Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/66

 58 ments, and watches two youths playing at chess. Towards night the hall fills with knights and dames; a youth enters, bearing a sword, which he lays before the old man. . . . Then enter two damsels, bearing lights, followed by two knights, with a spear, and two more damsels, with a toblier of gold and jewels. After them comes the fairest woman ever God created, and with her a maiden weeping. The spear is laid on the table, by it the 'toblier', wherein are three drops of blood. In the box borne by the fair lady is a piece of bread, one-third part of which she breaks off and gives to the old man. Gawain, recognising in her Gansguoter's sister, stays no longer, but asks what these wonders mean. Straightway knights and dames, all with mighty shout, leap from table, and great joy arises. The old man says what he has seen is the Grail; none saw it before save Parzival, and he asked not. By his question Gawain has delivered from long waiting and suffering both those which are dead and those which live. The old man himself and his companions are really dead, though they seem it not, but the lady and her damsels are living; for their unstained womanhood God has granted them to have the Grail, and therewith yearly to feed the old man."

So in all the versions it is a magnificent castle, wherein the one constantly-recurring figure is that of an old, sick or dead man, surrounded by jewels, plates or dishes of gold, and a mysterious thing, a cup with blood, or a box with bread, and a bloody lance. Only in Wolfram is it a mysterious rock or a jewel upon which a dove lays once a year a holy wafer. The hero asks, or omits to ask, and upon that action the whole tale turns. It is not, however, clear from the beginning what kind of task the hero has to achieve, nor is it more clear afterwards when he has achieved it. This portion seems not to be in the original, as not one version can clearly account for it. The original tale must have been also quite obscure on this point, thus affording free scope to the poet to interpret and to use it according to his own fancy. The less definite the task