Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/424

 1 1 6 Glastonbury and the Grail.

Glastonbury and the Grail.

[Folk-Lore, vol. xxxii. p. 131 et seqq.)

In criticising my paper on Glastonbury and the Grail Miss Weston says : " It is worth noting that the only one of the romances that can be directly associated with Glastonbury, i.e. the Per- lesvaus, appears to be interested in the Abbey as the burial place of Arthur and Guenevere, not as the home of the Grail. In fact, there is reason to believe that the romance was written with the direct intention of exploiting the supposed discovery of the tomb in 1 191."

Glastonbury Abbey was never the " home of the Grail," which local tradition hides in Chalice Hill ; and Glastonbury Abbey is not the spot indicated by Perlesvaus as Arthur's burial place, nor could any one knowing Glastonbury suppose so. Perlesvaus buries Arthur in Avalon, in a religious house ; but this is not the Abbey, for the story shows Lancelot visiting Avalon, and finding on a hill-top a chapel, where Guenevere's body waits burial, and where Arthur will one day lie. The Abbey is in a valley ; but in the Middle Ages there was a distinct monastery on the Tor, which our author plainly had in mind. We have no reason for disbelieving that he drew his data from a Glaston- bury MS. ; therefore, as he must have visited Glastonbury, he would have seen the " supposed discovery " near the Abbey Lady Chapel. Thus he puzzles us by exploiting the find in a place where he knew that it was not. At the best he is not much interested in it, only mentioning it twice, cursorily.

She then says : " It is by no means clear where the author located the Grail Castle ; it is certainly not in Avalon, and the final home of the Grail is in a sea-girt island." Glastonbury was once sea-girt, though in mediaeval days it had long been dry land. The author describes a long-past condition. So far as I know, no romance locates the Grail Castle or calls it Avalon — the reason doubtless being that the rites were banned, as Miss Weston says. The belief that this place is Avalon, or Glastonbury, belongs to unwritten tradition ; but mediaeval Glastonbury did not practise the rites, though Celtic Glaston- bury probably did. The Grail Castle's physical descriptions all