Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/142

120 tradition, I believe his method of arriving at the proximate source to be seriously mistaken.

little study on a theme, the critical problems of which have not yet been thoroughly investigated, is interesting, but misnamed. There are not two Knights of the Swan. Lohengrin is simply Helyas, in a more mythical setting, and divested of his claims to historic reality. As a brief introduction to the study of an interesting problem in romance literature, the book will be useful, and the information as to the whereabouts, and contents, of the Mss. is of decided value, but the author's excursions into the field of literary criticism are not happy. There can be no doubt that Wolfram found the connection of the Swan Knight with Perceval in his source, of which Gerbert's citation is a brief summary. The fact that Gerbert also treats the story as a 'post-scriptum,' introducing it after Perceval's reunion with the lady of his love, and at what he states definitely to be the conclusion of the "vraie estoire" is too significant to be ignored. When we find two writers agreeing, not only in the combination of two distinctly independent stories, but in the manner, and that a particularly awkward one, of that combination, it is obvious that there is a connection of some sort between them. Wolfram is certainly the earlier writer, but as certainly there is no trace in French literature of a knowledge of Wolfram's poem, and Gerbert has the earlier version of the story. The only reasonable conclusion is that both drew from the same original source. That Gerbert does at this point show a change of source is undeniable. Up to this moment his poem shows distinct parallels with the Chretien-Wolfram form of the story; from this point on the parallels are with the more ecclesiastical versions, i.e. Perlesvaus, the Quest, and Grand-Saint-Graal. At what moment, and under whose direction, the Swan Knight passed into the mystical cycle of the Grail, we do not know, nor do we