Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/167

Rh of the castle, and not with the damsel who reproaches him for throwing away the chessmen. This reproaching damsel is not in any way identified with the lady who carries off the hound, who is described as "une vieille," and of whom it is afterwards told "elle estoit quand elle voloit une des plus belles damoiselles du monde. Et est cele meismes que mon frère (the brother of the Knight of the Tomb, who here, as in Gautier, is the lover of a fay) amena à la forest," i.e., she is the fay herself, sister to the lady of the Chessboard Castle, who hated her and wished to diminish her and her knight's pride (p. 469). Here, again, a connection can be pieced out between the various personages of the adventure; and it appears that the hero is driven to his fight against the Knight of the Tomb by a fair damsel transformed into a mysterious hag. The Mabinogi thus gives one consistently worked-out conception—transformed hag = Peredur's cousin—which may be recovered partly from that one of the two discordant versions found in Gautier which makes the pucelle de malaire to be the Fisher King's daughter, hence Perceval's cousin, and connects the stag hunt with the Grail incident, partly from the Didot-Perceval, which tells how the same pucelle de malaire is but playing a part, being when she wills one of the fairest maids of the world. Now we have seen that the stag hunt is just one of those portions of the story in which are found the closest verbal similarities between Gautier de Doulens and the Didot-Perceval. It is, therefore, perplexing to find that there is not more likeness in the details of the incident. But the similarities pointed out concern chiefly the first part of the incident, and are less prominent in the latter part (the hero's encounter with the Knight of the Tomb). This, taken together with the difference in the details of the incident just pointed out, strengthens the opinion expressed above, that the Didot-Perceval and Gautier