THE GODS AS KING ARTHUR’S KNIGHTS
It is not, however, by such fragments of legend that Arthur is best
known to English readers. Not Arthur the god, but Arthur the “blameless
king”, who founded the Table Round, from which he sent forth his knights
“to ride abroad redressing human wrongs”,[452] is the figure which the
name conjures up. Nor is it even from Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur
that this conception comes to most of us, but from Tennyson’s _Idylls of
the King_. But Tennyson has so modernized the ancient tradition that it
retains little of the old Arthur but the name. He tells us himself that
his poem had but very slight relation to—
... “that gray king, whose name, a ghost,
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him
Of Geoffrey’s book, or him of Malleor’s ...”;[453]
but that he merely used the legend to give a substantial form to his
ideal figure of the perfect English gentleman—a title to which the
original Arthur could scarcely have laid claim. Still less does there
remain in it the least trace of anything that could suggest mythology.
As much as this, however, might be said of Malory’s book. We may be
fairly certain that the good Sir Thomas had no idea that the personages
of whom he wrote had ever been anything different from the Christian
knights which they had become in the late French romances from which he
compiled his own fifteenth-century work. The old gods had been, from
time to time, very completely euhemerized. The characters of the “Four
Branches of the Mabinogi” are still recognizable as divine beings. In
the later Welsh stories, however, their divinity merely hangs about them
in shreds and tatters, and the first Norman adapters of these stories
made them still more definitely human. By the time Malory came to build
up his Morte Darthur from the foreign romances, they had altered so much
that the shapes and deeds of gods could only be recognized under their
mediæval knightly disguises by those who had known them in their ancient
forms.
We have chosen Malory’s Morte Darthur, as almost the sole representative
of Arthurian literature later than the Welsh poems and prose stories,
for three reasons. Firstly, because it is the English Arthurian romance
_par excellence_ from which all later English authors, including
Tennyson, have drawn their material. Secondly, because the mass of
foreign literature dealing with the subject of Arthur is in itself a
life-study, and could not by any possibility be compressed within the
limits of a chapter. Thirdly, because Malory’s fine judgment caused him
to choose the best and most typical foreign tales to weave into his own
romance; and hence it is that we find most of our old British gods—both
those of the earlier cycle and those of the system connected with
Arthur—striding disguised through his pages.
Curiously enough, Sir Edward Strachey, in his preface to the “Globe”
edition of Caxton’s Morte Darthur, uses almost the same image to
describe Malory’s prose-poem that Matthew Arnold handled with such
effect, in his _Study of Celtic Literature_, to point out the real
nature of the Mabinogion. “Malory”, he says, “has built a great,
rambling, mediæval castle, the walls of which enclose rude and even
ruinous work of earlier times.” How rude and how ruinous these relics
were Malory doubtless had not the least idea, for he has completely
jumbled the ancient mythology. Not only do gods of the older and newer
order appear together, but the same deities, under very often only
slightly varying names, come up again and again as totally different
characters.
Take, for example, the ancient deity of death and Hades. As King
Brandegore, or Brandegoris (Brân of Gower), he brings five thousand
mounted men to oppose King Arthur;[454] but, as Sir Brandel, or
Brandiles (Brân of Gwales[455]), he is a valiant Knight of the Round
Table, who dies fighting in Arthur’s service.[456] Again, under his name
of Uther Pendragon (Uther Ben), he is Arthur’s father;[457] though as
King Ban of Benwyk (the “Square Enclosure”, doubtless the same as
Taliesin’s _Caer Pedryvan_ and Malory’s _Carbonek_), he is a foreign
monarch, who is Arthur’s ally.[458] Yet again, as the father of
Guinevere, Ogyrvran has become Leodegrance.[459] As King Uriens, or
Urience, of Gore (Gower), he marries one of Arthur’s sisters,[460]
fights against him, but finally tenders his submission, and is enrolled
among his knights.[461] Urien may also be identified in the Morte
Darthur as King Rience, or Ryons, of North Wales,[462] and as King
Nentres of Garloth;[463] while, to crown the varied disguises of this
Proteus of British gods, he appears in an isolated episode as Balan, who
fights with his brother Balin until they kill one another.[464]
One may generally tell the divinities of the underworld in these
romances by their connection, not with the settled and civilized parts
of England, but with the wild and remote north and west, and the still
wilder and remoter islands. Just as Brân and Urien are kings of Gower,
so Arawn, under the corruptions of his name into “Anguish” and
“Anguissance”, is made King of Scotland or Ireland, both countries
having been probably confounded, as the same land of the Scotti, or
Gaels.[465] Pwyll, Head of Annwn, we likewise discover under two
disguises. As Pelles, “King of the Foreign Country”[466] and Keeper of
the Holy Grail, he is a personage of great mythological significance,
albeit the real nature of him and his surroundings has been overlaid
with a Christian veneer as foreign to the original of Pelles as his own
kingdom was to Arthur’s knights. The Chief of Hades figures as a “cousin
nigh unto Joseph of Arimathie”,[467] who, “while he might ride supported
much Christendom, and holy church”.[468] He is represented as the father
of Elayne (Elen[469]), whom he gives in marriage to Sir Launcelot,
bestowing upon the couple a residence called “Castle Bliant”,[470] the
name of which, there is good evidence to show, is connected with that of
Pwyll’s vassal called Teirnyon Twryf Vliant in the first of the
Mabinogi.[471] Under his other name of “Sir Pelleas”—the hero of
Tennyson’s Idyll of _Pelleas and Ettarre_—the primitive myth of Pwyll is
touched at a different point. After his unfortunate love-passage with
Ettarre (or Ettard, as Malory calls her), Pelleas is represented as
marrying Nimue,[472] whose original name, which was Rhiannon, reached
this form, as well as that of “Vivien”, through a series of miscopyings
of successive scribes.[473]
With Pelles, or Pelleas, is associated a King Pellean, or Pellam, his
son, and, equally with him, the Keeper of the Grail, who can be no other
than Pryderi.[474] Like that deity in the Mabinogi of Mâth, he is
defeated by one of the gods of light. The dealer of the blow, however,
is not Arthur, as successor to Gwydion, but Balin, the Gallo-British
sun-god Belinus.[475]
Another dark deity, Gwyn son of Nudd, we discover under all of his three
titles. Called variously “Sir Gwinas”,[476] “Sir Guynas”,[477] and “Sir
Gwenbaus”[478] by Malory, the Welsh Gwynwas (or Gwyn) is altogether on
Arthur’s side. The Cornish Melwas, split into two different knights,
divides his allegiance. As Sir Melias,[479] or Meleaus,[480] de Lile
(“of the Isle”), he is a Knight of the Round Table, though, on the
quarrel between Arthur and Launcelot, he sides with the knight against
the king. But as Sir Meliagraunce, or Meliagaunce, it is he who, as in
the older myth, captures Queen Guinevere and carries her off to his
castle.[481] Under his Somerset name of Avallon, or Avallach, he is
connected with the episode of the Grail. King Evelake[482] is a Saracen
ruler who was converted by Joseph of Arimathea, and brought by him to
Britain. In his convert’s enthusiasm, he attempted the quest of the holy
vessel, but was not allowed to succeed.[483] As a consolation, however,
it was divinely promised him that he should not die until he had seen a
knight of his blood in the ninth degree who should achieve it. This was
done by Sir Percivale, King Evelake being then three hundred years
old.[484]
Turning from deities of darkness to deities of light, we find the
sky-god figuring largely in the Morte Darthur. The Lludd of the earlier
mythology is Malory’s King Loth, or Lot, of Orkney,[485] through an
intrigue with whose wife Arthur becomes the father of Sir Mordred. Lot’s
wife was the mother also of Sir Gawain, whose birth Malory does not,
however, attribute to Arthur, though such must have been the original
form of the myth.[486] Sir Gawain, of the Arthurian legend, is the
Gwalchmei of the Welsh stories, the successor of the still earlier Lleu
Llaw Gyffes, just as Sir Mordred—the Welsh Medrawt—corresponds to Lleu’s
brother Dylan. As Sir Mordred retains the dark character of Medrawt, so
Sir Gawain, even in Malory,[487] shows the attributes of a solar deity.
We are told that his strength increased gradually from dawn till high
noon, and then as gradually decreased again—a piece of pagan symbolism
which forms a good example of the appositeness of Sir Edward Strachey’s
figure; for it stands out of the mediæval narrative like an ancient
brick in some more modern building.
The Zeus of the later cycle, Emrys or Myrddin, appears in the Morte
Darthur under both his names. The word “Emrys” becomes “Bors”, and King
Bors of Gaul is made a brother of King Ban of Benwyck[488]—that is, Brân
of the Square Enclosure, the ubiquitous underworld god. Myrddin we meet
under no such disguise. The ever-popular Merlin still retains intact the
attributes of the sky-god. He remains above, and apart from all the
knights, higher even in some respects than King Arthur, to whom he
stands in much the same position as Mâth does to Gwydion in the
Mabinogi.[489] Like Mâth, he is an enchanter, and, like Mâth, too, who
could hear everything said in the world, in however low a tone, if only
the wind met it, he is practically omniscient. The account of his final
disappearance, as told in the Morte Darthur, is only a re-embellishment
of the original story, the nature-myth giving place to what novelists
call “a feminine interest”. Everyone knows how the great magician fell
into a dotage upon the “lady of the lake” whom Malory calls “Nimue”, and
Tennyson “Vivien”—both names being that of “Rhiannon” in disguise.
“Merlin would let her have no rest, but always he would be with her ...
and she was ever passing weary of him, and fain would have been
delivered of him, for she was afeard of him because he was a devil’s
son, and she could not put him away by no means. And so on a time it
happed that Merlin showed to her in a rock whereas was a great wonder,
and wrought by enchantment, that went under a great stone. So, by her
subtle working, she made Merlin to go under that stone to let her wit of
the marvels there, but she wrought so there for him that he never came
out for all the craft that he could do. And so she departed and left
Merlin.”[490]
Merlin’s living grave is still to be seen at the end of the _Val des
Fées_, in the forest of Brécilien, in Brittany. The tomb of stone is
certainly but a prosaic equivalent for the tower of woven air in which
the heaven-god went to his rest. Still, it is not quite so unpoetic as
the leather sack in which Rhiannon, the original of Nimue, caught and
imprisoned Gwawl, the earlier Merlin, like a badger in a bag.[491]
Elen, Myrddin’s consort, appears in Malory as five different “Elaines”.
Two of them are wives of the dark god, under his names of “King
Ban”[492] and “King Nentres”.[493] A third is called the daughter of
King Pellinore, a character of uncertain origin.[494] But the two most
famous are the ladies who loved Sir Launcelot—“Elaine the Fair, Elaine
the lovable, Elaine the lily maid of Astolat”,[495] and the luckier and
less scrupulous Elaine, daughter of King Pelles, and mother of Sir
Launcelot’s son, Galahad.[496]
But it is time, now that the most important figures of British mythology
have been shown under their knightly disguises, and their place in
Arthurian legend indicated, to pass on to some account of the real
subject-matter of Sir Thomas Malory’s romance. Externally, it is the
history of an Arthur, King of Britain, whom most people of Malory’s time
considered as eminently a historical character. Around this central
narrative of Arthur’s reign and deeds are grouped, in the form of
episodes, the personal exploits of the knights believed to have
supported him by forming a kind of household guard. But, with the
exception of a little magnified and distorted legendary history, the
whole cycle of romance may be ultimately resolved into a few myths, not
only retold, but recombined in several forms by their various tellers.
The Norman adapters of the _Matière de Bretagne_ found the British
mythology already in process of transformation, some of the gods having
dwindled into human warriors, and others into hardly less human druids
and magicians. Under their hands the British warriors became Norman
knights, who did their deeds of prowess in the tilt-yard, and found
their inspiration in the fantastic chivalry popularized by the
Trouveres, while the druids put off their still somewhat barbaric
druidism for the more conventional magic of the Latin races. More than
this, as soon as the real sequence and _raison d’être_ of the tales had
been lost sight of, their adapters used a free hand in reweaving them.
Most of the romancers had their favourite characters whom they made the
central figure in their stories. Sir Gawain, Sir Percival, Sir Tristrem,
and Sir Owain (all of them probably once local British sun-gods) appear
as the most important personages of the romances called after their
names, stories of the doughty deeds of christened knights who had little
left about them either of Briton or of pagan.
It is only the labours of the modern scholar that can bring back to us,
at this late date, things long forgotten when Malory’s book was issued
from Caxton’s press. But oblivion is not annihilation, and Professor
Rhys points out to us the old myths lying embedded in their later
setting with almost the same certainty with which the geologist can show
us the fossils in the rock.[497] Thus treated, they resolve themselves
into three principal _motifs_, prominent everywhere in Celtic mythology:
the birth of the sun-god; the struggle between light and darkness; and
the raiding of the underworld by friendly gods for the good of man.
The first has been already dealt with.[498] It is the retelling of the
story of the origin of the sun-god in the Mabinogi of Mâth, son of
Mâthonwy. For Gwydion we now have Arthur; instead of Arianrod, the wife
of the superannuated sky-god Nwyvre, we find the wife of King Lot, the
superannuated sky-god Lludd; Lleu Llaw Gyffes rises again as Sir Gawain
(Gwalchmei), and Dylan as Sir Mordred (Medrawt); while the wise Merlin,
the Jupiter of the new system, takes the place of his wise prototype,
Mâth. Connected with this first myth is the second—the struggle between
light and darkness, of which there are several versions in the Morte
Darthur. The leading one is the rebellion of the evilly-disposed Sir
Mordred against Arthur and Sir Gawain; while, on other stages, Balan—the
dark god Brân—fights with Balin—the sun-god Belinus; and the same Balin,
or Belinus, gives an almost mortal stroke to Pellam, the Pryderi of the
older mythology.
The same myth has also a wider form, in which the battle is waged for
possession of a maiden. Thus (to seek no other instances) Gwynhwyvar was
contended for by Arthur and Medrawt, or, in an earlier form of the myth,
by Arthur and Gwyn. In the Morte Darthur, Gwyn, under the corruption of
his Cornish name Melwas into “Sir Meliagraunce”, still captures
Guinevere, but it is no longer Arthur who rescues her. That task, or
privilege, has fallen to a new champion. It is Sir Launcelot who follows
Sir Meliagraunce, defeats and slays him, and rescues the fair
captive.[499] But Sir Launcelot, it must be stated—probably to the
surprise of those to whom the Arthurian story without Launcelot and
Queen Guinevere must seem almost like the play of “Hamlet with Hamlet
left out”,—is unknown to the original tradition. Welsh song and story
are silent with regard to him, and he is not improbably a creation of
some Norman romancer who calmly appropriated to his hero’s credit deeds
earlier told of other “knights”.
But the romantic treatment of these two myths by the adapters of the
_Matière de Bretagne_ are of smaller interest to us at the present day
than that of the third. The attraction of the Arthurian story lies less
in the battles of Arthur or the loves of Guinevere than in the legend
that has given it its lasting popularity—the Christian romance of the
Quest of the Holy Grail. So great and various has been the inspiration
of this legend to noble works both of art and literature that it seems
almost a kind of sacrilege to trace it back, like all the rest of
Arthur’s story, to a paganism which could not have even understood, much
less created, its mystical beauty. None the less is the whole story
directly evolved from primitive pagan myths concerning a miraculous
cauldron of fertility and inspiration.
In the later romances, the Holy Grail is a Christian relic of marvellous
potency. It had held the Paschal lamb eaten at the Last Supper;[500]
and, after the death of Christ, Joseph of Arimathea had filled it with
the Saviour’s blood.[501] But before it received this colouring, it had
been the magic cauldron of all the Celtic mythologies—the Dagda’s
“Undry” which fed all who came to it, and from which none went away
unsatisfied;[502] Brân’s cauldron of Renovation, which brought the dead
back to life;[503] the cauldron of Ogyrvran the Giant, from which the
Muses ascended;[504] the cauldrons captured by Cuchulainn from the King
of the Shadowy City,[505] and by Arthur from the chief of Hades;[506] as
well as several other mythic vessels of less note.
In its transition from pagan to Christian form, hardly one of the
features of the ancient myth has been really obscured. We may recount
the chief attributes, as Taliesin tells them in his “Spoiling of Annwn”,
of the cauldron captured by Arthur. It was the property of Pwyll, and of
his son Pryderi, who lived in a kingdom of the other world called, among
other titles, the “Revolving Castle”, the “Four-cornered Castle”, the
“Castle of Revelry”, the “Kingly Castle”, the “Glass Castle”, and the
“Castle of Riches”. This place was surrounded by the sea, and in other
ways made difficult of access; there was no lack of wine there, and its
happy inhabitants spent with music and feasting an existence which
neither disease nor old age could assail. As for the cauldron, it had a
rim of pearls around its edge; the fire beneath it was kept fanned by
the breaths of nine maidens; it spoke, doubtless in words of prophetic
wisdom; and it would not cook the food of a perjurer or coward.[507]
Here we have considerable data on which to base a parallel between the
pagan cauldron and the Christian Grail.
Nor have we far to go in search of correspondences, for they are nearly
all preserved in Malory’s romance. The mystic vessel was kept by King
Pelles, who is Pwyll, in a castle called “Carbonek”, a name which
resolves itself, in the hands of the philologist, into _Caer bannawg_,
the “square” or “four-cornered castle”—in other words, the _Caer
Pedryvan_ of Taliesin’s poem.[508] Of the character of the place as a
“Castle of Riches” and a “Castle of Revelry”, where “bright wine was the
drink of the host”, we have more than a hint in the account, twice
given,[509] of how, upon the appearance of the Grail—borne, it should be
noticed, by a maiden or angel—the hall was filled with good odours, and
every knight found on the table all the kinds of meat and drink he could
imagine as most desirable. It could not be seen by sinners,[510] a
Christian refinement of the savage idea of a pot that would not cook a
coward’s food; but the sight of it alone would cure of wounds and
sickness those who approached it faithfully and humbly,[511] and in its
presence neither old age nor sickness could oppress them.[512] And,
though in Malory we find no reference either to the spot having been
surrounded by water, or to the castle as a “revolving” one, we have only
to turn from the Morte Darthur to the romance entitled the _Seint Greal_
to discover both. Gwalchmei, going to the castle of King Peleur
(Pryderi), finds it encircled by a great water, while Peredur,
approaching the same place, sees it turning with greater speed than the
swiftest wind. Moreover, archers on the walls shoot so vigorously that
no armour can resist their shafts, which explains how it happened that,
of those that went with Arthur, “except seven, none returned from Caer
Sidi”.[513]
It is noticeable that Arthur himself never attempts the quest of the
Grail, though it was he who had achieved its pagan original. We find in
Malory four competitors for the mantle of Arthur—Sir Pelleas,[514] Sir
Bors, Sir Percivale, and Sir Galahad.[515] The first of these may be put
out of court at once, Sir Pelleas, who, being himself Pelles, or Pwyll,
the keeper of it, could have had no reason for such exertions. At the
second we may look doubtfully; for Sir Bors is no other than Emrys, or
Myrddin,[516] and, casting back to the earlier British mythology, we do
not find the sky-god personally active in securing boons by force or
craft from the underworld. The other two have better claims—Sir
Percivale and Sir Galahad. “Sir Percivale” is the Norman-French name for
Peredur,[517] the hero of a story in the Red Book of Hergest[518] which
gives the oldest form of a Grail quest we have. It is anterior to the
Norman romances, and forms almost a connecting-link between tales of
mythology and of chivalry. Peredur, or Sir Percivale, therefore, is the
oldest, most primitive, of Grail seekers. On the other hand, Sir Galahad
is the latest and youngest. But there is reason to believe that Galahad,
in Welsh “Gwalchaved”, the “Falcon of Summer”, is the same solar hero as
Gawain, in Welsh “Gwalchmei”, the “Falcon of May”.[519] Both are made,
in the story of “Kulhwch and Olwen”, sons of the same mother, Gwyar. Sir
Gawain himself is, in one Arthurian romance, the achiever of the
Grail.[520] It is needless to attempt to choose between these two. Both
have the attributes of sun-gods. Gwalchmei, the successor of Lleu Llaw
Gyffes, and Peredur Paladrhir, that is to say, the “Spearman with the
Long Shaft”,[521] may be allowed to claim equal honours. What is
important is that the quest of the Grail, once the chief treasure of
Hades, is still accomplished by one who takes in later legend the place
of Lieu Llaw Gyffes and Lugh Lamhfada in the earlier British and Gaelic
myths as a long-armed solar deity victorious in his strife against the
Powers of Darkness.
-----
Footnote 452:
Tennyson’s _Idylls of the King_; _Guinevere_.
Footnote 453:
_Ibid._ To the Queen.
Footnote 454:
_Morte Darthur_, Book I, chap. X.
Footnote 455:
Gresholm Island, the scene of “The Entertaining of the Noble Head”.
Footnote 456:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XX, chap. VIII.
Footnote 457:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. III.
Footnote 458:
_Morte Darthur_, Book I, chap. VIII.
Footnote 459:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. XVI.
Footnote 460:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. II.
Footnote 461:
_Ibid._, Book IV, chap. IV.
Footnote 462:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. XXIV.
Footnote 463:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. II.
Footnote 464:
_Ibid._, Book II, chap. XVIII.
Footnote 465:
_Ibid._, Book V, chap. II; Book VIII, chap. IV; Book XIX, chap. XI.
Footnote 466:
_Ibid._, Book XI, chap. II.
Footnote 467:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XI, chap. II.
Footnote 468:
_Ibid._, Book XVII, chap. V.
Footnote 469:
_Ibid._, Book XI, chap. II.
Footnote 470:
_Ibid._, Book XII, chap. V.
Footnote 471:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 283.
Footnote 472:
_Morte Darthur_, Book IV, chap. XXIII.
Footnote 473:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 284 and note.
Footnote 474:
The subject is treated at length by Professor Rhys in his _Arthurian
Legend_, chap. XII—“Pwyll and Pelles”.
Footnote 475:
_Morte Darthur_, Book II, chap. XV.
Footnote 476:
_Morte Darthur_, Book I, chap. XII.
Footnote 477:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. XV.
Footnote 478:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. IX.
Footnote 479:
_Ibid._, Book XIII, chap. XII.
Footnote 480:
_Ibid._, Book XIX, chap. XI.
Footnote 481:
_Ibid._, Book XIX, chap. II.
Footnote 482:
_Ibid._, Book XIII, chap. X.
Footnote 483:
_Ibid._, Book XIV, chap. IV.
Footnote 484:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XIV, chap. IV.
Footnote 485:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 11.
Footnote 486:
_Op. cit._, pp. 21-22.
Footnote 487:
_Morte Darthur_, Book IV, chap. XVIII.
Footnote 488:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. VIII.
Footnote 489:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 23.
Footnote 490:
_Morte Darthur_, Book IV, chap. I.
Footnote 491:
See chap. XVII—“The Adventures of the Gods of Hades”.
Footnote 492:
_Morte Darthur_, Book IV, chap. I.
Footnote 493:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. II.
Footnote 494:
_Ibid._, Book III, chap. XV.
Footnote 495:
Whose story is told by Tennyson in the _Idylls_, and by Malory in Book
XVIII of the _Morte Darthur_.
Footnote 496:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XI, chaps. II and III.
Footnote 497:
See his _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_.
Footnote 498:
See chap. XXI—“The Mythological ‘Coming of Arthur’”.
Footnote 499:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XIX, chaps. I-IX.
Footnote 500:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XVII, chap. XX.
Footnote 501:
_Ibid._, Book II, chap. XVI; Book XI, chap. XIV.
Footnote 502:
See chap. V—“The Gods of the Gaels”.
Footnote 503:
See chap. XVIII—“The Wooing of Branwen and the Beheading of Brân”.
Footnote 504:
See chap. XXI—“The Mythological ‘Coming of Arthur’”.
Footnote 505:
See chap. XII—“The Irish Iliad”.
Footnote 506:
Chap. XXI—“The Mythological ‘Coming of Arthur’”.
Footnote 507:
Chap. XXI—“The Mythological ‘Coming of Arthur’”.
Footnote 508:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 305.
Footnote 509:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XI, chaps. II and IV.
Footnote 510:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XVI, chap. V.
Footnote 511:
_Ibid._, Book XI, chap. XIV; Book XII, chap. IV; Book XIII, chap.
XVIII.
Footnote 512:
Not mentioned by Malory, but stated in the romance called _Seint
Greal_.
Footnote 513:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 276-277; 302.
Footnote 514:
_Morte Darthur_, Book IV, chap. XXIX.
Footnote 515:
_Ibid._, Book XVII, chap. XX, in which Sir Bors, Sir Percivale, and
Sir Galahad are all fed from the Sangreal.
Footnote 516:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 162.
Footnote 517:
_Ibid._, p. 133.
Footnote 518:
Translated by Lady Guest in her _Mabinogion_, under the title of
_Peredur, the Son of Evrawc_.
Footnote 519:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 169. But see whole of chap. VIII—“Galahad
and Gwalchaved”.
Footnote 520:
The German romance _Diu Krône_, by Heinrich von dem Tûrlin.
Footnote 521:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 71.
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