Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/566

 502 Reviews.

hero in the story of the Grail, and the story came first to Normans on the Welsh border through the agency of Bleheris, the authority used in Wauchier's tale of Gawain. Bleheris is identified with the Bledhericus of Giraldus Cambrensis (first half of the twelfth century). Nothing of this is certain, but the theory agrees with the known facts, and the point of view puts the later versions in a right perspective.

Then the story, at first non-Christian, "was definitely Christianized " ; and, later, Perceval took the place of Gawain as the hero. Perceval " seems at this stage to have . . . taken over the Gawain form much as it stood" (p. 278).

The next stage is the most important of all for the history of poetry ; it is the definite beginning of the versions both of Chretien and of Wolfram ; the blending of the original adven- tures of Perceval with the Grail adventures which at first had no place in his story. Here Miss Weston distinguishes, — and this is one of the best examples of her careful work, — between a blending in which the Grail is Christian, represented in Ferlesvaus, and another (followed by Chretien de Troyes) where it is not.

Then comes Robert de Borron. " In the last decade of the [12th] century Robert de Borron boldly undertook to rewrite the story, with the double (more correctly the successive) objects of conforming the symbolism to that of Eucharistic doctrine, and of incorporating the whole in a pseudo-historic account of Arthur's reign" (p. 279).

"Thus to Borron's initiative we owe not only the Quesfe, but the general cyclic form of later Arthurian Romance" (p. 280).

The successive positions are explained, with the evidences, in a book which becomes clearer, and in its main historical lines more satisfactory, the more it is examined.

The parts of it most open to challenge are those that would explain the Grail by means of occult science which the author herself does not profess to understand and with regard to which she has given no proofs. She plays lightly with words like " Mysteries " and " Mystic," showing no knowledge of the fact that "Mysticism" has many different meanings. She speaks of Erigena as if he were a Rosicrucian. " Esoteric Christianity,