Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail Part 30

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

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

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

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

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

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

[97] I at one time thought that the prohibition to reveal the "secret words," which is such an important element in Robert de Borron's version, might be referred to the same myth-root as the instances in the text.

There is little or no evidence to sustain such a hazardous hypothesis.

Nevertheless it is worth while drawing attention in this place to that prohibition, for which I can offer no adequate explanation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

149.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[124] In Chrestien the part of the Magician Lord is little insisted upon.

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

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

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

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

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

[129] Grimm, Vol. III., p. 9 (note to Marchen von einem der auszog das Furchten zu lernen), gives a number of variants. It should be noted that in this story there is the same mixture of incidents of the Magic Castle and Haunted Castle forms as in the romances. Moreover, one of the trials to which the hero's courage is subjected is the bringing into the room of a coffin in which lies a dead man, just as in Gawain's visit to the Grail Castle. Again, as Grimm notes, but mistakenly refers to Perceval instead of to Gawain, the hero has to undergo the adventures of the magic bed, which, when he lays himself down in it, dashes violently about through the castle and finally turns topsy turvy. In connection with this story, and with the whole series of mythical conceptions noted in the Grail romances, Chapter x.x.xII. of the Deutsche Mythologie deserves careful study. Grimm compares Conduiramur's (Blanchefleur's) nightly visit to Percival's chamber to the appearance at the bedside of the delivering hero of that white maiden, who is so frequently figured as the inmate of the Haunted Castle. As niece of the Lord of the Grail Castle, Blanchefleur is also a denizen of the otherworld, but I hardly think that the episode of Perceval's delivering her from her enemies can be looked upon as a version of the removal of the spells of the Haunted Castle. In a recent number of the Revue des Traditions Populaires (III., p. 103), there is a good Breton version of the Bespelled Castle sunk under the waves. A fair princess is therein held captive; once a year the waves part and permit access, and he who is bold enough to seize the right moment wins princess and castle, which are restored to earth.

[130] Whether it be the Castle of the Fisher King, _i.e._, the Castle of the Perceval Quest; or the Magic Castle, _i.e._, the Castle of the Gawain Quest.

[131] For fuller information about this mysterious fish, see Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 553-54.

[132] In an already quoted tale of Campbell's (LVIII., the Rider of Grianaig) allusion is made to the "black fisherman working at his tricks."

Campbell remarks that a similar character appears in other tales. Can this wizard fisher be brought into contact with the Rich Fisher of Pseudo-Chrestien (_supra_, p. 8), who knew much of black art, and could change his semblance a hundred times?

[133] Complete text, edited by Kuno Meyer, Revue Celt., Vol. V. Major portion of text with English translation by Dr. J. O'Donovan, Oss. Soc., Vol. IV. The tract as a whole is only known to us from a fifteenth century MS.; but the earlier portion of it appears in the L.n.H., in a strongly euhemerised form, only such incidents being admitted as could be presented historically, and these being divested of all supernatural character. See my paper, "Folk-Lore Record," Vol. IV., for a discussion of the genuine and early character of the tract.

[134] A reason for this concealment may be found in the idea, so frequently met with in a certain stage of human development, that the name is an essential portion of the personality, and must not be mentioned, especially to possible enemies or to beings possessed of magical powers, lest they should make hurtful use of it.

[135] _Cf._ the whole of the Book of Rights for an exemplification of the way in which the pre-Christian Irishman was hedged and bound and fettered by this amazingly complicated system of what he might and what he might not do.

[136] They offer him dog's-flesh cooked on rowan spits, and, it has been conjectured that the _gess_ has a totemistic basis, Culann's Hound (Cuchulainn) being forbidden to partake of the flesh of his totem.

[137] It is only within the last 100 years that our knowledge of savage and semi-savage races has furnished us with a parallel to the "geasa" in the "taboo" of the Polynesian. I am not advancing too much in the statement that this inst.i.tution, although traces of it exist among all Aryan races, had not the same importance among any as among the Irish Gael. It is another proof of the primitive character of Irish social life, a character which may, perhaps, be ascribed to the a.s.similation by the invading Celts of the beliefs and practices of much ruder races.