Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/669

Rh ROMANCE 645 ancient popular Gospel of Nicodemus), according to which Joseph of Arimathea brought Christianity to Britain in the time of Vespasian. Then Robert de Borron continued his story in another work which represented the quest or re- discovery of the Grail in Avalon, Brittany, or Britain, by Perceval, the grand-nephew of Joseph of Arimathea ; and Walter Map appropriated so much of De Borron's Histoire and Queste as suited him, working it up in a continuation of his story on Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, whilst adding to and altering the incidents of the narrative very considerably. Finally, Helie de Borron (about 1190) re- wrote the Tristan in something like its existent form, weaving it by enlargement into connexion with the other tales, and probably soon after 1200 united for the first time in one enormous and unharmonized corpus the full set of Arthurian stories. One reason why we cannot assign this first combination to a later date (as those do who hold the work of Rusticien of Pisa to have been something more than a mere compression) is that the Guiron, written by Helie de Borron (probably soon after 1200), is not in- corporated in the Morte Arthur, which it would assuredly have been if Rusticien (about 1270-75) had been employed to unite a number of detached stories rather than to re-edit an already existing compilation. Of Helie de Borron we only know that he was a relative of Robert ; that he was the virtual author of the Bret or Tristan, in which he incorporated the substance of tales written by Luc de Gast and Gasse li Blont ; that he also wrote Palamedes in two parts (Meliadus and Guiron le Courtois) and that his work was done at the request of a king of England, alleged to have been Henry II. or Henry III. Of the other early writers of Arthurian stories the chief were the trouvere Chrestien de Troyes (about 1180-90), who com- posed a poem upon an episode of Map's Lancelot story, and another upon the Perceval (in which he may have combined Robert de Borron and Map), and Guyot de Provins (about 1190-95), who wrote a romance of Perceval, now lost, and only known through the German translation of Wolfram von Eschenbach (about 1205). As for the Welsh stories in the Mabinogion and the Welsh Seint Greal, there is really no evidence to show their anteriority to the English Morte Arthur, except the fact that two of the tales (Geraint and the Lady of the Fountain) are of similar substance to the poems of Chrestien de Troyes, Erec et Enide and Le Chevalier au Lyon, narratives of Arthurian personages but not embodied in the French prose romances. Even the Welsh chronicles which are supposed to have furnished the original text of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia have been ascertained to be merely translations from the Latin version. It is a safe con- clusion to say that anything in Welsh literature corre- sponding with portions or incidents of the French romances was simply a translation made in the 13th or 14th century from a French original. This refers, of course, to what is now extant, for there can be little question that Breton and Cymric legend furnished the earlier romancists with names and legends in plenty. Returning to the consideration of names, it is obvious that when Lawnselot dy Lak appears in Welsh it is simply a corruption of the Franco-English Lancelot, and that the Cymric writer had no idea of its above-suggested origin in a British lanc-e-loc (a conjecture which is fortified by the pleonasm of du-lak or del-laJc) or in a French I'ancillet. Consequently the original Lancelot story has left no trace in purely Welsh literature. With Perceval we may think differently ; the Welsh name Pere- dur, under which he is known, is a sufficient warrant for supposing that portions of the Welsh tale are at least as ancient as Walter Map. The very form Pered-ur, like that of Arth-ur, is archaic, and with the latter it requires a different interpretation from that which Welsh scholars have given it. Here it may be observed that the terminal ur, whatever may have been its true sense, is remarkable for its frequent use in the names of Pictish princes. As for Perceval, wherever Robert de Borron got the name (see below), Walter Map, in adopting it for the hero of the story that belongs to Peredur, made the two names thenceforward identical. Analysis of the Arthurian Romances. I. II. Arthur and the Round Table had no separate romance, or else it has perished. It exists now substantially as part of Lancelot (III.). I. Merlin. Most of his story appears in Geoffrey of Monmoutli Merlin, and in Wace, from whom it was probably worked up into a French poem (or prose work) by Robert de Borron about 1160-70. The French prose composition, embracing his life and, as an appendix, his prophecies (Latin by Geoffrey), was apparently written about 1200 (by Helie de Borron) in the form in which it exists in certain MSS., and nearly as it appears in printed books. Merlin, the son of an incubus, rescued at his birth by sudden baptism from the malignant destiny for which his diabolical parent had begotten him, is always described as a magician. He is called by the Welsh Myrddin, a form which betrays the posteriority of the existing Cambrian legends not only to the date of Geoffrey but also to the French romances ; in one of the earliest incidents of his story, however, he himself gives his name as Ambrosius. 1 He is repre- sented as living apparently at the time of the Saxon invasion of England. He was not a friend of Vortigern ; this king, whom we know from English sources to have been attached more to the Saxons than to his countrymen, was represented in the old Merlin story as a usurper reigning in an interval between Moines, son of Constans, and the two brothers of Moines, Uter and Pendragou. After the successive deaths of Vortigern and Pendragon (on whose fall Uter adds his brother's name to his own) Merlin continues to be the friend and counsellor of King Uter Pendragon. In that capacity he helps the king to assume the shape of Gorlais, duke of Tintagel, and thereby to beget Arthur upon the Duchess Yguerne. (The name Pendragon and the action remind us of the fabulous birth of Alexander the Great ; the name Uter, in connexion with the go-between Merlin, and the probable Celtic meaning of Yguerne remind us of Jupiter, Mercury, and Alcmena. ) The result is the birth of a hero who resembles both Hercules and Alexander. He grows up and is held to be merely the son of Gorlais, in spite of the fact that he was born after Yguerne (already a widow) had married Uter Pendragon ; but he proves his right to royal place after the king's death by performing some extraordinary feats. In these he has Merlin's aid, as well as in the conduct of his sub- sequent wars with the Gauls and the Saxons. Merlin has a lover or mistress in Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, to whom in an un- lucky moment (as Samson to Delilah) he betrays a certain spell. She uses it to try her power, without having learned the converse charm, and poor Merlin vanishes into the midst of a thornbush, whence his voice can be heard ; but he is seen no more. Here the romance ends, one of the most interesting, as well as one of the best -constructed and most simply told of the Arthurian series. The name and deeds of the enchanter have found their way into most modern literatures. One of Merlin's actions was to institute a round table at Carduel, at which room was made for King Arthur and fifty of his nobles, with a vacant place for the Holy Grail. This was a ceremony to be performed once every year, and it was on the first of these occasions that Gorlais brought his wife Yguerne with him to court, and that King Arthur fell in love with her (as David with Bathsheba). This circumstance, although of later date than the original Merlin, leads us to the next romance in the cycle. IV. 1. The Holy Grail. The Grail romance began with Borron's Holy poem (or prose narrative) on Joseph of Arimathea. An old tradi- Grail. tion maintained that Joseph of Arimathea (confounded in some respects with the centurion at the crucifixion and with Josephus the historian) brought the gospel to Britain or to Gaul in the first century of oiir era. The French romance on this subject, whichever of its existent early forms in verse and prose was the earlier, relates the story thus : Pilate allowed Joseph to take down the body of Christ from the cross, and gave Him also son vaisseul, by which was evidently meant the chalice of His passion, or the cup used at the Last Supper. Of all the numerous interpretations suggested for the word "grail" or "graal" the only tenable one is that of "cup," which plainly refers to the words "son vaisseuL" In that cup Joseph collected the precious blood of his Saviour. _ He loses it when put in prison by the Jews, but it is restored to him in 1 When we remember that the Ambrosius Aurelius of Gildas was probably the Arthur of Nennius and the romances, and that Merlin was called Ambrosius Merlinus, we are drawn to believe in the Romano- Briton origin of the stories, and to conclude that " Arthur " and " Mer- lin " are two explicative or distinguishing epithets attached to the older names.