Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/217

 Rh In connection with the preceding, I will add now the interpretation of another name, Corbenic, not infrequent in the Grail romances, a name of some importance. According to Queste, Incident 13 (Nutt, p. 73), Castle Corbenic is the place wherein the maimed king dwells; further, Incident 76 (p. 50) the same is again mentioned as the Castle of Peleur, or the Maimed King, i.e., the resting-place of the Grail. In the Grand St. Graal, Incident 51 (p. 63) we read: "Here is the resting-place of the Holy Grail, a lordly castle is built for it hight Corbenic, which is Chaldee, and signifies 'holy vessel'."

This interpretation is only half true, in so far as the word Corbenic can be traced to a Hebrew or Chaldee word Corbana, the meaning of which is, offering, sacrifice, and not that which is assigned to it by the author of the Grand St. Graal, that of holy vessel.

This explanation agrees perfectly with the identification of the Grail with the Altar-stone, the place of sacrifices, mystical, symbolical or material.

Starting from the Slavonic, especially Russian legends, about the mysterious Altar-stone, which he brought in connection with the Grail, Prof Wesselofsky has tried to prove its identity with that stone of the Christian Church of Zion mentioned by the pilgrims quoted above. The Jewish legends, however, which I have been able to add, have enabled me to trace that identity further, and to furnish those links which were missing, and to show the last sources to whom those Christian legends owed their origin. The name "Alatyr", which remained unexplained, is nothing else but the Altar-stone, as I have proved it to be.

The same causes, i.e., the same Palestinian legends, had the same result, viz., to produce an ideal stone both for the East and the West of Europe, but it remained to the genius of the different trouveurs, or Kaleki perehojie, to develop that idea according to the skill and perfection possible in those two regions. The one introduced it into the famous legend of Alexander, in order to substitute it