident does appear in a Celtic version, the Mabinogi, it is not brought in connection with the Grail, and it bears obvious traces of interpolation. The utmost we have been able to do is to reconstruct from scattered indications in different Celtic tales a sequence of incidents similar to that of the French romance. Let us, then, return to what may be called the central incident of the Grail legend in its older and purer form. And let us recall the fact that the hypothesis which finds a Christian origin for the whole legend has no explanation to offer of this incident. Birch-Hirschfeld can merely suggest that Perceval's question upon which all hinges is "eine harmlose Erfindung Borron's," a meaningless invention of Borron's. It is, indeed, his failure to account for such an essential element of the story that forms one of the strongest arguments against his hypothesis.
In the first place it must be noticed that the incident of a hero's visit to a magic castle, of his omission whilst there to do certain things, and of the loss or suffering thereby caused, occurs not once, but many times; not in one, but in many forms in the vast body of Grail romance, as is seen by the following list, which likewise comprises all the occasions on which one or other of the questers has come near to or succeeded in seeing the Grail:—
In another version by:—
On looking at the list we notice that the Conte du Graal knows of three visits on the part of the principal hero to the Castle of Talismans: 1, 2, 3, or 1, 2–4, 5, and of one visit (or two) of the secondary hero; whilst Wolfram, the Mabinogi, and the Didot-Perceval know of two only. Heinrich von dem Türlin gives only one visit to his chief hero, though he mentions a former one by the secondary hero. In Wolfram, and the Didot-Perceval, the incident may be compared in the Conte du Graal with 1 and 2; in the Mabinogi with 1 and 5; in Heinrich with 6. The Queste forms of the incident are obviously dependent upon those of the Conte du Graal, although they have been strongly modified. As for 7, it would seem to be a form of the incident which has been entirely unaffected by the Christian symbolism which has influenced all the others.
It will be advisable to recapitulate the leading features of the incident as found in the different versions. Where the summaries in Chapter II afford detailed information about it, the recapitulation will be brief, but it will be necessary to give at least one version at much greater length than heretofore.
In the Conte du Graal (1) the hero finds a King fishing, who directs him to his castle. Just as he deems the fisher has deceived him the castle bursts upon his sight. He enters, is led into a square room wherein is a bed sitting on which is an old man wrapped in sables; before him is a great fire of dry wood; 400 men might sit in the hall. The King rises to greet him; as they sit, a squire enters with a sword which had but two fellows, sent by the King's niece for the hero to whom it was destined. The hall is light as it may be. A squire enters holding a lance by the middle; all can behold the drop of blood which flows from the point upon the holder's hand. There follow him two squires with candlesticks, each with ten candles, in either hand; a damsel holding a Grail, which gives out a light as greater than that of the candles as the sun ​outshines the stars; and another damsel with a plate of fine gold. The procession passes from one into the other room. The hero refrains from asking who is served by the Grail. After playing at chess with the King they dine, and again the Grail passes, uncovered, at each dish. The hero would fain ask what was done with it, and is about to do so, but puts off the question. On the morrow he sees no one in the castle, the doors of the rooms he had been in the eve before are shut, no one answers; and, mounting his horse, which he finds ready saddled, he sets forth over the drawbridge, which closes of itself behind him, without learning why lance bleeds or whither the Grail is borne. (2) At the second visit the hero comes into a magnificent room, ornamented with fine gold and stars of silver, wherein on a vermeil couch the rich King is sitting. The hero is fain forthwith to ask about Grail and bleeding lance, but must sit him down by the rich King and tell of his adventures, about the chapel in which lay the dead Knight, and the black hand, the child in the tree and the tree full of candles. The King makes him eat before answering his questions. Whilst at meat a damsel, fairer than flowers in April, enters with the Holy Grail, another with the lance, a squire with the broken sword. The hero asks about these talismans. But first the King answers the questions about the earlier wonders; the talismans he will tell of after meat. The hero insists to know about the sword. The King bids him put it together—can he do so he will learn about the Knight in the Chapel, and after that about the talismans. Save for one flaw the hero succeeds, whereupon the King says he knows no one in the world better than he, embraces him, and yields him up all in his house. The squire who brought the sword returns, wraps it in a cendal, and carries it off.
| 2A. The King bids the hero eat. Lance and Grail, and a fair silver dish pass before them, the latter held by a damsel. The hero sighs and begs to learn about these three. He is told about lance, Grail, Grail-bearing damsel, dish-bearing damsel, and in answer to further questions, learns the history of the broken sword, and of the chapel haunted by the black hand. After sleeping in a splendid bed he sets forth on the morrow on the sword quest (the slaying of Partinal). 3. Having accomplished which, and lighted chancewise upon the Grail Castle, the King, apprised by a squire and forthwith healed, meets the hero who shows him head and shield. At table lance and Grail pass, borne by two maidens; delectable meats fill the dishes—all are filled and satisfied who behold the Holy Grail and the lance that bleeds. Thereafter enters a squire holding a silver dish covered with red samite; the talismans pass thrice; the King thanks the hero for having slain his enemy and thereby rid him of great torment. Asks his name, learns that he is his nephew, and offers him his kingdom. | 4. The hero would hold it sin if he did not ask concerning the Grail. The King first submits him to the sword test. The existence of the flaw is apparently held to constitute failure, due to the hero's sin in quitting his mother so abruptly. In the night the hero has a vision, which warns him to hasten to his sister's aid. On the morrow the Grail Castle has vanished. Mounting his horse, which stands ready saddled, he rides forth. After a vain essay to gain entrance to a magnificent castle, in which he breaks his sword, and thereby loads upon himself seven further years of adventure, but learns how the sword may be made whole again, he finds the land which the day before was waste fertile and peopled. The peasants hail him: the townsmen come forth in his honour—for through him the folk have won back lands and riches. A damsel tells him how: at the Court of the Fisher King he had asked about the Grail. At her castle he has his sword mended. (Later the hero learns that his failure to win the Grail comes from his not having wedded his lady-love). 5. Hero is directed by a cross to the Court of the Fisher King. The latter makes him sit by his side and tell his adventures, when he would fain learn about the Grail. The same procession then passes as in (2), save that sword instead of being broken is simply described as not resoldered. The hero says he has been twice before with the King, and reproaches him for not having answered his questions, although he had resoldered the sword to the King's great joy. The King then bids him shake the sword, which he does, and the flaw disappears. The King is overjoyed, and the hero is now worthy of knowing everything. |
In comparing with these versions of the incident that found in the Didot-Perceval, we find that the hero at his first visit is welcomed by the squires of the castle, clad in a scarlet cloak, ​and placed upon a rich bed, whilst four sergeants apprise Brons of his arrival, and the latter is carried into the hall where sits the hero, who rises to greet him. Brons questions him before they sit down to meat. The mystic procession is formed by squire with lance bleeding, damsel with silver dish, squire with the vessel holding our Lord's blood. On the morrow the hero sees no one, and finds all the doors open. At his second visit there is no mention of difficulty in finding the castle. This time the King rises to greet him; they talk of many things and then sit down to meat. Grail and worthy relics pass, and the hero asks who is served by the vessel which the squire holds in his hands. Straightway the King is healed and changed; overjoyed he first asks the hero who he is, and, on learning it, tells him concerning lance and Grail, and afterwards, at the bidding of a heavenly voice, the secret words which Joseph taught him, Brons.
In the Mabinogi the castle lies on the other side of a meadow. At his first visit the hero finds the gates open, and in the hall a hoary-headed man sits, around whom are pages who rise to receive the hero. Host and guest discourse and eat, seated beside one another. The sword trial follows, and the hero is declared to have arrived at two-thirds of his strength. The two youths with the dripping spear enter, amid the lamentation of the company, are followed by the two maidens with the salver wherein is a man's head, and the outcry redoubles. On the morrow the hero rides forth unmolested.
At the second visit the castle is described as being in a valley through which runs a river. The grey-headed man found sitting in the hall with Gwalchmai is described as lame.
So far we have recapitulated the leading features of Perceval's dealings at the Talismans Castle in the Conte du Graal and in the most closely allied versions. But Perceval, the chief hero, has, as we have already seen, an under-study in Gauvain. And the Gauvain form of the incident deserves as close examination as the Perceval form.
(6) Gauvain has met a knight, stranger to him, with whom he travels to Caerleon. Whilst in his company the stranger is slain by a dart cast by whom no one knows. Before dying he bids ​Gauvain take his arms and his horse; he knows not why he has been slain, he never harmed anyone. Gauvain suspects and accuses Kex, upon whom he vows to prove the murder, and sets forth to learn the unknown's name. After affronting the adventure of the black hand in the chapel and long wanderings, he finds himself one evening at the opening of a dark, tree-covered road at whose further end he spies a light. Tired and fasting he lets his horse go at its will, and is led to a castle where he is received with great honour as though he were expected. But when he has changed his dress the castle folk see it is not he whom they thought. In the hall is a bier whereupon lie cross and sword and a dead knight. Canons and priests raise a great lamentation over the body. A crowned knight enters and bids Gauvain sit by his side. Then the Grail goes through the room, serving out meats in plenty, and acting the part of a steward, whereat Gauvain is astounded. He next sees a lance which drips blood into a silver cup. From out the same room whence come the talismans, the King issues, a sword in his hand, the sword of the dead knight, over whom he laments—on his account the land languishes. He bids Gauvain essay to make the sword whole, but Gauvain cannot, and is told his quest may not be accomplished. After his toils and wanderings Gauvain is sleepy, but he struggles against sleep, and asks about bleeding lance and sword and bier. Whilst the King is answering him he goes to sleep. On awakening he is on the sea shore, arms and steed by his side. He then meets ​with the peasantry, and is told of the changed condition of the land in a passage already quoted (p. 87). Had he asked about the Grail "por coi il servoit," the land had been wholly freed.
Heinrich von dem Türlin's account of Gauvain's visit to the Grail Castle differs, as will be seen by the Summary, p. 27, which it is unnecessary to repeat, more from that of Gautier than from the Perceval visit of the Conte de Graal, with which it has the common feature, that the person benefitted by the transaction is the Lord of the Magic Castle. As will already have been noticed it stands alone in the conception that the inmates of the castle are under the enchantment of death-in-life from which the question frees them.
There still remains to be noticed (7) the incident of Perceval's visit to the Castle of Maidens, so closely analogous in certain details to the Grail Castle visit, and yet wholly disassociated from it in the conduct of the story. Perceval, wandering, sees across a river in fair meadow land a rich castle built of marble, yellow and vermeil. Crossing a bridge he enters, and the door at once closes behind him. No one is in the hall, in the centre of which is a table, and hanging to it by a steel chain a hammer. Searching the castle he still finds no one, and no one answers to his call. At length he strikes upon the table three blows with the hammer. A maiden appears, reproaches him, and disappears. Again he waits, and again he strikes three blows. A second damsel appears, and tells him if he strike afresh the tower will fall, and he be slain in its fall. But as he threatens to go on, the damsel offers to open the door and let him forth. He declares he will stay till morning, whereupon the damsel says she will call her mistress. The hero bids her haste as he is not minded to wait long, and warns her that he still holds the hammer. Other damsels then show themselves, disarm and tend the hero, and lead him through a splendid hall into a still more splendid one, wherein a hundred fair and courteous maidens, all of like age and mien, and richly dressed, rise at his approach and hail him as lord. The hero deems himself in paradise, and "sooth 'tis to be in paradise to be with dames and maids; so sweet they are, the devil can make naught of them, and 'tis better to follow them than to hearken to ​sermons preached in church for money." The dame of the castle bids the hero sit him down by her. "White she is as a lily, rosier than on a May morn a fresh blown rose when the dew has washed it." She asks him his name, and on hearing how he had wandered lonely three days ere meeting with the castle, tells him he might have wandered seven ere finding where to partake of bread and meat. He is well feasted. In reply to his questions about the castle, and how is it no man may be seen in it, he learns he is in the Maidens' Castle, all the inmates of one kin and land, of gentle birth; no mason put his hand to the castle, no serf toiled at it. Four maids built it, and in this wise: Whatever knight passed, and entering, beheld the door closed, and no man meeting him—if craven he struck no blow with the hammer, and on the morrow he went forth unheeded; but if wise and courteous he struck the table, and was richly entertained. As the lady tells this tale the hero, overcome with much journeying, falls asleep and is laid to bed by the maidens. On the morrow he wakes beneath a leafy oak, and never a house in sight.
It is surely superfluous to point out that the foregoing recapitulation of the various forms under which this incident has come down to us gives the last blow to the theory which makes Christian symbolism the starting point, and the Didot-Perceval the purest representative of the legend. We should have to admit not only that the later romance writers entirely misunderstood the sense of their model, but that, whilst anxiously casting about in every direction for details with which to overlay it, they neglected one of its most fertile hints—that of the secret words handed down through Joseph from Christ Himself to the successful Grail quester. What a mine of adventures would not Gautier, Gerbert, and all the other unknown versifiers, who added each his quota to the Conte, have found in those "secret words?" Nay, more, we must admit that so much in love were they with this incident they misunderstood, that they repeated it in half-a-dozen varying forms, and finally eliminated from it every trace of its original element. There are theories which ask too much and which must be set on one side, even if one has nothing equally ingenious and symmetrical to set in their place.
​Three things strike one in considering this incident apart from the other adventures with which it is associated; the want of consistency in those versions which, formally, are closely related, an inconsistency which we have already noted in dealing with the legend as a whole; the repetition of the same incident with almost similar details, but with a different animating conception; and the fact that some of the secondary forms testify to that same thread of story which we have already extracted from the comparison of the Mabinogi and the Conte du Graal in their entirety. Not only is the conception of the Quest different in Chrestien and Manessier or Chrestien-Gerbert, but the details are different, the centre of interest being shifted from the omitted question to the broken sword. In Manessier the dénoûment is brought about without any reference to the question, in Gerbert the reference is of the most perfunctory kind. Again we find the same machinery of Grail, lance, and other talismans, which in Chrestien-Manessier serves to bring about the hero's vengeance on his uncle's murderer, in Chrestien-Gerbert the re-union of the lovers and the winning of the Grail Kingship, used in the Gawain quest with the evident object of compassing vengeance upon the slayer of the unknown knight. And, thirdly, this secondary form is in close agreement with the Mabinogi—here, as there, the sword test takes place at the Fisher King's; here, as there, it immediately precedes the passing of the talismans; here, as there, it is only partially successful; here, as there, is a tangible reminder of the object of the quest, in the dead body of the unknown knight in the one case, in the head swimming in blood in the other. And here we may note that of the two forms in which the Queste reproduces this incident, the one which holds the more prominent position in the narrative, the one of which Lancelot is the hero, closely resembles that secondary form in the Conte du Graal which is connected with Gawain. The wounded knight whom Lancelot beholds at the crossways borne into the chapel upon a bier, and clamouring for the succour of the Grail, recalls forcibly the dead knight of the Gawain quest. It is, perhaps, still more significant that when the Queste does reproduce the Perceval form, it is only in its externals, and the mystic vessel, which in the older version is ​obviously a means of achieving the quest, has, in the later one, become the end of that quest.
It seems impossible to resist the following conclusions:—The many forms of the incident found in the Grail romances are not variants of one, and that an orderly and logical original; they testify to the fact that in the body of popular tradition which forms the basis of these romances the incident of the visit to a magic castle was a common one, that it entered into the thread of stories, somewhat similar in outline and frequently centered in the same hero, but differing essentially in conception, and that the forms in the romances which are most likely to keep close to the traditional model are those secondary ones with which the innovating spirit, whether due to the genius of the individual artist, or to intruding Christian symbolism, has least concerned itself. There is apparently but one case in the Conte du Graal, that of Perceval's visit to the Castle of Maidens, which has been modified by neither of these influences.
To accept these conclusions is to clear the ground. If we rid our minds of the idea that there is a Grail legend, a definite fixed sequence of incidents, we need not be discouraged if we fail to find a prototype for it in Celtic tradition or elsewhere. We shall be prepared to examine every incident of which the Grail is a feature upon its own merits, and satisfied if we can find analogies to this or that one. And by so doing we are more likely to discover the how and why of the development of the legends as we find them in the romances.
Leaving subsidiary details out of account, we may bring all the instances in which the Grail appears under two formulas: that of the kinsman avenging a blood feud by the means of the three magic talismans, sword and lance and vessel; and that of the visit to the Bespelled Castle, the inmates of which enjoy, thanks to the magic vessel, a supernaturally prolonged life, from which they are released by the hero's question concerning that vessel. The one we may call the feud quest, the other the unspelling quest. The Proto-Mabinogi belonged, as we have already seen (supra, p. 139), to the first class, and accordingly we find that all relating to the question is obviously interpolated from Chrestien. Chrestien's model ​belonged, in all probability if not wholly, chiefly to the first class, and accordingly we find that Manessier, certainly more faithful than Chrestien to that original, lays no stress upon the question. But in Chrestien himself there is a mixture of the two formulas; the question and the food-producing qualities of the magic vessel have been incorporated in the feud formula. Once started upon this track the legend continues to mingle the formulas. The mystic procession, which probably owes its form to Chrestien, is repeated with monotonous sameness by his continuators; the machinery of the feud quest almost invariably doubles that of the visit to the Bespelled Castle, and vice versâ. Thus Heinrich von dem Türlin, along with the most archaic presentment of the unspelling quest, has that procession of the talismans which properly belongs to the feud quest; and, to complete his conception, we must turn to incidents at present set in the framework of the other formula. For the effect upon the land produced by the hero's action at the Castle of Talismans is obviously analagous to, though of directly contrary nature to, that produced upon the inmates of the Bespelled Castle. They are dead though they seem quick, the land is full of life though it seems waste. The question which frees the one from the spell of life-in-death, frees the other from the spell of death-in-life. The Didot-Perceval has the complete conception. Perceval's question not only releases Brons, who may not die until then, but it also ends the enchantment of Britain.
The identity of hero in stories originally dissimilar was one reason for the confusion between the two formulas; the nature of the Grail was another. Its attributes were in all probability not very clearly defined in the immediate models of the French romance writers; these found it enveloped in mysterious haze, which simple story-tellers, such as Gautier, did not try to clear up, and which ​gave free play to the mystic imaginings of those writers who used romance as a vehicle for edification. The one tangible thing about it in stories of the one class, its food producing-power, has left its trace upon every one of the romances. But we shall also find in our survey of Celtic literature that this attribute, as well as that of healing or restoring to life, is found indifferently in stories of both the classes, to the fusion of which we refer the Grail legends in their present form. Another link between the two formulas is formed by the sword. It is almost invariably found associated with the healing vessel of balsam in task stories connected with the feud quest of the Mabinogi and the Conte du Graal; it is also a frequent feature in the legend of the unsuccessful visit to the Bespelled Castle. Finally, the most important reason for running into one the stories derived from these two formulas, and the one which could hardly fail to lead to the fusion, is to be found in the identity of the myth which underlies both conceptions. The castle to which the avenger must penetrate to win the talismans, and that to which the hero comes with the intent of freeing its lord, are both symbols of the otherworld.
Bearing in mind this double origin of the Grail, and reviewing once more the entire cycle, we note that, whilst it is that presentment of the magic vessel due to the second formula which is most prominent in the romances, the feud quest has furnished more, and more varied sequences of incident, and is the staple of the oldest literary Celtic form (the Proto-Mabinogi) and of those North French forms which are most closely akin to it. Here the magic vessel is at best one of three equally potent treasures; as a matter of fact its rôle in this section of the romances is, as we have seen, ​inferior to that of the sword. Obviously intended to be the immediate cause of restoration to life or health of the hero's kinsman, its functions have been minimised until they have been forgotten. If this is so already in the Proto-Mabinogi and in the model of the Conte du Graal, we may expect to find that elsewhere in Celtic tradition the magic vessel is of less account than sword or lance.
We should likewise misconceive the character of popular tradition if we expected to find certain attributes rigidly ascribed to the mystic vessel in this or that set of stories. The confusion we have noted in the romances may be itself derived from older traditions. Certain it is that in what may be looked upon as the oldest account of the vessel in Celtic literature (although the form in which it has reached us is comparatively modern), there is a vessel of abundance associated with three other talismans, two of them being sword and lance. The Tuatha de Danann (the race of fairies and wizards which plays a part in Irish tradition analogous to that of Gwydion ap Don, Gwynn ap Nudd, and their kin in Welsh) so runs the tradition preserved by Keating in his History of Ireland (Book I, ed. by Joyce, Dublin, 1880, p. 117), had four treasures: The Lia Fail, the stone of Fate or Virtue ("now in the throne upon which is proclaimed the King of the Saxons," i.e., the stone brought by Edward I., from Scone); the sword that Lug Lamhfhada (Lug the Longhanded) was wont to use; the spear the same Lug used in battle; the cauldron of the Dagda, "a company used not ever go away from it unsatisfied." Keating followed old and good sources, and although the passage I have underlined is not to be found in all MSS. of his work (e.g., it is missing in that translated by Halliday), and although the verse which he quotes, and which probably goes back to the eleventh century, whilst the traditions which ​it embodies may be regarded as a couple of centuries older, does not mention this property of the Dagda's Cauldron, it may, I think, be assumed that the tradition here noticed is genuine, and that a vessel akin to the Grail, as well as talismans akin to those that accompany the Grail, formed part of the gear of the oldest Celtic divinities.
This conclusion appears no rash one when we consider the further references to the cauldron in Middle Irish Literature. The Battle of Magh Rath, a semi-historical romance relating to events which took place in the seventh century, is ascribed by its editor, Dr. J. O'Donovan, to the latter half of the twelfth century. It relates (pp. 51, et seq.) how the sons of the King of Alba sought to obtain from their father the "Caire Ainsicen" so called, because "it was the caire or cauldron which was used to return his own proper share to each, and no party ever went away from it unsatisfied, for whatever quantity was put into it there was never boiled of it but what was sufficient for the company according to their grade or rank." The mediæval story-teller then goes on to instance similar cauldrons to be met with in the older history of Ireland. These may nearly all be referred to the oldest heroic Irish cycle, the Ultonian, of which Cuchulainn is the most prominent figure. This cycle, in its origin almost if not wholly mythic, was at an early date (probably as early as the eighth century) euhemerised, and its gods and demi-gods made to do duty as historical personages living at the beginning of the Christian era. It is, indeed, not improbable that actual historical events and personages of that period may have coloured and distorted the presentment of the myth; and it is highly probable that the substance of these stories does go back to that age, as they are almost entirely free from any admixture of ​Christian elements, and such admixture as there is can be readily detected as the handiwork of the tenth and eleventh century monks by whom these tales were written in MSS. which have for the most part come down to us. The cauldron is found with the same properties as those set forth in the Battle of Magh Rath, in two of the most celebrated tales of this cycle, the Toghail Bruighne da Derga, and the Tale of Mac Datho's pig.
Turning from Irish to Welsh literature we may note that the Grail has frequently been compared with the cauldron of Bran in the Mabinogi of Branwen, the daughter of Llyr. I have dealt with this tale fully (Folk-Lore Record, Vol. V.), and see no reason to depart from the conclusion I then arrived at; namely, that it goes back in the main to the eleventh or tenth century. Here, the revivifying power of the vessel is dwelt upon, "The property of it is that if one of thy men be slain to-day, and be cast therein, the morrow he will be as well as ever he was at his best, except that he will not regain his speech." We cannot fail to recall that in the Queste which, as far as the Grail itself is concerned, must be referred on the whole to the feud quest formula, when the sacred vessel appears the assembled company is struck dumb.
Later Celtic folk-literature has followed the Mabinogi rather than the older Irish legend in its account of the mystic vessel. Where it appears in the folk-tale its function is to heal or to bring back to life. We may leave out of account for the present the references in the Welsh "bardic" literature to the cauldron of Ceridwen, chief among which is that in the Mabinogi of Taliesin. I am far from thinking that this literature deserves the wholesale condemnation that has been passed upon it, but it has been too little and too uncritically studied to afford, as yet, a firm basis for investigation. We are on surer ground in dealing with the living folk-tale. Thus the tale of Fionn's Enchantment, although belonging more properly ​to the other formula, may be noticed here as containing a cup of balsam, the washings of which restore the maimed Fionn to complete health. Mr. Campbell, who has noted the tale, remarks that the cup of healing is common in all the Fenian stories, which is what we should naturally expect, seeing the close connection between Fionn and Peredur (Rev. Celt. I., p. 194). Other instances have already been given in Chapter VI. of the appearance of the vessel of balsam in connection with the glaive of light, and of its use in bringing back to life the hero's enemies. And here it may be noted that almost the very mode in which it is introduced in the folk-tales may be paralleled from the romances. The Grail appears to Perceval and Hector, lying well nigh dead upon the field of battle, and makes them whole, even as the vessel of balsam revivifies the dead warriors whom Conall Gulban has just slain, and heals the latter. It is, perhaps, only a coincidence that the angel in the one, the Carlin in the other case, appear in a great flashing of light. But, as a rule, in those task-stories which otherwise present such close similarities to the feud quest of the Proto-Mabinogi and the Conte du Graal, the mystic vessel has dropped out altogether, and the sword is the chief if not the only talisman. This is the case in Campbell, I., the young King of Easaidh Ruadh, and in XLVI. Mac Iain Direach. In one instance the glaive of light is met with outside the task group, in Campbell XLI., the Widow and her Daughters, variant ii (a Bluebeard story), and here it is found associated with the vessel of balsam. In the folk-tales, then, as in one section of the Conte du Graal, the healing vessel is decidedly of less account than the avenging or destroying weapon. This, as the sword, plays such an important part in the French romances that an examination of its rôle in Celtic literature will repay examination.
Besides the already quoted instances in which the sword of light accompanies the vessel of balsam as one of the treasures which reward the hero's quest, but in which it does not otherwise affect the march of the story, we find others in which the sword is either that weapon which causes the woe, the subject of the story, or else is the one means of testing the hero's fitness for his quest. In either case it is parallel to the sword of the Grail romances. Apart ​ from these special instances there are general references in the oldest Irish literature to the quasi-supernatural nature attributed to the sword. Thus the Leabhar Gabhala, or Book of Invasions, the tenth and eleventh century tract in which Irish mythology was euhemerised into an historical relation of the pre-Christian invasions of Ireland, has a passage relating to the sword of Tethra, King of the Fomori, which spake, and, adds the Christian scribe, the ancient Irish adored swords. This is borne out by a passage in the Seirglige Conculainn, a story belonging to the Ultonian cycle, which Mr. Whitley Stokes has translated (Rev. Celt. I., 260). The men of Ulster, when showing their trophies, had their swords upon their thighs, "for their swords used to turn against them where they made a false trophy."
The Christian transcriber notes that it was reasonable for the pagan Irish to trust their swords "because demons used to speak from out them." To return to the sword of Tethra. The most famous battle of Irish mythic history is that of Mag-Tured, in which the Tuatha de Danann, the gods of light and life, overcome their enemies the Fomori. Ogma, the champion of the Tuatha de Danann, wins the sword of Tethra, and as he cleans it it tells him the many and great feats it had wrought.
It is, however, in the second of the great heroic cycles of the ancient Irish, the Fenian or Ossianic, that we find the sword put to a use which strongly recalls that of the romances. Not until the hero is able to wield the weapon so that it break not in his hand, or to weld it together so that no flaw appears, is he fit to set ​forth on the quest. In Campbell's LXXXII., "How the Een was set up," Fionn applies for his sword to Ullamh Lamhfhada (Ullamh the Longhanded), who gives him the most likely sword and the best he found. The hero takes it, shakes it, casts it out of the wooden handle and discards it. Thrice is this repeated, and when the right weapon is in Fionn's hand, he quells utterly all he sees. Now how had Fionn obtained this sword originally? By slaying black Arcan, his father's slayer. It may, I think, be looked upon as certain that in an earlier form of the story, the weapon in question would turn out to be the one with which the treacherous deed was done, and Fionn, a counterpart of Peredur in his bringing up, would also be his counterpart in this incident. For the sword with which Partinal slew Goon Desert is treasured up for the use of Perceval, but only after a repeated essay is he held worthy of it.
The sword incident reappears in a tale of Campbell's, Manus (Vol. III.), which presents some very remarkable analogies with the romances. Manus is driven into various adventures by his aunt; ​an armourer of his grandfather offers to get him a sword; but all given to him he breaks save the armourer's old sword, and it beat him to break that. The armourer then gives him a cloth, "When thou spreadest it to seek food or drink, thou wilt get as thou usest." Subsequently, helped by a lion, he achieves many feats. He comes to the help of the White Gruagach by fetching the blood of a venemous horned creature belonging to the King over the Great World, by which alone the White Gruagach could be restored to life when the magic trout with which his life was bound up had been slain. Afterwards he accompanies him against his enemy the Red Gruagach, who is slain, and his head stuck on a stake. This Red Gruagach is apparently the father of the aunt who so persecutes Manus.
This examination of the sword incident shows that the Mabinogi has preserved the original form of the story, and links afresh this portion of the Conte du Graal with the other Celtic stories belonging to the Expulsion and Return formula group, with which it has so much else in common. In all the formula-stories, except those of the Conte du Graal and the Proto-Mabinogi, the hero has to avenge his father, not his uncle; and it is highly suggestive that at least one version of the Perceval cycle (the Thornton romance) follows suit. With this remark we may take leave of the feud quest.
Many and interesting as have been the parallels from the older Celtic literature to the feud quest, they are far outweighed by those which that literature affords to the second formula—the visit to the Bespelled Castle—which we have noted in the romances.
From the recapitulation (supra, pp. 173, et. seq.) we may learn several things. The castle lies, as a rule, on the other side of a river; the visitor to it is under a definite obligation; he must either do a ​certain thing, as, e.g., in Perceval's visit to the Castle of Maidens, strike on the table three blows with the hammer, or he must put a certain question, or again he must abstain from certain acts, as that of falling asleep (Perceval and Gawain) or drinking (Gawain, in Heinrich von dem Türlin). Disregard of the obligation is punished in various ways. In the case of the Castle of Maidens the craven visitor is allowed to fare forth unheeded without beholding the marvels of the castle; but, as a rule, the hero of the adventure finds himself on the morrow far away from the castle, which has vanished completely. The inmates of this castle fall into two classes—they are supernatural beings like the maidens, who have apparently no object to gain from their mortal visitor, but who love heroism for its own sake, and are as kindly disposed towards the mortal hero in the folk-lore and mythology of the Celts as gods, and especially goddesses, are in the mythic lore of all other races; or they suffer from an over-lengthened life, from which the hero alone can release them. This latter feature, seen to perfection only in Heinrich von dem Türlin, is apparent in the Didot-Perceval, and has, in the Conte du Graal, supplied the figure of the old man, father to the Fisher King, nourished by the Grail.
These features sufficiently indicate that the Magic Castle is the realm of the other world. The dividing water is that across which lies Tír-na n-Og, the Irish Avalon, or that Engelland dwelt in by the shades which the inhabitants of the Belgian coast figured in the west. In Celtic lore the earliest trace of this realm is found, as is the earliest trace of Grail and sword, in connection with the Tuatha de Danann, that race of dispossessed immortals which lives on in the hollow hill sides, and is ever ready to aid and cherish the Irish mythic heroes. The most famous embodiment of this conception in Irish myth is the Brug na Boine, the dwelling place of Oengus, ​son of the Dagda, and the earliest account of it is that contained in the Book of Leinster, the second of the two great Irish vellums written down in the twelfth century. It is a land of Cockayne; in it are fruit trees ever loaded with fruit, on the board a pig ready roasted which may not be eaten up, vessels of beer which may not be emptied, and therein no man dies. But Oengus is not the only one of the Tuatha de Danann who has such a fairy palace. The dwelling place of Lug is of the same kind, and in the story of the Conception of Cuchulainn, which tells how the god carried off Dechtire, sister of Conchobor, and re-incarnated himself in her as the great Ulster hero, we learn that when Conchobor and his men go in search of Dechtire and her fifty maidens, they first come to a small house wherein are a man and woman; the house suddenly becomes a splendid mansion, therein are the vanished maidens in the shape of birds (and all sorts of goods, and dishes of divers sorts, known and unknown; never did they have a better night, in the morning they found themselves houseless, birdless in the east of the land, and they went back to Emain Macha). Although no prohibition is mentioned the similarity in parts of this story, which, it must be repeated, is older than the introduction of Christianity in Ireland, to the romances is evident. Another famous Brug of the Tuatha de Danann is that of Manannan Mac Lir. Among the visitors was Bran, the son of Febal, whose story may be found in the Leabhar na h' Uidhre, the oldest of the great Irish vellums. One day as he was alone in his palace there came to him soft, sweet music, and he fell asleep. When he awoke a silver branch, covered with flowers, was at his side. A short while after, as he was in the midst of his kinsfolk, his chiefs, and his nobles, an unknown damsel appeared, and bid him to her in the ​land of Sidhe, and then vanished, and with her the branch. Bran set sail, and with him thirty men. After two days' wandering they met Manannan Mac Lir. They continued their journey until they came to an island dwelt in solely by women; their queen it was who had sent for Bran. He stayed with her a while, and then came back to Ireland.
But the most famous of the visits to the Brug of Manannan is that of Cormac Mac Art, whom the Irish legendary annals place in the third century of our era, and bring into connection with Fionn. The story, though only known to us from later MSS., can be traced back to the tenth century at least, as the title of it figures in a list preserved in the Book of Leinster, and as it is apparently alluded to by the eleventh century annalist, Tighernach. The following summary is from a version, with English translation by Mr. Standish Hayes O'Grady, in the third volume of the Ossianic Society's publications.
Of a time that Cormac was in Liathdruim he saw a youth having in his hand a glittering fairy branch, with nine apples of red gold upon it. And this was the manner of that branch, that when any one shook it, men wounded and women with child would be lulled to sleep by the sound of the very sweet fairy music which those apples uttered, and no one on earth would bear in mind any want, woe, or weariness of soul when that branch was shaken for him. Cormac exchanged for this branch his wife and son and daughter, overcoming their grief by shaking the branch. But after a year, Cormac went in search of them. And he chanced upon a land where many marvels were wrought before his eyes, and he understood them not. At length he came to a house wherein was a very tall couple, clothed in clothes of many colours, and they bade him stay. And the man of the house brought a log ​and a wild boar, and if a quarter of the boar was put under a quarter of the log, and a true story was told, the meat would be cooked. At Cormac's request the host told the first story, how that he had seven swine with which he could feed the world, for if the swine were slain, and their bones put in the sty, on the morrow they would be whole again; and the hostess the second, how that the milk of her seven white kine would satisfy the men of the world. Cormac knew them for Manannan and his wife, and then told his story how he had lost and was seeking for wife and children. Manannan brought in the latter, and told Cormac it was he who gave him the branch, that he might bring him to that house. Then they sat down to meat, and the table-cloth was such that no food, however delicate, might be demanded of it, but it should be had without doubt; and the drinking cup was such that if a false story was told before it, it went in four pieces, and if a true one, it came whole again, and therewith was the faith of Cormac's wife made evident. And Manannan gave branch and cloth and goblet to Cormac, and thereafter they went to slumber and sweet sleep. Where they rose upon the morrow was in the pleasant Liathdruim.
The foregoing examples have been akin to the incident of the Maiden Castle. We have seen the race of immortals caring for the sons of men, signalling out and alluring to themselves the brave and wise hero. In the tales we are now about to examine the benefit conferred by the visitor upon the inmates of the Magic Castle is insisted upon. But we must first notice a tale which presents many of the incidents of the Grail romances, without actually belonging to the same story group as they. In Campbell's No. LXXXVI, the Daughter of King Under the Waves, Diarmaid, the fairest and bravest of the Fenian heroes, weds a fay who, as her description indicates, belongs to the same order of beings as the damsels who lure away Connla and Bran, the son of Febal. She comes to him in loathly guise, and the other heroes shrink from her; but Diarmaid, courteous as he is brave, gives her the shelter of tent and bed and has his reward. She builds for him such a castle as the fay mistress of the Knight of the Black Tomb (supra, p. 17) builds for her lover. But she warns him that after a threefold ​reproach as to how he found her she would have to leave him. Through the cunning of Fionn he is led to break the taboo and "it was in a mosshole he awoke on the morrow. There was no castle, or a stone left of it on another." Diarmaid sets forth to seek his wife, he finds her ailing to death, and to be cured she must have three draughts from the cup of the King of the Plain of Wonder. Helped by a little russet man, he gets the talisman, as was prophesied of him; but, advised by the little russet man, he gives the maiden to drink out of a certain well, which changes their love into aversion, and he returns to the light of day.
This last feature should be noted as characteristic. The mortal lover always tires sooner than the fay mistress. Oisin cannot stay in Tír-na n-Og. Perceval gives but one night to the Lady of the Chessboard.
We now come to the "unspelling" stories, and I will cite in the first place one which is the most striking testimony I know of to the influence of this formula upon Celtic mythic lore. There is a widely spread folk-tale of a hero robbed of three magic gifts and getting them back thus; by chance he eats some fruit or herb which changes him into an ass, causes his nose to grow, sets horns upon his head, or produces some equally unpleasant result. Another herb he finds heals him. Armed with specimens of either, he wins back his talismans. In Grimm it is No. 122, Der Krautesel, and in Vol. III., p. 201, variants are given. In one the hero is one of three soldiers, and he receives the gifts from a little grey man. But neither here nor in the variants given by Dr. R. Köhler (Orient und Occident, II., p. 124) is the opening the same as in Campbell's No. X.—The Three Soldiers.
The three come to a house in the wilderness dwelt in by three girls who keep them company at night, but disappear during the day. In the house is a table, overnight they eat off it, and when they rise the board is covered, and it would not be known that a bit had ever come off it. At the first night's close one soldier gets a purse never empty; at the second, the next one a cloth always filled with meat; and the third, the youngest (the hero), a transporting whistle. But as they leave he must needs ask them who they are, and they burst out crying, "They were under charms till they could ​find three lads who would spend three nights with them without putting a question—had he refrained they were free."
In one variant the time of probation lasts a year, and the talismans are: a cup that empties not, and a lamp of light, the table-cloth of meat, and a bed for rest. In another the damsels are swanmaids, and the visitors are bidden "not to think nor order one of us to be with you in lying down or rising up."
There can, I think, be little doubt that this last variant represents the oldest form of the story, and that the swanmaid damsels belong to the otherworld, as do the daughter of King Under the Waves and the maiden who fetches Connla. There is nothing surprising in swanmaids being the object of a taboo, this is so invariably the case in myth and folk-lore that it is needless to accumulate instances; what is unique to my knowledge, I speak under correction, is the fact of these damsels being in possession of the talismans, one of which is so obviously connected with the Grail. It may be noted that the obligation laid upon the hero is the direct opposite of that in the Grail romances, in the one case a question must not be asked, in the other it must. In this respect Campbell's tale of course falls into line with all the widely spread and varying versions of the Melusine legend. The supernatural wife always forbids her husband some special act which, as is perhaps natural, he can never refrain from doing.
The next form of the Bespelled Castle legend is one which has attained far greater celebrity than any other on account of its traditional association with historical personages. It pictures the inmate of the castle as a King, with his warriors around him, sunk into magic sleep, and awaiting a signal to come forth and free his folk. To many English readers this legend will be more familiar in connection with Frederick Barbarossa or with Holger ​the Dane than with any Celtic worthy. Yet the oldest historic instance is that of Arthur. I have quoted (supra, p. 122) Gerald's words relating to the mountain seat of Arthur. A more definite tradition, and one closely resembling the episode in the Grail romances, is the one noted by Gervasius of Tilbury (c. 1211 a.d.). A groom of the Bishop of Catania, following a runaway horse even to the summit of Mount Etna, found himself in a far reaching plain, full of all things delightful. A marvellous castle rose before him, wherein lay Arthur on a royal bed, suffering from the wound inflicted upon him by Modred his nephew, and Childeric the Saxon, and this wound broke out afresh each year. The King caused the horse to be given to the groom, and made him many rich presents.
This tradition of Arthur in Sicily raises some very interesting questions. For one thing it is a fresh example of the tremendous ​and immediate popularity of the Arthurian legend. It also shows with what rapidity a tradition, however remote in its origin from a particular spot, may associate itself with that. Of more immediate interest to us is the question whether this tradition has any direct connection with the Grail romances, whether it has shaped or been shaped by them. Martin refers the Maimed King of the romances to the same myth-root as the wounded Arthur waiting in Etna or in Avalon till his wound be healed and he come forth. It seems to me more likely that in so far as the wound is concerned there is a coincidence merely between the two stories, and that the Wounded King belongs properly to the feud quest. I do not, however, deny that the fact of the Lord of the Bespelled Castle, of the otherworld, being sometimes pictured as suffering from an incurable wound, may have aided that fusion of the two strains of legend which we find in the romances.
It is not my purpose to examine here in detail the innumerable versions of this widely-spread tradition, the more so as I have been able to trace no exact parallel to that presentment of the story found in Heinrich von dem Türlin and in the Didot-Perceval. No other version of this form of the legend, to my knowledge, pictures the Bespelled King as awaiting the deliverance of death at the hands of his visitor. Before endeavouring to find a reason for the singularity of Heinrich's account, I will first quote one variant of the common form of the legend which has not been printed before save by myself in the Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. I., p. 193. King Arthur sleeps bespelled in the ruins of (Richmond) Castle. Many have tried to find him but failed. One man only, Potter Thompson by name, wandering one night among the ruins chanced upon the hall wherein sat the King and his men around a table upon which lay a horn and a sword. Terrified, he turned and fled, and as he did so a voice sounded in his ears—
"Potter Thompson, Potter Thompson,
Had'st thou blown the horn,
Thou had'st been the greatest man
That ever was born."
This version, besides being practically inedited has the merit of exemplifying that association of the sword with the Lord of the Bespelled Castle to which I have already alluded.
The instances of the visit to the otherworld which have thus far been collected from Celtic mythic literature, and which have been used as parallels to the unspelling quest of the romances, are more closely akin to one example of this incident, Perceval's visit to the Castle of Maidens, than to that found in Heinrich and the Didot-Perceval. None, indeed, throw any light upon that death-in-life which is the special feature in these two works. All are of one kind in so far as the disposition of the inmates towards the visitor is concerned; he is received with courtesy when he is not actually allured into the castle, and the trials to which he is subjected are neither painful nor humiliating. But it will not have escaped attention that the Conte du Graal contains another form of the visit, one which I have hitherto left unnoticed, in Gawain's visit to the Magic Castle. A new conception is here introduced: the Lord of the Castle is an evil being, who holds captive fair dames and damsels; they it is, and not he, whom the hero must deliver, and the act of deliverance subjects him to trial and peril (supra, p. 14, Chr. Inc. 17). Let us see if this form affords any explanation of the mysterious features of Heinrich's version. This incident may, it is easily conceivable, be treated in two ways; the hero may be a worthy knight and succeed, or a caitiff and fail. A story of this latter kind may throw some light upon Gawain's adventures at the Magic Castle. The story in question (The Son of Bad Counsel) is ascribed by Kennedy, Legendary Fictions, pp. ​132, et seq., to an author of the early eighteenth century, Brian Dhu O'Reilly, and traced back to an older Ossianic legend—Conan's delusions in Ceash, of which Kennedy prints a version, pp. 232, et seq. The hero of the story comes to the Castle of a Gruagach, named the Giant of the Unfrequented Land, and his wife, daughter to the King of the Lonesome Land. The name of the castle is the Uncertain Castle. Very fair is their daughter, and she is proffered to the hero for his promised aid against other fairy chieftains. After playing at backgammon with the Gruagach, the hero lays himself to bed. He is assailed, as he fancies, by great dangers from which he hastens to flee, and, waking, finds himself in a ridiculous plight, with his lady-love and the other folk of the castle laughing at him. In the morning he awakes, "and his bed was the dry grass of a moat."
The names of the personages in the story at once recall those of the romances—the Waste Land or Forest, the Castle Perillous, and the like—and one of the trials, the being shot at with fairy darts, is the same as that to which Gawain is exposed in the Conte du Graal. But it is interesting chiefly as being a version of a widespread tale of how gods or heroes penetrating to the other world are made mock of by its inmates. In Scandinavian mythology the story is well-known as Thor's visit to Utgarth Loki. It is equally well-known in the Fionn saga, and, considering the many points of contact we have hitherto found between Fionn and the Grail hero, the Fenian form claims our notice. The oldest preserved form of the story, that in the Book of Leinster, has been printed with translation by Mr. Whitley Stokes, Revue Celt., Vol. VII., pp. 289, et seq.—Fionn comes at nightfall with Cailte and Oisin to a house he had never heard of in that glen, knowing though he was. A grey giant greets them; within are a hag with three heads on her thin neck, and a headless man with one eye protruding from his breast. Nine bodies rise out of a recess, and the hideous crew sing a strain to the guests; "not melodious was that concert." The giant slays their horses; raw meat is offered them, which they refuse; the inmates of the house attack them; they had been dead had it not been for Fionn alone. They struggle until the sun lights up the house, then a mist falls into every one's head, so that he was dead upon the spot. The ​champions rise up whole, and the house is hidden from them, and every one of the household is hidden.—In the later Fenian saga (later that is as far as the form in which it has come down to us is concerned) the story closely resembles Thor's visit. Kennedy (Bardic Stories, pp. 132, et seq.) has a good version.—Fionn and his comrades follow a giant, on his shoulders an iron fork with a pig screeching between the prongs, behind him a damsel scourging him. They follow them to a house wherein is an aged hoary-headed man and a beautiful maid, a rough giant cooking the hog, and an old man having twelve eyes in his head, a white-haired ram, and a hag clad in dark ash coloured garment. Two fountains are before the house: Fionn drinks of one which at first tastes sweet, but afterwards bitter to death; from the other, and though he never suffered as much as while drinking, when he puts the vessel from his lips he is as whole as ever he was. The hog is then shared; the ram left out of count revenges itself by carrying out the guest's share, and smite it with their swords as they may, they cannot hurt it. The hag then throws her mantle over the guests, and they become four withered drooping-headed old men; on the mantle being removed they resume their first shape. These wonders are explained. The giant is sloth, urged on by energy; the twelve-eyed old man is the world; and the ram the guilt of man; the wells are truth and falsehood; the hag old age. The warriors sleep and in the morning find themselves on the summit of Cairn Feargaill with their hounds and their arms by them.
This tale betrays its semi-literary origin at once; and, though there is no reason to doubt that the Irish Celts had a counterpart to Thor's journey to Giantland, I am inclined to look upon the version just summarised as influenced by the Norse saga. Certain it is that the popular version of Fionn's visit to Giantland is much more like the eleventh century poem, preserved in the Book of Leinster, than it is like the late mediæval, "How Fionn fared in the House of Cuana." I have already alluded (supra, p. 186) ​to one feature of the tale of Fionn's enchantment, but the whole tale is of interest to us.—As Fionn and his men are sitting round the fire boasting of their prowess in comes a slender brown hare and tosses up the ashes, and out she goes. They follow her, a dozen, to the house of the Yellow Face, a giant that lived upon the flesh of men. A woman greets them, and bids them begone before the Face returns, but Fionn will not flee. In comes the Face and smells out the strangers. Six of the Fenians he strikes with a magic rod, "and they are pillars of stone to stop the sleety wind." He then cooks and devours a boar, and the bones he throws to the Fenians. They play at ball with a golden apple, and the Face puts an end to Fionn's other comrades. Hereafter he wrestles with Fionn, and the griddle is put on the fire till it is red hot, and they all get about Fionn and set him on the griddle till his legs are burnt to the hips ('twas then he said, "a man is no man alone"), and stick a flesh-stake through both his hams, so that he could neither rise nor sit, and cast him into a corner. But he manages to crawl out and sound his horn, and Diarmaid hears it and comes to his aid, and does to the Face as the Face did to Fionn, and with the cup of balsam which he wins from him makes Fionn whole.—It is not necessary to dwell on the parallel between Diarmaid healing his uncle Fionn, wounded with a stake through the two thighs, by winning the cup of balsam, and Perceval healing his uncle (mehaignié des II cuisses) by the question as to the Grail. This, alone, would be sufficient to show us what rôle the Grail played in the oldest form of the feud quest before the latter was influenced by the visit to the Bespelled Castle.
If we look at the stories we have just summarised, we shall easily understand the meaning of the Magic Castle vanishing at dawn. As sleep is brother to death, so are night and its realm akin to the otherworld; many phantoms haunt them and seem quick and strive with and often terribly oppress the mortal wanderer through this domain, but with the first gleam of sunlight they vanish, leaving no trace behind them, and the awakening hero find himself in his own place. The conditions of the visit to the otherworld are thus partly determined by man's nightly experience in that dreamland which he figures to himself as akin to, if not an ​actual portion of the land of shades. This visit, as we have seen, is conceived of in several ways. Its object is almost invariably to win precious talismans; all we have comes to us from our forefathers, and it is natural to suppose that in the world whence they came, and whither they go back, is to be found all that man seeks here, only in a form as more wonderful than earthly objects as the dwellers in the otherworld are mightier and cleverer than man. At times the talismans are held by beneficent beings, who either gladly yield them to the mortal visitor, or from whom they may be won by the exhibition of valour and magnanimity; at times by evil monsters with whom the mortal must strive. In either case the visitor arrives at nightfall and in the morning awakes to the life of this earth.
The secondary or Gawain form of the myth, as found in the Conte de Graal, may help us to understand Heinrich's version. It is to free imprisoned damsels that Gauvain undergoes the trials of the Magic Castle. Now the effect of his visit in the German poem is to free the sister of Gansguoter, who, with her maidens, remains when the other inmates of the castle, released by the question, have utterly vanished. But what means the death-in-life condition of the King and his men? Is it merely an expedient to account for their sudden vanishing at daylight? I rather see here the influence of another form of the unspelling myth, one that mixed with Christian elements has powerfully impressed the popular imagination, and is in many European countries the only one in which this old myth still lives on.
​The inmates of the Magic Castle or house are in this form figured as men doomed for some evil deed to haunt that particular spot, until some mortal is bold enough to win their secret and bring them rest. One would think that under the circumstances they would be as amiable as possible to any visitor. But the older form of the story persists, and they have not terrors or trials enough for the man who is to be their deliverer. I will only quote one version, from Irish sources.
A youth engages to sleep in a haunted castle. If he is alive in the morning he will get ten guineas and the farmer's daughter to wife. At nightfall he goes thither, and presently three men in old-fashioned dress come down in pieces through a hole in the ceiling, put themselves together, and begin playing at football. Jack joins them, and towards daybreak he judges they wish him to speak, so he asks them how he can give them rest if rest they want. "Them is the wisest words you ever spoke," is answered to him. They had ground the poor and heaped up wealth evilly. They show him their treasure, and tell him how to make restitution. As they finish, "Jack could see the wall through their body, and when he winked to clear his sight the kitchen was as empty as a noggin turned upside down." Of course Jack does as he is told, and has the daughter to wife, and they live comfortably in the old castle.
​We have here, it seems to me, the last echo of such a story as one of those which enter into the Grail romances. In Heinrich's version, as elsewhere in these romances, different story types can be distinguished, different conceptions are harmonised. Many, indeed, are both the early conceptions and the varying shapes in which they embodied themselves, to be traced in the complex mass of the romances. That a kinsman is bound to avenge a blood feud, and that until he does so his kin may suffer from ailment or enchantment and their land be under a curse; that the otherworld is a land of feasting and joyousness and all fair things; that it contains magic treasures which he who is bold may win; that it is peopled with beings whom he may free by his courage; that it is fashioned like dreamland—all these ideas find expression.
If the foregoing exposition be accepted we have a valuable criterion for the age of the immediate originals of the romances. That famous version of the legend which pictured the dwellers in the otherworld as Kings, spell bound, awaiting the releasing word to come forth and aid their folk, to which special circumstances gave such wide popularity in the later middle ages, causing it to supplant older tales of gods dwelling in the hollow hills, this version has left no trace upon the romances. These must, therefore, be older than the full-blown Arthurian legend. One or two minor points may be briefly noticed. The ship in which is found the magic sword which wounds all bold enough to handle it save the destined Knight may be thought to have taken the place of an older island. The loathly Grail messenger shows the influence of the two formulas: as coming from the Bespelled Castle, type of the otherworld, she ​should be radiantly fair; as the kinswoman of the destined avenger, under spells until the vengeance be accomplished, she is hideous in the last degree.
But before we take leave of this incident we must examine two features upon which, as yet, no light has been thrown, the meaning of the epithet the Fisher King, and the hero's silence upon his first visit to the Castle of Talismans.
* ↑ It may be worth notice that v. 35,473 is the same as Chrestien, v. 4,533.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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
* ↑ Cf. D'Arbois de Jubainville, op. cit. p. 188.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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."
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Cf. Procopius quoted by Elton, Origins of English History, p. 84.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ D'Arbois de Jubainville, op. cit., p. 275. Rhys, op. cit., p. 149.
* ↑ M. Duvau, Revue Celtique, Vol. IX., No. 1, has translated the varying versions of the story.
* ↑ Like many of the older Irish tales the present form is confused and obscure, but it is easy to arrive at the original.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Summarised by D'Arbois de Jubainville, op. cit., p. 323.
* ↑ D'Arbois de Jubainville, p. 326.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ This recalls the fact that Oengus of the Brug fell in love with a swan-maid. 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Unless the passage relating to Karl 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.
* ↑ Liebrecht's edition of the Otia Imperialia, Hanover, 1856, p. 12, and note p. 55.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ See Grimm, D.M., Ch. XXXII.; Fitzgerald, Rev. Celt., IV., 198; and the references in Liebrecht, op. cit.
* ↑ Personally communicated by the Rev. Mr. Sorby, of Sheffield.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Kennedy, Legendary Fictions, p. 154, et. seq.
* ↑ 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, Chapter XXXII. of the Deutsche Mythologie deserves careful study. Grimm compares Conduiramur's (Blanchefleur's) nightly visit to Perceval's chamber to the appearance at the bedside of the delivering hero of that white maiden, who is so frequently figured as the inmate of the Haunted Castle. As niece of the Lord of the Grail Castle, Blanchefleur is also a denizen of the otherworld, but I hardly think that the episode of Perceval's delivering her from her enemies can be looked upon as a version of the removal of the spells of the Haunted Castle. In a recent number of the Revue des Traditions Populaires (III., p. 103), there is a good Breton version of the Bespelled Castle sunk under the waves. A fair princess is therein held captive; once a year the waves part and permit access, and he who is bold enough to seize the right moment wins princess and castle, which are restored to earth.
* ↑ Whether it be the Castle of the Fisher King, i.e., the Castle of the Perceval Quest; or the Magic Castle, i.e., the Castle of the Gawain Quest.