Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/210

 202 If we follow up closely the difterent versions, we can easily observe the increase of the properties assigned to the Grail, and through the Grail to the Grail-keeper and Grail-seeker. We can see how the author of each new version tried to outdo his predecessor, and thus in time a complete history of the Grail appears, of which nothing was known before.

The connection, further, with Britain is one of the latest developments, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the primitive history of the Grail, with which it became later connected. I must leave that point untouched, as I wish to go straight to the question of the Grail itself. I have already stated, at the beginning, that the temple of the Grail in the poem is the temple of Jerusalem, and the Grail in its double character a certain sacred stone in the Holy place.

The change from the temple of the sun to a Christian church is only natural and quite in accordance with the spirit of the time. Besides, the legend of Prester John with his palace-church paved the way for the transition, and certainly none was better known or more renowned than that of Jerusalem, of which numerous legends were circulated by pilgrims from the Holy Land swarming through Europe, not to speak of the crusades and the numerous expeditions to Palestine. We can trace those legends, which I shall mention later on more fully, through a great number of Christian writers, ranging from the twelfth century back to the third. From such legends is derived also the double character assigned to the Grail, that of a holy cup or vessel, with an eucharistical symbolism, and that of a sacred stone existing from the creation of the world, and carried about by the angels of heaven. Both are derived from a more primitive notion, viz., from the legfends connected with a sacred stone which served as an altar in that very church. In this peculiar character we can trace it back to the first century, and, perhaps, to an earlier tradition preserved by Jewish writers.