Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/143

Rh in the grave and the mass is fully worked out. Thus Joseph who laid Christ's body in the grave is the natural guardian of the symbol which commemorates that event, thus, too, the Grail is the natural centre point of all the symbolism of mass and sacrament, and thus the Grail found its place in the Joseph legend, ultimately becoming its most important feature. Need Perceval's question detain us? May it not be explained by the fact that as Joseph had to apply twice for Christ's body, so his representative, the Grail-seeker, had to apply twice for the symbol of Christ's body, the Grail? But it is, perhaps, best to consider the question and the Fisher King's weakness as inventions of Borron's, possibly derived from Breton sources, the ease with which the hero fulfils a task explained to him beforehand favouring such a view. Borron, it must be noticed, had no great inventive power; in the Joseph he is all right so long as he has the legend to follow; in the Merlin and the Perceval he clings with equal helplessness to the Breton sagas, confining himself to weaving clumsily the adventures of the Grail into the regular Arthur legend.

The question as to the authorship of the Grand St. Graal and the Queste, the latter so confidently attributed to W. Map, may now profitably be investigated. Map, who we know flourished 1143-1210 (see supra, p. 5), took part in all the political and social movements of his time. If we believe the testimony of the MSS. which ascribe to him the authorship of the following romances: (1) the Lancelot, in three parts; (2) the Queste; (3) the Mort Artur; (4) the Grand St. Graal, he would seem to have shown a literary activity quite incompatible with his busy life, when it is remembered how slow literary composition was in those days. Nor can it be reconciled with the words of Giraldus Cambrensis, although Paulin Paris (Rom. i. 472) has attempted such a reconciliation by the theory that the words dicere and verba dare referred to composition in the vernacular, and that Map was