Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/208

 200 a white stag led by four lions; these come to a hermitage, and hear mass, the stag becomes a man and sits on the altar; the lions become a man, an eagle, a lion, and an ox, all winged." There is not the slightest doubt as to who is represented here under the guise of a stag: it is Christ with the four Apostles, each in that form in which they have been represented by art.

This symbolism is not the author of the Queste's own invention. We meet it more than once in the "Chansons de Geste" (V. P. Rajna. Le origini dell' epopea francese, Florence, 1884, p. 252 and p. 706 ff). It can be traced even to a much older source, viz., the famous Life of St. Eustachius Placida, so closely resembling the frame work of a romance, that it has indeed become a popular tale, and it has been incorporated into the Gesta Romanorum, ed. Oesterley (ch. 110), and Legenda aurea of Jacobus à Voragine. This hero-saint is drawn away from his companions by the appearance of a stag, whom he pursues, and which turns out afterwards to be Christ himself. The stag has thus a symbolical meaning, and is of purely Christian origin.

The greatest modification in the tale, however, is that wrought in the character and attributes of the Holy Grail. I proceed, therefore, to investigate this second most important element of the legend.

There is, first, the question whence the name? What is the meaning of it? This question is the more necessary, as the oldest writers themselves do not know its exact meaning and have recourse to explanations which in the best case are mere plays upon the word. Paulin Paris, in his "Romans de la Table Ronde", suggests that the name Grail is nothing else but a modification of the Latin Graduale, the name of a book used in the liturgy of the church, wherein the tale was written down. The romances themselves afford examples enough to connect the tale with books preserved in the Church; the introduction to the Grand St. Graal lets the book come down directly from heaven.