Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/141

Rh Conte du Graal with numerous additions. A knowledge of the Didot-Perceval on Chrestien's part must be presupposed, as where could he have got the Fisher King and Grail Castle save from a poem which dealt with the Early History of the Grail, a thing the Mabinogi does not do. But, it may be said, Chrestien used the Mabinogi conjointly with Borron's poem. That the Welsh tale is, on the contrary, only a copy is apparent from the following considerations:—It mixes up Gurnemanz and the Fisher King; it puts in the mouth of Peredur's mother an exclamation about the knights, "Angels they are my son," obviously misread from Perceval's exclamation to the same effect in Chrestien's poem; Perceval's love-trance over the three blood drops in the snow is explained in Chrestien by the hero's passion for Blanchefleur, but is quite inexplicable in the Mabinogi; again, in the Welsh tale, the lance and basin episode is quite a secondary one, a fact easily explained if it is looked upon as a vague reminiscence of Chrestien's unfinished work; moreover the Mabinogi lays great stress upon the lance, which has already been shown to belong to a secondary stage in the development of the legend. Again the word Graal occurs frequently in old Welsh literature, and invariably in its French form, never translated by any equivalent Welsh term. As for the name Peredur, it is understandable that the Welsh storyteller should choose the name of a national hero, instead of the foreign name Perceval; the etymology Basin-Seeker is untenable. There is no real analogy between the Grail and the magic cauldron of Celtic fable, which is essentially one of renovation, whereas the Grail in the second stage only acquires miraculous feeding, and in the third stage healing powers. It is of course not impossible that such adventures in the Mabinogi, as cannot be referred directly to Chrestien, may belong to a genuine Peredur sage.

The question then arises—was Robert de Borron a simple copyist, or is the legend in its present form due to him, i.e., did he first join the Joseph of Arimathea and Grail legends, or had he a predecessor? Now the older Joseph legends know nothing of his wandering in company of a miraculous vessel, Zarncke having shown the lateness of the one commonly ascribed to William of Malmesbury. Nor is it likely Borron had before him a local French