Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/229

Rh actual portion of the land of shades. This visit, as we have seen, is conceived of in several ways. Its object is almost invariably to win precious talismans; all we have comes to us from our forefathers, and it is natural to suppose that in the world whence they came, and whither they go back, is to be found all that man seeks here, only in a form as more wonderful than earthly objects as the dwellers in the otherworld are mightier and cleverer than man. At times the talismans are held by beneficent beings, who either gladly yield them to the mortal visitor, or from whom they may be won by the exhibition of valour and magnanimity; at times by evil monsters with whom the mortal must strive. In either case the visitor arrives at nightfall and in the morning awakes to the life of this earth.

The secondary or Gawain form of the myth, as found in the Conte de Graal, may help us to understand Heinrich's version. It is to free imprisoned damsels that Gauvain undergoes the trials of the Magic Castle. Now the effect of his visit in the German poem is to free the sister of Gansguoter, who, with her maidens, remains when the other inmates of the castle, released by the question, have utterly vanished. But what means the death-in-life condition of the King and his men? Is it merely an expedient to account for their sudden vanishing at daylight? I rather see here the influence of another form of the unspelling myth, one that mixed with Christian elements has powerfully impressed the popular imagination, and is in many European countries the only one in which this old myth still lives on.