Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/151

Rh in all the versions shows that the legend must have assumed definite shape first on British soil, and he looks upon the separatist and anti-papal tendencies of the British Church as supplying the original impulse to such a legend. The Grail belongs originally wholly to the "Legend;" only in the later versions and in Wolfram, owing to the latter's ignorance of its real nature, does it assume a magic and popular character. The lance, on the other hand, is partly derived from the Celtic sage. The boyhood of Perceval is a genuine folk-story, a great-fool tale, and had originally nothing to do with the Grail, as may plainly be seen by reference to the Thornton Sir Perceval, the most primitive form of the story remaining, the Mabinogi, and the modern Breton tale of Peronnik, deriving directly or indirectly from Chrestien. As for the question, although it presented much that seemed to refer it to folk-tradition, as for instance in Heinrich von dem Türlin's version, where Gawain's putting the question releases the lord of the castle and his retainers from the enchantment of life-in-death, yet the form of the question, "Je vos prie que vous me diez que l'en sert de cest vessel," shows its original connection with the Grail cultus, and necessitates its reference to the "Legend." Existing versions fail, however, to give any satisfactory account of the question. It is a matter of conjecture whether in the earliest form of the legend (which Hertz assumes to have been lost) it was found in the same shape as in the Didot-Perceval.

Birch-Hirschfeld's theory has already been implicitly criticised in Chapter III. The considerations adduced therein, as well as Martin's criticisms and Hertz's admissions, preclude the necessity of examining it in further detail. Formally speaking, the theory rests upon the assumption that we have Borron's work substantially as he wrote it, an assumption which, as shown by the difference in motif between the Metrical Joseph and the Didot-Perceval, is inaccurate. Again, the theory does not account for the silence of all the other versions respecting Brons and that special conception of the Grail found in Borron's poem. Nor does it offer any satisfactory explanation of the mysterious question which Birch-Hirschfeld can only conjecture to have been a meaningless invention, eine harmlose Erfindung, of Borron's. In fact, only