Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/213

Rh to the other formula, may be noticed here as containing a cup of balsam, the washings of which restore the maimed Fionn to complete health. Mr. Campbell, who has noted the tale, remarks that the cup of healing is common in all the Fenian stories, which is what we should naturally expect, seeing the close connection between Fionn and Peredur (Rev. Celt. I., p. 194). Other instances have already been given in Chapter VI. of the appearance of the vessel of balsam in connection with the glaive of light, and of its use in bringing back to life the hero's enemies. And here it may be noted that almost the very mode in which it is introduced in the folk-tales may be paralleled from the romances. The Grail appears to Perceval and Hector, lying well nigh dead upon the field of battle, and makes them whole, even as the vessel of balsam revivifies the dead warriors whom Conall Gulban has just slain, and heals the latter. It is, perhaps, only a coincidence that the angel in the one, the Carlin in the other case, appear in a great flashing of light. But, as a rule, in those task-stories which otherwise present such close similarities to the feud quest of the Proto-Mabinogi and the Conte du Graal, the mystic vessel has dropped out altogether, and the sword is the chief if not the only talisman. This is the case in Campbell, I., the young King of Easaidh Ruadh, and in XLVI. Mac Iain Direach. In one instance the glaive of light is met with outside the task group, in Campbell XLI., the Widow and her Daughters, variant ii (a Bluebeard story), and here it is found associated with the vessel of balsam. In the folk-tales, then, as in one section of the Conte du Graal, the healing vessel is decidedly of less account than the avenging or destroying weapon. This, as the sword, plays such an important part in the French romances that an examination of its rôle in Celtic literature will repay examination.

Besides the already quoted instances in which the sword of light accompanies the vessel of balsam as one of the treasures which reward the hero's quest, but in which it does not otherwise affect the march of the story, we find others in which the sword is either that weapon which causes the woe, the subject of the story, or else is the one means of testing the hero's fitness for his quest. In either case it is parallel to the sword of the Grail romances. Apart