Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/144

 132 I should be inclined to look for it on the Welsh coast, but Dr. Brugger would place it in Scotland.

I do not think the identification of Corbenic with Glastonbury Tor can be maintained. In the first place, the correct form of the name has not yet been determined; it is written Corbenic, Corberic, or Carbonek. Secondly, it only occurs in the final, cyclic, redaction, where it seems to have been introduced from the Grand Saint Graal, which says that the name is Chaldaean. It may quite well have come from the Acts of St. Thaddaeus, to which I referred in my letter in the same number, and therefore really be Oriental, as Miss Murray contends. The connection of the Lit Merveil with the Grail Castle also comes from the same romance, and is equally “suspect”; Chrétien and Wolfram place it in the Chastel Merveilleus, which has nothing to do with the Grail.

The Balin and Balan story certainly contains Grail elements, but in a very confused form, and requires further study. Professor Brown has drawn attention to the parallels with the earliest Gawain version.

The Owain story is, of course, allied to this group of ideas, but I know no version of the Grail story where the hero has to slay the guardian of bridge or ford before arriving at the Castle. Such a feat, which would involve his taking the place of the slain knight for an indefinite period, would have formed a most inconvenient hindrance to initiation. The adventures which provide us with variants of the theme, such as Perceval’s adventure at the Ford Amorous, are isolated from the main theme of the Grail Quest. Miss Berkeley introduces too many elements into her enquiry. The Nature ritual, with its accompanying initiation ceremonies, is a simple concrete actual fact; it happened, and it seems a pity to mix it up with “Otherworld” speculations, Gods of the Head, of the Sea, etc. Such may be local, but are they Grail traditions? With regard to the Cauldrons, I have expressed my opinion in the book referred to; I do not believe they belong to the same line of tradition at all.

I purposely made no use of the Dionysiac, or Orphic, mysteries. All these Life Cults possess certain elements in common, but