Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/206

180 Three things strike one in considering this incident apart from the other adventures with which it is associated; the want of consistency in those versions which, formally, are closely related, an inconsistency which we have already noted in dealing with the legend as a whole; the repetition of the same incident with almost similar details, but with a different animating conception; and the fact that some of the secondary forms testify to that same thread of story which we have already extracted from the comparison of the Mabinogi and the Conte du Graal in their entirety. Not only is the conception of the Quest different in Chrestien and Manessier or Chrestien-Gerbert, but the details are different, the centre of interest being shifted from the omitted question to the broken sword. In Manessier the dénoûment is brought about without any reference to the question, in Gerbert the reference is of the most perfunctory kind. Again we find the same machinery of Grail, lance, and other talismans, which in Chrestien-Manessier serves to bring about the hero's vengeance on his uncle's murderer, in Chrestien-Gerbert the re-union of the lovers and the winning of the Grail Kingship, used in the Gawain quest with the evident object of compassing vengeance upon the slayer of the unknown knight. And, thirdly, this secondary form is in close agreement with the Mabinogi—here, as there, the sword test takes place at the Fisher King's; here, as there, it immediately precedes the passing of the talismans; here, as there, it is only partially successful; here, as there, is a tangible reminder of the object of the quest, in the dead body of the unknown knight in the one case, in the head swimming in blood in the other. And here we may note that of the two forms in which the Queste reproduces this incident, the one which holds the more prominent position in the narrative, the one of which Lancelot is the hero, closely resembles that secondary form in the Conte du Graal which is connected with Gawain. The wounded knight whom Lancelot beholds at the crossways borne into the chapel upon a bier, and clamouring for the succour of the Grail, recalls forcibly the dead knight of the Gawain quest. It is, perhaps, still more significant that when the Queste does reproduce the Perceval form, it is only in its externals, and the mystic vessel, which in the older version is