Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/261

Rh the Middle Ages was what it was, wholly or even mainly in virtue of its Celtic affinities. That literature was the outcome of the age, and something akin to it would have sprung up had Celtic tradition remained unknown to the Continent. The conception of feudal knighthood as a favoured class, in which men of different nations met on a common footing; the conception of knightly love as something altogether dissasociated [sic] from domestic life, must in any case have led to the constitution of such a society as we find portrayed in the romances. What is claimed is that the spirit of the age, akin to the Celtic, recognised in Celtic tales the food it was hungering for. It transformed them to suit its own needs and ideas, but it carried out the transformation on the whole in essential agreement with tradition. In some cases a radical change is made; such a one is presented to us in the Grail cycle.

The legend thus started with the advantages of belonging to the popular literature of the time, and of association through Brons with Christian tradition. Its incidents were varied, and owing to the blending of diverse strains of story vague enough to be plastic. The formal development of the cycle has been traced in the earlier chapters of these studies; that of its ideal conceptions will be found to follow similar lines. Various ethical intentions can be distinguished, and there is not more difference between the versions in the conduct of the story than in the ideals they set forth.

To some readers it may have seemed well nigh sacrilegious to trace that

to the magic vessels of pagan deities. In England the