Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/392

 58 Reviews. evidence, the later we place Chrétien's poem the less probability is there of its being the source of such a version as Wolfram has preserved.

I may note here that it is somewhat strange that though Herr Wechssler admits the force of the Angevin allusions in the Parzival as reflections of real facts of Angevin history and tradition, even going so far as to note the part played by the two brothers Theobald and Stephen of Blois as opponents of the Empress Matilda and her son, he gives no hint that all this is not new, but was carefully and fully worked out by me in the appendices to my translation of the Parzival published in 1894. He knows the book, for he refers to it elsewhere, and includes it in the bibliography at the end; also he refers over and over again to Hertz on pages where that writer quotes the English Parzival. It would have been more courteous if he had acknowledged what had already been done in this field.

With regard to the relation between Chrétien and Wolfram, there is one point which I touched upon in the Legend of Sir Gaivain, and which appears to me to be of wider interest in the criticism of the cycle as a whole than even in its special connection with these two writers — the existence in the Perceval romances of a female recluse relative of the hero. Chrétien knows nothing of such a character. Wolfram gives him a cousin, Sigune, who seeks the religious life from grief at the death of her lover. The Queste gives him an aunt who is undoubtedly originally the same as the cousin (cf. the interview in the Queste, and that in Book ix. of the Parzival), and a sister of devout life. The prose Perceval li Gallois, the Didot Perceval, and two of Chrétien's continuators, Gautier and Gerbert, know of a sister. Peredur has no sister, but the maiden with the slain knight, elsewhere his cousin, is here his foster-sister.

Now, certainly, judging from Aryan parallels, Perceval should have neither brother nor sister, but be an only child; and it is noticeable that it is the stories in which he alone is the hero, Galahad unknown, and the Grail of uncertain character, which conform most closely to this primitive type. In Parzival he is the only child; in Chrétien and the Peredur the only surviving — and those dead were all brothers. Whereas, the romances in which the Christian character of the talisman is most fully developed, i.e. the prose romances, whether Perceval be still the