Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/105

Rh it is briefly stated, "And afterwards it happened to Joseph, and Joseph his father, and a number of his family with them, to set out from the city of Sarras, and they came as far as Great Britain"; again, p. 467, Perceval's aunt relates how when Joseph of Arimathea came, and his son Joseph with him, to Great Britain, there came with them about 4,000 people, all of whom are fed by ten loaves, placed on the table, on the head of which is the Grail. E, Grand St. Graal, dwells specially upon Josephe; he is referred to in I, p. 22, as having passed "le lignage ioseph son père outre mer iusqu'en la bloie bertaigne qui ore a nom engleterre," and II, 123, etc., gives a full account of how the passage is effected; how the Grail-bearers are sent first, and supported through the water by its power; how, when Josephe takes off his shirt, and his father Joseph puts his foot upon it, it swells until it holds 250 persons. These two accounts agree better with that of A II, Pseudo-Gautier, than with any of the others; indeed, a passage in the latter (v. 125-29), which tells how Joseph committed the portrait of our Lord, made by Verrine, to the mercy of the sea, may have given the hint for the miraculous shirt story of the Grand St. Graal. In this version, too, as in D, Queste, we first hear of the passage to England, and then the Grail appears at the miraculous feeding of the travellers. The versions thus fall into two clearly-defined groups, Joseph being the Grail-bearer in the one, Brons in the latter. The latter class is represented by the Metrical Joseph and the Didot-Perceval alone, if we except the Berne MS. form of a portion of the Conte du Graal, which, in its finish, has obviously copied the Metrical Joseph. To the former class belong all the other versions. Nay, more, one of the prose forms of Borron's poems is interpolated, so as to countenance the Joseph-account of the bringing of the Grail to England. Moreover, Borron's account of the whole transaction is ambiguous and obscure; at first Alain is the destined hero, long passages being devoted to him, and the keeping of the mystic vessel being expressly reserved to him. Yet he leaves, quite quietly, nothing more being heard of him, and the same machinery of angelic messages is set in motion for Brons, to whom, henceforth, the chief rôle is assigned. Does not this show that there were from the outset two accounts of the