Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/129

Rh the twelfth century became Perceval le chercheur du basin. He too, was poor, and the son of a widow, and half starved, and kept in ignorance by his mother, but, nevertheless in the end he became possessed of that sacred basin, le Saint Graal, and the holy lance, which, though Christian in the story, are manifestly the same as the Gaelic talismans which appear so often in Gaelic tales, and which have relations in all popular lore—the glittering weapon which destroys, and the sacred medicinal cup which cures." I have taken these words as a motto for my studies, which are, indeed, but an amplification of Mr. Campbell's statement. Had the latter received the attention it deserved, had it, for instance, fallen into the hands of a scholar to whom Simrock's words quoted on p. 101 were familiar, there would, in all probability, have been no occasion for the present work.

The publication of texts was continued by Mr. Furnivall's issue, in 1864, for the Roxburghe Club, of the Quête del Saint Graal from a British Museum MS. The opening of twelve MSS. from the Bibliothèque Nationale is likewise given, and shows substantial unity between them and Mr. Furnivall's text. In 1868 Mons. Paulin Paris published, in the first volume of his "Romans de la Table Ronde," a general introduction to the Round Table cycle, and a special study upon the Metrical Joseph and the Grand St. Graal. A large share of influence is assigned to Celtic traditions through the medium of Breton lais. The Early History of the Grail is a British legend, and embodies the national and schismatic aspirations of the British Church. The date given in the prologue to the Grand St. Graal, and repeated by Helinandus, is accepted as the genuine date of a redaction of the legend substantially the same as that found later in the Grand St. Graal. The word "Grail" is connected with the Latin gradale, modern gradual, and designated the book in which the tradition was first written down. The Grand St. Graal is anterior to Chrestien's poem, and Robert de Borron's poem in the first draft preceded the Grand St. Graal, and was written between 1160 and 1170, but he subsequently revised it towards 1214, as is shown by his alluding, l. 3,490, "O mon seigneur, Gauter en peis" (where the underlined words are equivalent to the Latin in pace) to Gautier of Montbeliard in the past tense. From