Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/282

256 world and of the flesh is its key-note. Once only in Wolfram do we find an ideal human in its essence, though dogmatic in form; the path thus opened is not trodden further, and the legend remains as a whole, on the moral side, a monument of Christian asceticism.

We have seen reason to surmise that the folk-tales which underlie the romances themselves gave the hint for the most characteristic manifestation of this ascetic ideal. It is worth enquiry if these tales have developed themselves independently from the Christianised legend, and if such development shows any trace of ethical conceptions comparable with those of the legend. Can we gather from the tales as fashioned by the folk teaching similar to that of the preachers, philosophers, and artists by whom the legend has been shaped? Few enquiries can be more interesting than one which traces such a conception as the Quest after the highest good as pictured by the rudest and most primitive members of the race.

Many of the tales which formed a part of the (hypothetical) Welsh original of the earliest Grail romances have been shown to come under the Aryan Expulsion and Return Formula (supra, Ch. VI). Among most races this formula has connected itself with the national heroes, and has given rise to hero-tales in which the historical element outweighs the ethical. Sometimes, as in the tale of Perseus, the incidents are so related as to bring out an ethical motif; Perseus is certainly thought of as avenging his mother's undeserved wrongs. I cannot trace anything of the kind among the Celts. All the incidents of the formula in Celtic tradition which I know of are purely historical in character. This element of the old Saga-mass thus yields nothing for the present enquiry. Others are more fruitful. Perceval is akin not only to Fionn, but also to the Great Fool. The Lay of the Great Fool was found to tally closely with adventures in the Mabinogi and in the Conte du Graal (supra, Ch. VI). It also sets forth a moral conception that admits of profitable comparison with that of the Grail romances.

Ultimately, the Lay is, I have little doubt, one of the many forms in which a mortal's visit to the otherworld was related. Wandering into the Glen of Glamour, the hero and his love