Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/394

360 Wechssler seems rather divided between two theories (which do not fit very well with each other): (a) distrust of the sources of the legend; (b) ultra-reverence for the Grail itself, for which writers had claimed such miraculous powers. Here the writer has completely overshot his mark and supplied us with his own refutation. Was the vessel which contained the Holy Blood more sacred than the Blood Itself? Did not, in fact, its sanctity depend on the use to which it had been put? Yet drops of that Holy Blood were brought to Europe. (Or, to speak more accurately. Crusaders believed they had brought such.) Has Herr Wechssler never been to Bruges? Nor is Bruges the only city to boast such a relic.

Is not the real reason to be found in the fact that at the period of the general outburst of zeal and enthusiasm which led to the first Crusades there was no such story in existence? That the legend of the Grail as a purely Christian talisman only took shape at the end of the twelfth century, when political jealousies and personal ambition had already obscured the fervour of Christian zeal and love? The Crusaders found the Lance, because the canonical gospels (not the spurious, which Herr Wechssler apparently confuses with them, p. 12) had made all minds familiar with such a weapon, and prepared the way for its "Invention." They did not find the Grail, because neither history nor tradition had told them anything about it.

The table appended to the end of the book, setting forth the six-fold character of the Grail as a Christian relic, is interesting, and will be useful; but it will need caution in using, for certainly in the case of Wolfram the text does not support Herr Wechssler's interpretation.

The latter part of the book, the discussion of Wagner's Parsifal, stands outside the range of criticism of the Grail cycle. It is both interesting and suggestive. Whether it be quite in accordance with the fact is another thing; but the "inner meaning" of the poet-musician is a field in which we can all air our pet theories and interpretations without the fear of transgressing the rules and bounds of serious scholarship. On one point at least I am glad to be in hearty accord with Herr Wechssler—in unstinted admiration of the great composer's last, and greatest, work.

For the rest, I wish I could have welcomed the book as a valuable and solid contribution to the criticism of an obscure and