Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/360

 346 The European Sky -God.

Wolfram wrote his Parzival early in the thirteenth century and quotes as his source Kyot the Proven^al.^ Kyot and Chretien de Troyes appear to have had a common source in a book given to the latter by Philip, Count of Flanders, and cited by him in the prologue to his Co7ite del Graal\ a fragment of this common source is perhaps still extant.'-^ It is, therefore, practically certain that such a name as Gramoflanz goes back to a Romance (? Breton) original ; and that, in seeking to determine its earliest form, we must set side by side the variants of Wolfram and Chretien : —

Wolfram : Gramoflanz, Graviovlanz?

Chretien : Giiiroinelans, li guiroinelans, li Giiiremelanz,

li grionielans. Cp. Heinrich von dem Tiirlin {Diu

Krone) : Giremelanz.^

In view of these variants I would suggest that the name was originally *Ginramela7ts, representing a Latin visci-^ramell- anus, which in Old French would become successively vis-ramel-ans, gids-raniel-ans, gui-ramel-ans^ On this showing Wolfram has preserved the original a as against Chretien's or e, though Chretien's forms are otherwise more primitive than Wolfram's : yet even in the scarcely recognisable Gramoflanz the ending (cp. pflanze^ shows that the name suggested to Wolfram some connexion with

1 lb. xvi. 663 ff.

^Miss J. L. Weston The Legend of Sir Perceval London 1906 i. i, 73, 93, 319, 325-

' K. Bartsch in Index to his ed. of Wolfram's Parzival.


 * Id. GertJtanische SitidienWien 1875 ii. '^i.

'^ Old French used both vis and gtiis for ' mistletoe ' (Mod. Fr. gui). Gtiis, as I learn from my friend Dr. P. Giles, was probably a borrowed word (? from Breton), which superseded the Old French vis. The Latin *ramellus appears in Old French ramel, 'a branch,' Provencal ramels, * a bush,' Modern French ra?/ieau, ' a branch. ' See A. 'Stxa.chti An Etymological Dictionary of the French Language ed. 3 Oxford 1882 s. vv, 'gui,' 'rameau,' G. Korting Lateinisch-romanisches Worterbuch ed. 2 Paderborn 1901 nos. 7745, 10227.