The Lay of the Great Fool--Summary of the Prose Opening--The Aryan

Expulsion and Return Formula--Comparison with the Mabinogi, Sir

Perceval, and the Conte du Graal--Originality of the Highland

tale--Comparison with the Fionn legend--Summary of the Lay of the

Great Fool--Comparison with the stag hunt incident in the Conte du

Graal and the Mabinogi--The folk-tale of the twin brethren--The fight

against the witch who brings the dead to life in Gerbert and the

similar incident in the folk-tale of the Knight of the Red

Shield--Comparison with the original form of the Mabinogi--Originality

of Gerbert.

One of the most popular of the poetic narratives in the old heroic

quatrain measure still surviving in the Highlands is the "Lay of the Great

Fool" (Laoidh an Amadain Mhoir), concerning which, according to Campbell,

vol. iii., p. 150, the following saying is current:--"Each poem to the

poem of the Red; each lay to the Lay of the Great Fool; each history to

the history of Connal" (is to be referred as a standard). This Lay, as

will be shown presently, offers some remarkable similarities with the

central Grail episode of the quest romances, but before it is investigated

a prose opening often found with it must be noticed. This prose opening

may be summarised thus from Campbell, vol. iii., pp. 146, _et seq._

There were once two brothers, the one King over Erin, the other a mere

knight. The latter had sons, the former none. Strife broke out between the

two brothers, and the knight and his sons were slain. Word was sent to the

wife, then pregnant, that if she bore a son it must be put to death. It

was a lad she had, and she sent him into the wilderness in charge of a

kitchen wench who had a love son. The two boys grew up together, the

knight's son strong and wilful. One day they saw three deer coming towards

them; the knight's son asked what creatures were these--creatures on which

were meat and clothing 'twas answered--it were the better he would catch

them, and he did so, and his foster-mother made him a dress of the deer's

hide. Afterwards he slew his foster-brother for laughing at him, caught a

wild horse, and came to his father's brother's palace. He had never been

called other than "Great fool," and when asked his name by his cousin,

playing shinty, answered, "Great Fool." His cousin mocked at him, and was

forthwith slain. On going into the King's (his uncle's) presence, he

answered in the same way. His uncle recognised him, and reproaching

himself for his folly in not having slain the mother with the father, went

with him, as did all the people.

In my article on the Aryan Expulsion and Return Formula among the Celts

("Folk-Lore Record," vol. iv.), I have shown that this tale is widely

distributed in the Celtic Heldensage as well as in the Celtic folk-tale.

Before noticing the variants, a word of explanation may be necessary. The

term, Arische Aussetzungs-und Rückkehr-Formel, was first employed by J. G.

v. Hahn in his Sagwissenschaftliche Studien (Jena, 1876), to describe a

tale which figured in the heroic literature of every Aryan race known to

him. He examined fourteen stories, seven belonging to the Hellenic

mythology, Perseus, Herakles, Oedipus, Amphion and Zethos, Pelias and

Neleus, Leukastos and Parrhasius, Theseus; one to Roman mythic history,

Romulus and Remus; two to the Teutonic Heldensage, Wittich-Siegfried,

Wolfdietrich; two to Iranian mythic history, Cyrus, Key Chosrew; two to

the Hindu mythology, Karna, Krishna. I was able to recover from Celtic

literature eight well-defined variants, belonging to the Fenian and

Ultonian cycles of Irish Heldensage (heroes, Fionn and Cu-Chulaind); to

Irish mythic history, Labraidh Maen; to the folk-tale still living in the

Highlands, Conall and the Great Fool; to the Kymric Heldensage,

Peredur-Perceval, Arthur, and Taliesin. An examination of all these tales

resulted in the establishing of the following standard formula, to the

entirety of which it will of course be understood none of the tales

answer:--

I. Hero born--

(_a_) Out of wedlock.

(_b_) Posthumously.

(_c_) Supernaturally.

(_d_) One of twins.

II. Mother, princess residing in her own country.

III. Father--

(_a_) God }

(_b_) Hero } from afar.

IV. Tokens and warning of hero's future greatness.

V. He is in consequence driven forth from home.

VI. Is suckled by wild beasts.

VII. Is brought up by a (childless couple), or shepherd, or widow.

VIII. Is of passionate and violent disposition.

IX. Seeks service in foreign lands.

IXA. Attacks and slays monsters.

IXB. Acquires supernatural knowledge through eating a fish, or other

magic animal.

X. Returns to his own country, retreats, and again returns.

XI. Overcomes his enemies, frees his mother, seats himself on the

throne.

I must refer to my article for a full discussion of the various Celtic

forms of this widely-spread tale, and for a tabular comparison with the

remaining Indo-European forms analysed by J. G. von Hahn. Suffice to say

here that the fullest Celtic presentment of the _motif_ is to be found in

the Ossianic Heldensage, the expelled prince being no other than Fionn

himself. The Celtic form most closely related to it is that of the Great

Fool summarised above, the relationship of Peredur-Perceval with which is

evident. In both, the father being slain, the mother withdraws or sends

her son into the wilderness; in both he grows up strong, hardy, ignorant

of the world. Almost the same instances of his surpassing strength and

swiftness are given; in the Mabinogi by celerity and swiftness of foot he

drives the goats and hinds into the goat-house; in the Highland folk-tale

he catches the wild deer, and seeing a horse, and learning it is a beast

upon which sport is done, stretches out after it, catches and mounts it;

in Sir Perceval he sees--

... A fulle faire stode

Offe coltes and meres gude,

Bot never one was tame (v. xxi.).

and "smertly overrynnes" one.--The Great Fool then comes to his uncle, in

whom he finds the man who has killed his father. Sir Perceval likewise

comes to his uncle, and gets knowledge from him of his father's slayer; in

Chrestien and the Mabinogi no relationship is stated to exist between

Arthur and the hero. The manner of the coming deserves notice. In the

Conte du Graal, entering the hall the hero salutes the King twice,

receives no answer, and, turning round his horse in dudgeon, knocks off

the King's cap.

In the English poem--

At his first in comynge,

His mere withowtenne faylynge,

Kiste the forehevede of the Kynge,

So nerehande he rade (v. xxxi.).

He then demands knighthood or--

Bot (unless) the Kyng make me knyghte,

I shall him here slaa (v. xxxiii.).

In the Great Fool the horse incident is wanting, but the hero's address to

his uncle is equally curt: "I am the great fool ... and if need were it is

that I could make a fool of thee also." The incident then follows of the

insult offered to Arthur by the Red Knight. Here, be it noted, the

Mabinogi version is much the ruder of the three, "the knight dashed the

liquor that was in the goblet upon her (Gwenhwyvar's) face, and upon her

stomacher, and gave her a violent blow in the face, and said," &c.; in

Chrestien the incident is not directly presented, but related at

second-hand, and merely that the discourteous knight took away the goblet

so suddenly that he spilt somewhat of its contents upon the queen, and

that she was so filled with grief and anger that well nigh she had not

escaped alive; in Sir Perceval the knight takes up the cup and carries it

off. Now it is a _lieu commun_ of Celtic folk-tales that as a King is

sitting at meat, an enemy comes in mounted, and offers him an insult, the

avenging of which forms the staple of the tale. A good instance may be

found in Campbell's lii., "The Knight of the Red Shield." As the King is

with his people and his warriors and his nobles and his great gentles, one

of them says, "who now in the four brown quarters of the Universe would

have the heart to put an affront on the King?"--then comes the rider on a

black filly, and, "before there was any more talk between them, he put

over the fist and he struck the King between the mouth and the nose." It

is noteworthy that this tale shows further likeness to the Mabinogi-Great

Fool series, generally, in so far as it is the despised youngest who out

of the three warriors that set off to avenge the insult succeeds, even as

it is the despised Peredur who slays the Red Knight, and specially in what

may be called the prophecy incident. With the exception of the opening

incidents, this is the one by which the "formula" nature of the Perceval

_sage_ is most clearly shown. In the Mabinogi it is placed immediately

after the hero's first encounter with the sorceresses of Gloucester: "by

destiny and foreknowledge knew I that I should suffer harm of thee," says

the worsted witch. The Conte du Graal has only a trace of it in the Fisher

King's words as he hands the magic sword to Perceval--

... Biaus frère, ceste espée

Vous fu jugie et destinée (4345-6),

whilst in Sir Perceval a very archaic turn is given to the incident by

Arthur's words concerning his unknown nephew--

The bokes say that he mone

Venge his fader bane (v. xxxvi.).

This comparison is instructive as showing how impossible it is that

Chrestien's poem can be the only source of the Mabinogi and Sir Perceval.

It cannot be maintained that the meagre hint of the French poet is the

sole origin of the incident as found in the Welsh and English versions,

whilst a glance at my tabulation of the various forms of the Aryan

Expulsion and Return formula ("Folk-Lore Record," vol. iv.) shows that the

foretelling of the hero's greatness is an important feature in eight of

the Celtic and five of the non-Celtic versions, _i.e._, in more than

one-third of all the stories built up on the lines of the formula. It is

evident that here at least Mabinogi and Sir Perceval have preserved a

trait almost effaced in the romance. In the above-mentioned Highland tale

the incident is as follows: the hero finds "a treasure of a woman sitting

on a hill, and a great youth with his head on her knee asleep"; he tries

to wake the sleeper, even cuts off his finger, but in vain, until he

learns how it was in the prophecies that none should rouse the sleeping

youth save the Knight of the Red Shield, and he, coming to the island,

should do it by striking a crag of stone upon his breast. This tale, as

already remarked, shows affinity to the Perceval saga in two incidents,

and is also, as I have pointed out ("Folk-Lore Record," vol. v.,

Mabinogion Studies), closely allied to a cycle of German hero and

folk-tales, of which Siegfried is the hero. Now Siegfried is in German

that which Fionn is in Celtic folk-lore, the hero whose story is modelled

most closely upon the lines of the Expulsion and Return formula. We thus

find not only, as might be expected, affinity between the German and

Celtic hero-tales which embody the formula, but the derived or allied

groups of folk-tales present likewise frequent and striking

similarities.[75]

Another Highland tale (Campbell, lviii., The Rider of Grianaig) furnishes

a fresh example of this fact. Here, also, the deeds to be done of the hero

were prophesied of him. But these deeds he would never accomplish, save he

were incited thereto and aided therein by a raven, who in the end comes

out as a be-spelled youth, and a steed, a maiden under spells, and the

spells will not go off till her head be off. Even so Peredur is urged on

and helped by the bewitched youth. In other respects, there is no likeness

of plan and little of detail[76] to the Mabinogi, certainly no trace of

direct influence of the Welsh story upon the Highland one.

It may, however, be asserted that all of these tales are derived more or

less directly from the French romance. This has been confidently stated of

the Breton ballad cycle of Morvan le Breiz (Barzaz Breiz) and of the

Breton Märchen, Peronik l'idiot (Souvestre, Foyer Breton), and I have

preferred making no use of either. In the matter of the Scotch and Irish

tales a stand must be made. The romance, it is said, may have filtered

down into the Celtic population, through the medium of adaptations such as

the Mabinogi or Sir Perceval. Granted, for argument sake, that these two

works are mere adaptations, it must yet follow that the stories derived

from them will be more or less on the same lines as themselves. Is this

so? Can it be reasonably argued that the folk-tale of the Great Fool is a

weakened copy of certain features of the Mabinogi, which itself is a

weakened copy of certain features of the French poem? Is it not the fact

that the folk-tale omits much that is in the Mabinogi, and on the other

hand preserves details which are wanting not alone in the Welsh tale but

in Chrestien. If other proof of the independent nature of these tales were

needed it would be supplied by the close similarity existing between the

Great Fool opening and the Fionn legend. This is extant in several forms,

one of which, still told in the Highlands (Campbell's lxxxii.), tells how

Cumhall's son is reared in the wilderness, how he drowns the youth of a

neighbouring hamlet, how he slays his father's slayer, and wins the magic

trout the taste of which gives knowledge of past and to come, how he gets

back his father's sword and regains his father's lands, all as had been

prophesied of him. Another descendant of the French romance it will be

said. But a very similar tale is found in a fifteenth century Irish MS.

(The Boyish Exploits of Finn Mac Cumhall, translated by Dr. J. O'Donovan

in the Transactions of the Ossianic Society, vol. iv.); Cumhall, slain by

Goll, leaves his wife big with a son, who when born is reared by two

druidesses. He grows up fierce and stalwart, overcomes all his age-mates,

overtakes wild deer he running, slays a boar, and catches the magic salmon

of knowledge. An eighteenth century version given by Kennedy ("Legendary

Fictions," p. 216) makes Cumhall offer violence to Muirrean, daughter of

the druid Tadg, and his death to be chiefly due to the magic arts of the

incensed father. It will hardly be contended that these stories owe their

origin to adaptations of Chrestien's poem. But in any case no such

contention could apply to the oldest presentment of Fionn as a formula

hero, that found in the great Irish vellum, the Leabhar na h'Uidhre,

written down from older materials at the beginning of the twelfth century.

The tract entitled "The cause of the battle of Cnucha" has been translated

by Mr. Henessey ("Revue Celtique," vol. ii., pp. 86, _et seq._). In it we

find Cumhall and Tadhg, the violence done to the latter's daughter, the

consequent defeat and death of Cumhall, the lonely rearing of Fionn by his

mother, and the youth's avenging of his father. I must refer to my paper

in the "Folk-Lore Record" for a detailed argument in favour of the L.n.H.

account being an euhemerised version of the popular tradition, represented

by the Boyish Exploits, and for a comparison of the Fionn _sage_ as a

whole with the Greek, Iranian, Latin, and Germanic hero tales, which like

it are modelled upon the lines of the Expulsion and Return formula. I have

said enough, I trust, to show that the Fionn _sage_ is a variant (a far

richer one) of the theme treated in the boyhood of Perceval, but that it,

and _a fortiori_ the allied folk-tales are quite independent of the French

poem. It then follows that this portion of Chrestien's poem must itself be

looked upon as one of many treatments of a theme even more popular among

the Celts than among any other Aryan race, and that its ultimate source is

a Breton or Welsh folk-tale.

The genuine and independent nature of the Great Fool prose opening being

thus established, it is in the highest degree suggestive to find in the

accompanying Lay points of contact with the Grail Legend as given in

Chrestien. Three versions of this Lay have been printed in English, that

edited by Mr. John O'Daly (Transactions of the Ossianic Society, vol. vi.,

pp. 161, _et seq._); Mr. Campbell's (West Highland Tales, vol. iii. pp.

154, _et seq._) and Mr. Kennedy's prose version (Bardic Stories of

Ireland, pp. 151, _et seq._). O'Daly's, as the most complete and

coherent, forms the staple of the following summary, passages found in it

alone being italicised.[77]

_Summary of the Lay of the Great Fool._--(1) There was a great fool who

subdued the world by strength of body; (2) _He comes to the King of

Lochlin to win a fair woman, learns she is guarded by seven score heroes,

overthrows them, and carries her off_; (C. and K. plunging at once _in

medias res_, introduce the Great Fool and his lady love out walking); (3)

The two enter a valley, are meet by a "Gruagach" (champion, sorcerer), in

his hand a goblet with drink; (4) The Great Fool thirsts, and though

warned by his lady love drinks deep of the proffered cup; the "Gruagach"

departs and the Great Fool finds himself minus his two legs; (5) The two

go onward, and ("swifter was he at his two knees than six at their

swiftness of foot;" C.) A deer nears them followed by a white hound, the

Great Fool slays the deer and seizes the hound; (6) whose owner coming up

claims but finally yields it, and offers the Great Fool food and drink

during life; (7) The three fare together (the glen they had passed through

had ever been full of glamour) till they come to a fair city filled with

the glitter of gold, dwelt in solely by the owner of the white hound and

his wife, "whiter than very snow her form, gentle her eye, and her teeth

like a flower"; (8) She asks concerning her husband's guests, and,

learning the Great Fool's prowess, marvels he should have let himself be

deprived of his legs; (9) The host departs, leaving his house, wife, and

store of gold in the Great Fool's keeping, he is to let no man in, no one

out should any come in, nor is he to sleep; (10) Spite his lady love's

urgings the Great Fool yields to slumber, when in comes a young champion

and snatches a kiss from the host's wife, ("She was not ill pleased that

he came," C.); (11) The Great Fool's love awakening him reproaches him for

having slept--he arises to guard the door, in vain does the intruder offer

gold, three cauldrons full and seven hundred townlands, he shall not get

out; (12) _At the instigation of the host's wife_ the intruder restores

the Great Fool's legs, but not then even will the hero let him go--pay for

the kiss he must when the host returns; threats to deprive him of his legs

are in vain, as are likewise the entreaties of the host's wife (All this

is developed with great prolixity in O'Daly, but there is nothing

substantial added to the account in C.); (13) Finally the intruder

discloses that he himself is the host, and he was the Gruagach, whose

magic cup deprived the Great Fool of his legs, and he is, "_his own gentle

brother long in search of him, now that he has found him he is released

from sorcery_." The two kiss (C. and K. end here). (14) The two brothers

fare forth, encounter a giant with an eye larger than a moon and an iron

club, wherewith he hits the Great Fool a crack that brings him to his

knees, but the latter arising closes with the giant, kills him and takes

his club, the two then attack four other giants, three of whom the Great

Fool slays with his club, and the fourth yields to him. The brothers take

possession of the giant's castle and all its wealth.

There are obvious similarities between the Lay and the story found in the

Mabinogi and the Conte du Graal. A stag hunt is prominent in both, and

whilst engaged in it the hero falls under "illusion," in both too the

incident of the seizure of the hound appears, though in a different

connection. Finally in the Lay, as in the Mabinogi, the mover in the

enchantment is a kinsman whose own release from spells depends upon the

hero's coming successfully out of the trials to which he exposes him. But

while the general idea is the same, the way in which it is worked out is

so different that it is impossible to conceive of the one story having

been borrowed from the other. What can safely be claimed is that the

Great Fool, counterpart of Peredur-Perceval in the adventures of his youth

and up-bringing, is also, to a certain extent, his counterpart in the most

prominent of his later adventures, that of the stag hunt. It is thus

fairly certain that all this part of the Conte du Graal is, like the

_Enfances_, a working up of Celtic folk-tales. The giant fight which

concludes the Lay may be compared with that in Sir Perceval and in Morvan

le Breiz, and such a comparison makes it extremely likely that the

incident thus preserved by independent and widely differing offshoots from

the same folk-tale stem, belongs to the oldest form of the story.

The analogies of the Lay with the Perceval _sage_ are not yet exhausted.

In virtue of the relationship between the two chief characters, the Lay

belongs to the "twin-brother cycle." This group of folk-tales, some

account of which is given below,[78] is closely related on the one hand

to the "dragon slayer" group of _märchen_, on the other hand to the

Expulsion and Return formula tales. In many versions of the latter (the

most famous being that of Romulus and Remus) the hero is one of twins,

and, after sharing for a while with his brother, strife breaks out between

them. In the folk-tale this strife leads to final reconciliation, or is

indeed a means of unravelling the plot. In the hero-tale on the other hand

the strife mostly ends with the death or defeat of the one brother. It

would seem that when the folk-tale got associated with a definite hero

(generally the founder and patron of a race) and became in brief a

hero-tale, the necessity of exalting the race hero brought about a

modification of the plot. If this is so the folk-tale group of the "two

brothers" must be looked upon as older than the corresponding portion of

the Expulsion and Return hero-tales, and not as a mere weakened echo of

the latter. To return to the twin-brother features. The Peredur-Perceval

_sage_ has a twin-sister, and is parallel herein to the Fionn _sage_ in

one of its forms ("How the Een was set up"), though curiously enough not

to the Great Fool folk-tale (otherwise so similar to "How the Een was set

up"), which, as in the Lay, has a brother. But beyond this formal

recognition of the incident in the Perceval _sage_, I am inclined to look

upon the Perceval-Gawain dualism as another form of it. This dualism has

been somewhat obscured by the literary form in which the _sage_ has been

preserved and the tendency to exalt and idealise _one_ hero. In the

present case this tendency has not developed so far as to seriously

diminish the importance of Gawain; _his_ adventures are, however, left in

a much more primitive and _märchenhaft_ shape, and hence, as will be shown

later on, are extremely valuable in any attempt to reach the early form of

the story.[79]

If Simrock's words quoted on the title page were indeed conclusive--"If

that race among whom the 'Great Fool' folk-tale was found independent of

the Grail story had the best claim to be regarded as having wrought into

one these two elements"--then my task might be considered at an end. I

have shown that this race was that of the Celtic dwellers in these

islands, among whom this tale is found not only in a fuller and more

significant form than elsewhere, but in a form that connects it with the

French Grail romance. But the conclusion that the Conte du Graal is in the

main a working up of Celtic popular traditions, which had clustered round

a hero, whose fortunes bore, in part, a striking resemblance to those of

Fionn, the typical representative of the Expulsion and Return formula

cycle among the Celts, though hardly to be gainsaid, does not seem to help

much towards settling the question of the origin of the Grail itself. The

story would appear to be Celtic except just the central incident upon

which the whole turns. For the English Sir Perceval, which undoubtedly

follows older models, breathes no word of search for any magic talisman,

let alone the Grail, whilst the Mabinogi, which is also older in parts

than the Conte du Graal, gives a different turn to and assigns a

different _motif_ for the hero's conduct. The avenging of a kinsman's harm

upon certain supernatural beings, and the consequent release from

enchantment of another kinsman, supply the elements of a clear and

consistent action to which parallels may easily be adduced from

folk-tales, but one quite distinct from the release of a kinsman through

the medium of certain talismans and certain magic formulæ. Numerous as

have been the points of contact hitherto established between Celtic folk

belief and the French romance, the parallel would seem to break down at

its most essential point, and the contention that the Grail is a foreign

element in the Celtic legend would still seem to be justified. Before,

however, this can be asserted, what I have called the central episode of

the romance requires more searching and detailed examination than it has

had, and some accessory features, which, on the hypothesis of the

Christian legendary origin of the Grail, remain impenetrable puzzles must

be commented upon. And another instructive point of contact between

romance and folk-tale must be previously noticed, connected as it is with

stories already dealt with in this chapter.

In the latest portion of the Conte du Graal, the interpolation of Gerbert,

the following incident occurs:--The hero meets four knights carrying their

wounded father, who turns out to be Gonemans, the same who armed him

knight. He vows vengeance upon Gonemans' enemies, but his efforts are at

first of no avail. As fast as in the daytime he slays them, at night they

are brought back to life by "Une vieille" who is thus described:--

La poitrine ot agüe et sèche;

Ele arsist ausi come une esche

Si on boutast en li le fu.[80]

* * * *

La bouche avoit grant à merveilles

Et fendue dusqu'as oreilles,

Qu'ele avoit longues et tendans;

Lons et lez et gausnes les dans

Avoit. (Potvin vi., 183, 184.)

She carries with her

II. barisiax d'ivoire gent;

containing a "poison," the same whereof Christ made use in the Sepulchre,

and which serves here to bring the dead back to life and to rejoin heads

cut off from bodies. She goes to work thus:--

A la teste maintenant prise,

Si l'a desor le bu assise;

then taking the balm

Puis en froie celui la bouche

À cui la teste avoit rajointe;

Sor celui n'ot vaine ne jointe

Qui lues ne fust de vie plaine.

Perceval stops her when she has brought back three of her men to life; she

recognises in him her conqueror:

Bien vous connois et bien savoie

Que de nului garde n'avoie

Fors que de vous; car, par mon chief

Nus n'en péust venir à chief

Se vous non ...

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

She wars against Gonemant by order of the King of the Waste City, who ever

strives against all who uphold the Christian faith, and whose chief aim it

is to hinder Perceval from attaining knowledge of the Grail. Perceval gets

possession of somewhat of the wonder-working balm, brings to life the most

valiant of his adversaries, slays him afresh after a hard struggle, in

which he himself is wounded, heals his own hurt, and likewise Gonemant's,

with the balsam. Compare now Campbell's above-cited tale, the Knight of

the Red Shield. The hero, left alone upon the island by his two

treacherous companions, sees coming towards him "three youths, heavily,

wearily, tired." They are his foster-brothers, and from the end of a day

and a year they hold battle against the Son of Darkness, Son of Dimness,

and a hundred of his people, and every one they kill to-day will be alive

to-morrow, and spells are upon them they may not leave this (island) for

ever until they kill them. The hero starts out on the morrow alone

against these enemies, and he did not leave a head on a trunk of theirs,

and he overcame the Son of Darkness himself. But he is so spoilt and torn

he cannot leave the battle-field, and he lays himself down amongst the

dead the length of the day. "There was a great strand under him below; and

what should he hear but the sea coming as a blazing brand of fire, as a

destroying serpent, as a bellowing bull; he looked from him, and what saw

he coming on the shore of the strand, but a great toothy carlin ... there

was the tooth that was longer than a staff in her fist, and the one that

was shorter than a stocking wire in her lap." She puts her finger in the

mouth of the dead, and brings them alive. She does this to the hero, and

he bites off the finger at the joint, and then slays her. She is the

mother of the Son of Darkness, and she has a vessel of balsam wherewith

the hero's foster-brothers anoint and make him whole, and her death frees

them from her spells for ever.[81] This "toothy carlin" is a favourite

figure in Celtic tradition. She re-appears in the ballad of the

Muilearteach (probably Muir Iarteach, _i.e._, Western Sea), Campbell,

iii., pp. 122, _et seq._, and is there described as "the bald russet one,"

"her face blue black, of the lustre of coal, her bone tufted tooth like

rusted bone, one deep pool-like eye in her head, gnarled brushwood on her

head like the clawed-up wood of the aspen root." In another version of the

ballad, printed in the Scottish Celtic Review, No. 2, pp. 115, _et seq._,

the monster is "bald red, white maned, her face dark grey, of the hue of

coal, the teeth of her jaw slanting red, one flabby eye in her head, her

head bristled dark and grey, like scrubwood before hoar."[82] The editor

of this version, the Rev. J. G. Campbell, interprets the ballad, and

correctly, no doubt, "as an inroad of the Personified Sea." There is no

connection, save in the personage of the "toothy carlin," between the

ballad and the folk-tale.[83]

It is impossible, I think, to compare Gerbert's description of the witch

with that of the Highland "Carlin" without coming to the conclusion that

the French poet drew from traditional, popular Celtic sources. The wild

fantasy of the whole is foreign in the extreme to the French temperament,

and is essentially Celtic in tone. But the incident, as well as one

particular feature of it, admits of comparison: the three foster-brothers

of the Highland tale correspond to the four sons of Gonemant, who be it

recollected, represents in the Conte du Graal, Peredur-Perceval's uncle in

the Mabinogi; in both, the hero goes forth alone to do battle with the

mysterious enemy; the Son of Darkness answers to the King of the Waste

City; the dead men are brought back to life in the same way; the release

of the kinsman, from spells, or from danger of death, follows upon the

witch's discomfiture. And yet greater value attaches to the incident as

connected with the Mabinogi form of the story; in Gerbert, as in the

Mabinogi, the hero's uncle is sick to death, his chief enemy is a

monstrous witch (or witches), who foreknows that she must succumb at the

hero's hands.[84] Something has obviously dropped out from the Mabinogi.

May it not be those very magic talismans, the winning of which is the

chief element of the French romances, and may not one of the talismans

have been the vessel of life-restoring balsam which figures in Gerbert and

the Highland tales?[85] The study of subsidiary versions and incidents may

thus throw upon the connection of the Grail with the Perceval romance a

light which the main Celtic forms of the latter have not hitherto yielded.

The Thornton MS. Sir Perceval differs in this incident from both Manessier

and Gerbert. As in Gerbert and the Highland Tale the hero meets his uncle

and cousins; there is the same fight with the mother of the enemy of his

kin, the hideous carlin, but it precedes, as does also the slaying of that

enemy, the meeting of uncle and nephews. There is thus no room for the

healing _motif_ for which the unconscious avenging of the father's death

is substituted. These differences bear witness both to the popular and

shifting nature of the traditions upon which the romances are based, and

to the fact that the avenging of a blood feud was the leading incident of

its earliest form.

CHAPTER VII.

The various forms of the visit to the Grail Castle in the

romances--Conte du Graal: Chrestien; Gautier-Manessier;

Gautier-Gerbert--Didot-Perceval--Mabinogi--Conte du Graal: Gawain's

visit to the Grail Castle--Heinrich von dem Türlin--Conte du Graal:

Perceval's visit to the Castle of Maidens--Inconsistency of these

varying accounts; their testimony to stories of different nature and

origin being embodied in the romances--Two main types: feud quest and

unspelling quest--Reasons for the confusion of the two types--Evidence

of the confusion in older Celtic literature--The Grail in Celtic

literature: the gear of the Tuatha de Danann; the cauldron in the

Ultonian cycle; the Mabinogi of Branwen; vessel of balsam and glaive

of light in the contemporary folk-tale--The sword in Celtic

literature: Tethra; Fionn; Manus--Parallels to the Bespelled Castle;

the Brug of Oengus, the Brug of Lug, the Brug of Manannan Mac Lir,

Bran's visit to the Island of Women, Cormac Mac Art, and the Fairy

Branch; Diarmaid and the Daughter of King Under the Waves--Unspelling

stories: The Three Soldiers; the waiting of Arthur; Arthur in Etna;

the Kyffhäuser Legend, objections to Martin's views concerning

it--Gawain's visit to the Magic Castle and Celtic parallels; The Son

of Bad Counsel; Fionn in Giant Land; Fionn in the House of Cuana;

Fionn and the Yellow Face--The Vanishing of the Bespelled

Castle--Comparison with the Sleeping Beauty cycle--The "Haunted

Castle" form and its influence on Heinrich's version--The Loathly

Grail Messenger.

The 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:--

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

Question omitted.

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

Question put--

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

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

finished in

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

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

_In another version by_:--

(4) GERBERT: (Inc. 1-3). Perceval is sent forth anew upon Quest. He

has half put the question and been partially successful.

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

Question not mentioned. Hero's success.

_Besides these forms of the episode in the Conte du Graal of which

Perceval is the hero, we have_:--

(6) GAUTIER: (Inc. 3). Gauvain's first visit according to one, second

visit according to another version. Question half put, partial

success.

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

in_:--

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

of hero.

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

we have:

(8 & 9) WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH: Two visits of Perceval to Grail

Castle. Question omitted at first, put in second, and crowned with

success.

(10 & 11) MABINOGI OF PEREDUR: (Inc. 6-25). Two visits of hero to

Grail Castle. Question omitted at first. Second visit successful. No

mention of question.

(12 & 13) DIDOT-PERCEVAL: (Inc. 11-16). Two visits of Perceval to

Grail Castle. Question omitted at first, put at second, and crowned

with success.

In a German romance, which presents many analogies with that portion

of the Conte du Graal which goes under Gautier's name:

(14) HEINRICH VON DEM TÜRLIN: Gawain's first visit to Grail Castle.

Question put. Success. Allusion to previous unsuccessful visit of

Perceval.

Finally in the QUESTE versions we have four variants of the incident--

(15) QUESTE: (Inc. 12). Lancelot at the cross-road, omission to ask

concerning the Grail.

(15) QUESTE: (Inc. 15). Perceval heals Mordrains.

" (Inc. 43). Lancelot comes to Grail Castle. Partial

fulfilment of his Quest.

" (Inc. 48). The three questers come to the Grail Castle.

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. 4. The hero would hold it sin if

Lance and Grail, and a fair silver he did not ask concerning the

dish pass before them, the latter Grail. The King first submits him

held by a damsel. The hero sighs to the sword test.[86] The

and begs to learn about these existence of the flaw is

three. He is told about lance, apparently held to constitute

Grail, Grail-bearing damsel, failure, due to the hero's sin in

dish-bearing damsel, and in quitting his mother so abruptly.

answer to further questions, In the night the hero has a

learns the history of the broken vision, which warns him to hasten

sword, and of the chapel haunted to his sister's aid. On the morrow

by the black hand. After sleeping the Grail Castle has vanished.

in a splendid bed[87] he sets Mounting his horse, which stands

forth on the morrow on the sword ready saddled, he rides forth.

quest (the slaying of Partinal). After a vain essay to gain

entrance to a magnificent castle,

3. Having accomplished which, and in which he breaks his sword, and

lighted chancewise upon the Grail thereby loads upon himself seven

Castle, the King, apprised by a further years of adventure, but

squire and forthwith healed, meets learns how the sword may be made

the hero who shows him head and whole again, he finds the land

shield. At table lance and Grail which the day before was waste

pass, borne by two maidens; fertile and peopled. The peasants

delectable meats fill the dishes-- hail him: the townsmen come forth

all are filled and satisfied who in his honour--for through him the

behold the Holy Grail and the lance folk have won back lands and

that bleeds. Thereafter enters a riches. A damsel tells him how: at

squire holding a silver dish the Court of the Fisher King he

covered with red samite; the had asked about the Grail. At her

talismans pass thrice; the King castle he has his sword mended.

thanks the hero for having slain (Later the hero learns that his

his enemy and thereby rid him of failure to win the Grail comes

great torment. Asks his name, from his not having wedded his

learns that he is his nephew, and lady-love).

offers him his kingdom.

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.[88]

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[89] 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.[90] 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.[91] 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.[92] 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 maybe looked upon as the oldest account of the vessel[93] 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[94] 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[95] 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.[96]

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.[97]

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

maybe 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 euphemerised into an historical relation of the

pre-Christian invasion of Ireland, has a passage relating to the sword of

Tethra, King of the Fomori,[98] which spake, and, adds the Christian

scribe, the ancient Irish adored swords.[99] 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 mystic

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,[100] is he fit to set forth on the quest. In

Campbell's LXXVII., "How the Een was set up," Fionn applies for his sword

to Ullamh Lamhfhada[101] (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.[102] 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.[103] 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.[104]

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.[105]

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[106] (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.[107] 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,[108] 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.[109] 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,[110] 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,[111] 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).[112] 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.[113] 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.[114] 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.[115] 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,[116] and the

visitors are bidden "not to think nor order one of us to be with you in

lying down or rising up."[117]

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[118]

or with Holger the Dane than with any Celtic worthy. Yet the oldest

historic instance is that of Arthur.[119] 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[120] (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.[121]

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[122], 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.[123] 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."

for then he would have freed Arthur from his magic sleep. Never again

could he reach that hall.

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[124] 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 wide-spread 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.[125]--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

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.[126] 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.[127]

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.[128]

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.[129]

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,[130] 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.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Fisher King in the Conte du Graal, in the Queste, and in Borron

and the Grand St. Graal--The accounts of latter complete each

other--The Fish is the Salmon of Wisdom--Parallel with the Fionn

Saga--The nature of the Unspelling Quest--The Mabinogi of Taliesin and

its mythological affinities--Brons, Bran, Cernunnos--Perceval's

silence: Conte du Graal explanation late; explanation from the Fionn

Saga--Comparison of incident with _geasa_; nature of latter;

references to it in Celtic folk-tales and in old Irish literature,

Book of Rights, Diarmaid, Cuchulainn--_Geasa_ and _taboo_.

The Conte du Graal, as we have seen, offers no satisfactory explanation of

the Fisher King. By Chrestien he is represented on Perceval's first

meeting with him as angling from a boat steered by his companion (v.

4,187); he directs Perceval to his castle. Perceval is afterwards informed

that, being wounded and consequently unable to mount on horseback, fishing

is his only solace, whence the name applied to him (vv. 4,681, _et seq._).

This is practically all the Conte du Graal has to say about him, as the

continuators, whilst repeating the epithet, add no fresh details. Indeed

in none of the after-visits of Perceval is the King represented as

fishing, or is there the slightest reference to, let alone insistence

upon, this favourite occupation of his. It is another proof of the

inadequacy of Birch-Hirschfeld's theory of the development of the legend,

that it represents Chrestien, who, _ex hypothesi_, divested Borron's poem

of its religious character, as retaining this feature due wholly to

religious symbolism, whilst the continuators with their obvious fondness

for such symbolism entirely neglected it. The Queste, which in so far as

the quest portion is concerned is formally connected with the Conte du

Graal, says nothing about the Fisher, nor does that section of the Grand

St. Graal which presents the same Early History as the Queste. In

Borron's poem, on the other hand, and in that later section of the Grand

St. Graal which agrees with it, an explanation is given of the epithet.

According to Borron, Brons catches a fish at Joseph's bidding; Joseph,

having placed the vessel on the table and covered it with a towel, takes

the fish and lays it opposite the vessel; the people are then called

together, and it is possible to distinguish the sinners from the righteous

(vv. 2,500-2,600). Joseph is afterwards told by an angel, that, as Brons

was a good man, it was the Lord's will he should catch the fish (vv.

3,310, _et seq._), and he is to be called the Rich Fisher (v. 3,348). In

the Grand St. Graal (Vol. II., pp. 248, _et seq._) not Brons but his son

Alain is bidden by Joseph to fish, and this with a view to providing food

for the sinners of the company whom the Holy Vessel leaves unsatisfied.

Alain fishes from a boat with a net. He catches but one fish, and there

are at first murmurs, but Joseph, by virtue of Alain's prayers, multiplies

the fish so that it feeds the host, and thus Alain wins the name of Rich

Fisher.

These accounts complete each other. Chrestien dwells upon the continued

act of fishing which, for aught to the contrary we learn from him or his

continuators, is always fruitless. Borron and the Grand St. Graal dwell

upon the one successful haul, and especially upon the miraculous

properties of the one fish caught. Reading the two accounts together, we

find that the Fisher King passes his life seeking for a fish which, when

caught, confers upon him the power of distinguishing good from evil, or

enables him to furnish an inexhaustible meal to his men.

The Conte du Graal has been shown to derive more of its substance from the

feud quest--the Didot-Perceval from the unspelling quest. Borron's poem,

as far as its primitive Celtic elements are concerned, is probably to be

ranged with the Didot-Perceval, to which many links unite it. We may,

therefore, turn to Celtic stories belonging to either of these formulas

for parallel features. The inexhaustible nature of the fish at once

recalls the pigs of Manannan Mac Lir (_supra_, p. 194); they, too, can

feed a multitude. But it is in stories formally connected with the feud

quest that we find what I venture to suggest is an adequate explanation of

the nature of the Fisher King and of the fish. The latter is, I think,

the Salmon of Wisdom,[131] which appears so often and so prominently in

Irish mythic lore; and the former is that being who passes his life in

vain endeavours to catch the wonderful fish, and who, in the moment of

success, is robbed of the fruit of all his long toils and watchings. I am

prepared to admit that the incident as found in Borron's poem has been

recast in the mould of mediæval Christian symbolism, but I think the older

myth can still be clearly discerned and is wholly responsible for the

incident as found in the Conte du Graal.[132]

Let us first look at the Irish story. This is found in an account, to

which allusion has already been made, of the Boyish Exploits of Finn Mac

Cumhail.[133] It is there told how Finn seeks his namesake, Finn-eges, to

learn poetry from him, as until then he durst not stay in Ireland for fear

of his foes. Now Finn-eges had remained seven years by the Boyne, watching

the salmon of Linn-Feic, which it had been foretold Finn (himself as he

thought) should catch and know all things afterwards. Finn, who conceals

his name, takes service with him and the salmon is caught. Finn is set to

watch it while it roasts, but warned not to eat of it. Inadvertently he

touches it with his thumb, which he burns, and carries to his mouth to

cool. Immediately he becomes possessed of all knowledge, and thereafter he

had only to chew his thumb to obtain wisdom. Finn-eges recognises that the

prophecy has been fulfilled, and hails his pupil as Finn.

It is needless to dwell upon the archaic features of this tale, which

represents the hero seeking service of a powerful magician, from whom he

hopes to learn the spells and charms that may guard him against his foes.

Here, as in many other portions of the Ossianic saga, Fionn is strikingly

like a Red Indian medicine man, or the corresponding wizard among other

savage tribes. It is more to our purpose to note that this tale contains

the fullest presentment of Fionn as hero of the Expulsion and Return

Formula, and that a similar incident is to be found in the lives of other

heroes of the formula (notably Siegfried: the Adventure with Mimir.) Now,

as we have already seen that Peredur-Perceval is a formula hero, there is

nothing remarkable in finding an analogous incident in his _sage_. A

formal connection is thus at once made out. But we must look into the

matter a little closer, as the incident found in the romances is but a

faint echo, and that in part distorted by alien conceptions, of the

original story.

The unspelling quest in one form resolves itself ultimately into the

hero's search for riches, power, or knowledge, in prosecution of which he

penetrates to the otherworld. This is figured in the Grail romances both

by Brons' or Alain's (who here answers to Fionn) catching the wonderful

fish, and by Peredur-Perceval coming to the house of Brons, the Fisher

King (who here answers to Finn-eges), winning from him the mysterious

vessel of increase, and learning the secret words which put an end to the

enchantments of Britain. In the Grail romances the idea of wisdom is not

associated with the Grail, the vessel, at all; it is either bound up with

the fish, as in the Irish tale, or is the possession of the Fisher King as

the wonder-working spells are the possession of Finn-eges.

But in the Welsh tradition which corresponds to that of Fionn and the

salmon, it is the vessel, the cauldron, or rather the drink which it

holds, which communicates the gift of wisdom and knowledge. I allude, of

course, to the story of Gwion, set by Ceridwen to watch the cauldron of

inspiration, inadvertently tasting its contents, becoming thereby filled

with knowledge, pursued by Ceridwen, who swallows him, and in whom he

re-incarnates himself as Taliesin, the Allwise Bard. Campbell had already

(Vol. IV., p. 299) drawn attention to the similarity of the two stories,

and equated Fionn, father of Oisin, with Gwion, father of Taliesin; and,

as Professor Rhys has now (Hibbert Lectures, p. 551) given the equation

his sanction, it may be accepted as philologically sound.

I have hitherto refrained in the course of these studies from making any

use of the Mabinogi of Taliesin, or of references to the cauldron of

Ceridwen of a like nature with those contained in that tale; but it will,

I think, be admitted now that the Welsh Mabinogi, however late in form,

and however overlaid it may be with pseudo-archaic bardic rubbish, does go

back to a primitive stratum of Celtic mythology.

In connection with this myth the name Brons is of high import. This

catcher of the fish, this lord of the Grail, at once suggests Bran, who is

also a guardian of the magic cauldron. Professor Rhys (pp. 85-95) shows

reason for looking upon Bran (as he is presented in the Mabinogi of

Branwen) as the representative of an old Celtic god, Cernunnos, that

Celtic Dis from whom, as Cæsar reports, the Gauls claimed descent, and

who, as god of the otherworld and the shades was also god of knowledge and

riches. We are thus brought back again to the fundamental conception of

the Grail quest.

It is to this tale that I would turn for one of the possible explanations

of Perceval's silence at the Court of the Fisher King. That the romance

writers did not understand this incident is evident from the explanation

they give.

Gonemans' moral advice to his nephew on the evil of curiosity may have its

foundation in a possible feature of the original, about which I shall

speak presently; or it may simply be an expedient of Chrestien's or of his

immediate model. In either case its present form is obviously neither old

nor genuine. The silence of Perceval may, perhaps, be referred to the same

myth-root as Fionn's concealment of his name whilst in the service of

Finn-eges.[134] This prohibition might extend not only to the disclosing

of his name by the mortal visitor to the realm of the shades, but to the

utterance of any words at all. As he might not eat or drink in the

underworld, so he might not speak lest he lose the power to return to the

land of the living. One tale we have seen (_supra_, p. 195) does contain

this very injunction to say no word whilst in company of the dwellers in

the Bespelled Castle. In this case we should have to assume that two

varying redactions of the theme have been maladroitly fused into one in

the romances--that, namely, which bids the visitor to the otherworld

abstain from a certain act, and that which, on the contrary, bids him

perform a certain act, failure of compliance with the injunction being

punished in either case. The positive injunction of one form of the story

is used as an explanation of the hero's failure in another.

An alternative hypothesis is that whilst the hero's unreadiness of speech,

the cause of his want of success at his first visit, comes wholly from the

unspelling quest, the motive by which the romances seek to account for

that unreadiness comes from the feud quest. The latter, as has been shown,

is closely akin to many task-stories; and it is a frequent feature in such

stories, especially in the Celtic ones, that the hero has to accomplish

his quest in spite of all sorts of odd restrictions which are laid upon

him by an enemy, generally by a step-mother or some other evil-disposed

relative. In the language of Irish mythic tradition Perceval would be

under _geasa_ to ask no questions, and Gonemans' advice would be the last

faint echo of such an incident. The form which such prohibitions take in

Celtic folk-tales is very curious. The _gess_ is generally embodied in a

magical formula, the language of which is very old and frequently

unintelligible to the narrators themselves. As a rule, the hero, by advice

of a friendly supernatural being, lays a counterspell upon his enemy.

Thus, in "How the Great Tuairsgeul was put to Death" (Scot. Celt. Rev. I.,

p. 70) the magician "lays it as crosses and charms that water leave not

your shoe until you found out how the Great Tuairsgeul was put to death."

The hero retorts by laying the same charms that the magician leave not the

hillock until he return. In Campbell, No. XLVII., Mac Iain Direach, the

stepmother, "sets it as crosses, and as spells, and as the decay of the

year upon thee; that thou be not without a pool of water in thy shoe, and

that thou be wet, cold, and soiled until, etc.;" and the hero bespells

her, "that thou be standing with the one foot on the great house and the

other foot on the castle: and that thy face be to the tempest whatever

wind blows, until I return back." The formula in Campbell, No. LI, the

Fair Gruagach is very archaic. "I lay thee under spells, and under

crosses, under holy herdsmen of quiet travelling, wandering woman, the

little calf, most feeble and powerless, to take thy head and thine ear and

thy wearing of life from off thee if thou takest rest by night or day;

where thou takest thy breakfast that thou take not thy dinner, and where

thou takest thy dinner that thou take not thy supper, in whatsoever place

thou be, until thou findest out in what place I may be under the four

brown quarters of the globe."

These instances will suffice to show the nature of the _gess_ in Celtic

folk-lore, but some references to older Irish literature are necessary to

show its great importance in the social and religious life of the race.

O'Donovan (Book of Rights, p. xlv.) explains the word _geasa_ as "any

thing or act forbidden because of the ill luck that would result from its

doing;" also "a spell, a charm, a prohibition, an interdiction or

hindrance." This explanation occurs in the introduction to a poem on the

restrictions (_geasa_) and prerogatives (_buada_) of the Kings of Eire,

found in the Book of Ballymote (late fourteenth century) and Book of Lecan

(early fifteenth century). The poem is ascribed to Cuan O'Lochain (A.D.

1024), and, from the historical allusions contained in it, O'Donovan looks

upon it as in substance due to that poet, and as embodying much older

traditions. Some of these _geasa_ may be quoted. For the King of Eire,

"that the sun should rise upon him on his bed in Magh Teamhrach;" for the

King of Leinster, "to go round Tuath Laighean left hand-wise on

Wednesday;" for the King of Munster, "to remain, to enjoy the feast of

Loch Lein from one Monday to another;" for the King of Connaught, "to go

in a speckled garment on a grey speckled steed to the heath of Luchaid;"

for the King of Ulster, "to listen to the fluttering of the flocks of

birds of Luin Saileach after sunset."[135] Even these instances do not

exhaust the force or adequately connote the nature of this curious

institution. In the Irish hero-tales _geasa_ attach themselves to the hero

from his birth up, and are the means by which fate compasses the downfall

of the otherwise invincible champion; thus it is a _gess_ of Diarmaid that

he never hunt a swine, and when he is artfully trapped into doing it by

Fionn he meets his death; it is a _gess_ of Cuchulainn's that he never

refuse food offered him by women, and as he goes to his last fight he

accepts the poisoned meal of the witches though he full well knows it will

be fatal to him.[136] But, besides this, _geasa_ may also be an appeal to

the hero's honour as well as a magic charm laid upon him, and it is

sometimes difficult to see by which of the two motives the hero is moved.

Thus Graine, wife of Fionn, lays _geasa_ upon Diarmaid that he carry her

off from her husband, and though he is in the last degree unwilling he

must comply.[137]

Enough has been said to show that we have in the _geasa_ a cause quite

sufficient to explain the mysterious prohibition to ask questions laid

upon Perceval, if the first explanation I have offered of this prohibition

be thought inadequate.

CHAPTER IX.

Summing up of the elements of the older portion of the

cycle--Parallelism with Celtic tradition--The Christian element in the

cycle: the two forms of the Early History; Brons form older--Brons and

Bran--The Bran conversion legend--The Joseph conversion legend: Joseph

in apocryphal literature--Glastonbury--The head in the platter and the

Veronica portrait--The Bran legend the starting point of the Christian

transformation of the legend--Substitution of Joseph for

Bran--Objections to this hypothesis--Hypothetical sketch of the growth

of the legend.

I have now finished the examination of all those incidents in the Grail

Quest romances which are obviously derived from some other sources than

Christian legend, and which are, indeed, referred by pronounced adherents

of the Christian-origin hypothesis to Celtic tradition. I have also

claimed a Celtic origin for features hitherto referred to Christian

legend. This examination will, I trust, convince many that nearly all the

incidents connected with the Quest of the Grail are Celtic in their

origin, and that thus alone can we account for the way in which they

appear in the romances. The latter are, as we have seen, in the highest

degree inconsistent in their account of the mystic vessel and its

fortunes; the most cursory examination shows the legend to be composed of

two parts, which have no real connection with each other; the older of

these parts, the Quest, can easily be freed from the traces of Christian

symbolism; this older part is itself no homogeneous or consistent tale,

but a complex of incidents diverse in origin and character. These

incidents are: the rearing of the hero in ignorance of the world and of

men; his visit to the court of the King, his uncle; his slaying of his

father's murderer, the trial made of him by means of the broken sword; his

service with the Fisher King; his quest in search of the sword and of the

vessel by means of which he is to avenge the death or wounding of his

kinsman; his accomplishment of this task by the aid of a kinsman who is

under spells from which he will not be loosed until the quest be ended;

the adventure of the stag-hunt, in which the bespelled kinsman tests the

hero's skill and courage; the hero's visit to the Castle of Talismans; the

prohibition under which he labours; his failure to accomplish certain

acts; the effects of his failure; his visit to the Magic Castle, the lord

of which is under the enchantment of death-in-life; his visit to the

Castle of Maidens; his visit to the Castle Perillous; and his deliverance

of the captive damsels by means of the trials which he successfully

undergoes. To one and all of these incidents Celtic parallels have been

adduced; these have in each case been drawn from stories which present a

general similarity of outline with the Grail romances, or share with them

similar guiding conceptions, whilst at the same time they are so far

disconnected with them that no hypothesis of borrowing can account for the

features they have in common. The inconsistencies of the romances have

been explained by the fusion into one of two originally distinct groups of

stories, and this explanation is confirmed by the fact that traces of this

fusion may readily be found in the parallel Celtic tales. These latter,

when studied by scholars who never thought of comparing them with the

Grail romances, have been found to contain mythical elements which other

scholars had detected independently in the romances. Those features of the

romances which have perplexed previous students, the Fisher King and the

omitted question, have been explained from the same group of Celtic

traditions, and in accordance with the same scheme of mythical

interpretation which have been used to throw light upon the remainder of

the cycle. Finally, the one Celtic version of the Grail Quest, the

Mabinogi, which presents no admixture of Christian symbolism, has been

shown, when cleared of certain easily distinguishable interpolations, to

be genuine in character, and to present the oldest form of one of the

stories which enters into the romances.

I have tried not to force these parallels, nor to go one step beyond what

the facts warrant. I have also tried to bear in mind that a parallel is of

no real value unless it throws light upon the puzzling features in the

development of the romances. I thus rest my case, not so much upon the

accumulative effect of the similarities which I have pointed out between

the romances and Celtic tradition, as upon the fact that this reference of

the romances to certain definite cycles of Celtic myth and legend makes us

understand, what otherwise we cannot do, how they came by their present

shape. It now remains to be seen if this reference, can in any way explain

the Christian element in the legend, which I have hitherto left almost

entirely out of account. Birch-Hirschfeld's hypothesis is condemned, in my

opinion, by its failure to account for the Celtic element; although I do

not think an explanation of a late and intruding feature is as incumbent

upon me as that of the original Celtic basis of the legend is upon him, I

yet feel that an hypothesis which has nothing to say on such a vital point

can hardly be considered satisfactory. It is the Christian transformation

of the old Celtic myths and folk-tales which gave them their wide vogue in

the Middle Ages, which endowed the theme with such fascination for the

preachers and philosophers who used it as a vehicle for their teaching,

and which has endeared it to all lovers of mystic symbolism. The question

how and why the Celtic tales which I have tried, not unsuccessfully I

trust, to disentangle from the romances were ever brought into contact

with Christ and His disciples, and how the old mystic vessel of healing,

increase, and knowledge became at last the sacramental cup, must,

therefore, be faced. The hypotheses set forth in the preceding page might

be accepted in their entirety, and the merit of this transformation still

be claimed, as Birch-Hirschfeld claims it, for the North French poets, to

whom we owe the present versions of the romances. On first reading

Birch-Hirschfeld's book, I thought this claim one of the flaws in his

argument, and, as will be seen by reference to Chapter IV., other

investigators, who accept the Christian origin of the larger part of the

legend, hold that it has been shaped in these islands, or in accordance

with Celtic traditions now lost. I think we can go a step farther. A

number of myths and tales have been used to illustrate the romances. In

them may be found the personages through whom probably took place the

first contact between Celtic mythic tradition and Christian legend.

We must revert for one moment to the results obtained in Chapter III. by

an examination of the way in which the Grail and its fortunes are

mentioned in the romances. We there distinguished two forms of the

distinctively Christian portion of the legend, the Early History. In both

Joseph is the first possessor and user of the holy vessel, but in one its

farther fortunes are likewise bound up with him or with his seed. He, or

his son, it is who leads the Grail host to Britain, who converts the

island, and by whom the precious vessel is handed down through a chosen

line of kings in anticipation of the promised Knight's coming. In the

other form, on the contrary, Joseph has nothing to do with Britain, which

is converted by Brons and his son, Alain; Brons is the guardian of the

holy vessel, and, in one version, the fisher of the mystic fish, whilst in

another his son takes this part. There is repeated insistence upon the

connection between the Grail host and Avalon. Finally Brons is the

possessor of "secret words," and may not die until he has revealed them to

his grandson.

This account is, we saw, later in form than the Joseph one. As we have it,

it was written after the greater portion of the Conte du Graal, after that

redaction of the Early History made use of by the author of the Queste and

of the first draft of the Grand St. Graal. Its influence only makes itself

felt in the later stages of development of the legend. But none the less

it clearly represents an older and purer form of the Early History than

that of the Queste and of Chrestien's continuators. It has not been

doctored into harmony with the full-blown Arthurian legend as the Joseph

Early History has. It is still chiefly, if not wholly, a legend, the main

purport of which is to recount the conversion of Britain.