Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/139

Rh first, to induce through a sacrificial feast the fructification of nature; secondly, to initiate the human soul into the secret of life by bringing it, as it were, into relationship with the life deity" (p. 384).

He then briefly reviews certain particulars of the Eleusinian ritual, the Egyptian Osiris myth, the Adonis and Attis cults, and the Mithraic worship. He has little difficulty in establishing the "life-force" element in all these bodies of practice and doctrine, and he brings out isolated parallelisms with the Grail romances. But I fear he is preaching solely to the converted when, after asserting that "what remains of the Grail romances when stripped of the Perceval Galahad quest is clearly a vegetation ceremony," he proceeds,—"it is hardly necessary to repeat here the agreements upon which the argument rests; for the most part they are self-evident." In the first place, I do not understand the words I have underlined. The significance of the Quest may, as stated above (supra, p. 109), have been altered in the mediaeval romances; none the less is it an essential portion of the legend. Further, I think that Dr. Nitze exaggerates the "self-evidence" of the agreements upon which his argument rests. For the most part they are of too slight and general a character to carry conviction. The most noticeable and cogent had already been instanced by Miss Weston, and, although the mass of further "agreements" adduced by Dr. Nitze possesses a cumulative weight, the pertinency of each individual item often seems questionable. I doubt if the Mysteries evidence in itself can be held to substantiate the statement, "The Holy Grail, by the mediaeval romancers often conceived of in terms of a quest, is au fond an initiation, the purpose of which is to ensure the life of the vegetation spirit, always in danger of extinction, and to admit the "qualified" mortal into its mystery," although in consideration of the entire body of evidence concerning the Grail legend I am prepared to accept the contention. But Dr. Nitze seems to me to have done more to establish it by his acute analysis of the original import of the Fisher King's rôle than by the new facts he brings forward.

Dr. Nitze has thrown new light upon that enigmatic character the Fisher King's father. To borrow an illustration from history,