Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/212

190 assumed wanderings from East to West exists in Byzantine literature. The existence of a fully-formed Eastern Grail legend is postulated, and as it now only exists in the West, nay, only in a particular area of the West, it must have reached this area per saltum without in the least affecting either of the two chief mediæval intermediaries between East and West: the Græco-Christian literature of Byzantium, the Arabo-Jewish literature of Eastern and Southern Europe. Does not this fact suffice to discredit the hypothesis? Assume, for argument's sake, the validity of every parallel adduced, assume the existence of a Grail legend among populations speaking various dialects of Syriac and Hebrew, what might we reasonably expect to find? If not Syro-Jewish versions of the legend (their disappearance cannot excite wonder in view of the vast social and political changes that have taken place in the Syro-Palestinian area), at least mediæval Hebrew and mediæval Byzantine versions, which, in their turn, would affect primarily and most markedly those literatures with which Byzantium and mediæval Jewry stood in nearest contact, the literatures of Eastern and Southern Europe. Yet no trace of a Grail legend, as such, exists in Slavdom, and, alike in Provence, Spain, and Italy, it is a late comer obviously introduced from North France. Again, why, if originally Eastern imported into the West, should it be unknown to Germany save as an acknowledged loan from France?

In the Middle Ages transference of a legendary theme from one speech and culture area to another per saltum is, I venture to urge, unlikely in the last degree. The mode of transmission would be undulatory, and if, in presence of alleged influence of one body of literature upon another, we find no intermediary stages or links, then doubt as to the influence is justified. At the present date transference of this kind is, I admit, possible; we can conceive a traveller bringing back with him to Europe a romantic cycle from Japan or New Zealand which he makes known for the first time. Note, however, that now, when this is possible, it remains without effect. Macpherson's pseudo-Ossian, Longfellow's adaptation of Red Indian sagas, have thus been transferred from their own to alien speech and culture areas, but they have exercised absolutely no seminal influence. In any case, whether in the Middle Ages such transference be, as I hold, impossible, I can certainly recall no single instance of an imported Eastern theme affecting only one section of Western mediæval literature.