Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/127

Rh Adonis, Osiris). As the Grail may only be seen by those to whom God's grace is granted, so in the German folk-tale the entrance to the hollow mounds wherein lies treasure or live elves is only visible to Sunday children or pure youths. Thus, too, no man may find the grave of Hackelberg (Odin). Such caves, when entered, close upon the outgoing mortal as the Grail Castle portcullis closes upon Parzival. Many of Gauvain's adventures appear in German folk-tradition. As to Parzival's youth "it cannot be doubted that we have here a variation of the Great Fool folk-tale (Dummling's Märchen) found among all people. It is hard to say what people possessing this tale brought it into contact, either by tradition or in writing, with the Grail story, but that people would have the first claim among whom it is found in an independent form." The Mabinogi explanation of the Grail incident is unacceptable, and the Mabinogi itself is later than Chrestien, as is shown by its foolish invention of the witches of Gloucester, and by its misrendering the incident of the dwarves greeting Peredur. In the original folk-tale the ungainly hero was laughed at, not greeted. The Thornton Sir Perceval may possibly contain an older version of Perceval's youth than any found elsewhere. Wolfram's poem represents, however, the oldest and purest form of the Grail myth, which, originally pagan, only became fully Christianised in the hands of the later North French poets.

Simrock's speculations, though marred by his standing tendency to claim over much for German tradition, are full of his usual acute and ingenious, if somewhat fanciful, learning. His ignorance of Celtic tradition unfortunately prevented his following up the hint given in the passage quoted above which I have adopted as one of the mottoes of the present work.

In 1855 Rochat published ("Ueber einen bisher unbekannten Percheval li Gallois," Zurich) selections from a Berne MS. containing part of Gautier de Doulens' continuation of Chrestien (v. 21,930 to end, with thirteen introductory and fifty-six concluding original lines, cf. p. 19), and entered at some length into the question of the origin and development of the Grail legend. The Mabinogi, contrary to San Marte's opinion, is placed after Chrestien. Villemarqué's ballad of Morvan le Breiz is the oldest form of the