Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/219

 Rh versed in Christian and heathen lore, and on the other hand not much given to invent out of their own brains.

I do not know whether anybody has already pointed this out, or has brought in connection with it the legend, which occurs to me as an almost direct source for that portion of the romances of the Grail.

It is besides localised in Jerusalem, and is directly connected with that very same church on Mount Sion of which the other stone legends speak. I will deal now with this legend before concluding this, necessarily short, attempt to solve the question of the origin of the Grail. I have had to confine myself in many cases merely to indicating in a few words what required a special monograph, and I may return at another time to the study of those details at greater length.

{{center|{To be concluded.)}} 

REMARKS UPON THE FOREGOING PAPER.

By.

According to Dr. Gaster, to explain the origin of the Grail legends we must “look for one central tale, containing a sufficient number of incidents, complete in itself. . . . it must contain the most important incidents, and that of the Grail as one of them” (supra, pp. 53-54). He finds this tale in a particular episode of the Alexander legend (pp. 59-63). Herein he makes no new discovery. In 1850, Weismann, in his edition of Lamprecht’s Alexander, commented as follows upon the same episode: “This description shows marked similarity with that of the Grail in mediæval texts. As the legend has its origin in the East, and may have taken shape in the