Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/170

138 BOOK I. Lancelot and Gui- nevere,

Sir Bors to salute his father Sir Lancelot and bid him remember this unstable world " And therewith he kneeled down before the table and made his prayers, and then suddenly his soul departed unto Jesus Christ. And a great multitude of angels bare his soul up to heaven that his two fellows might behold it ; also they saw come down from heaven a hand, but they saw not the body, and then it came right to the vessel and took it and the spear,^ and so bare it up into heaven. Sithence was there never a man so hardy as to say that he had seen the San Greal."

The sequel which tells the story of the final fortunes of Lancelot and Guinevere presents perhaps the most wonderful instance of the degree to Avhich a myth may be modified, and in this case the modifying influence is strictly and purely Christian. It is true that he estranges the love of Guinevere from her lord Arthur, and that even the sanctifying influence of the holy Grail, which makes him proof against the heart-rending sorrow of Elaine, cannot avail to repress his unconquerable affection for the brightest and the fairest of women. But although the romance throughout speaks of it as his great sin, the love is one which asks only for her heart as its recom- pence, and enables him to say even at the last, that Guinevere is worthy of the love of Arthur. But the same Christian influence which makes Arthur slow to believe any evil of his dear friend Lancelot, could not allow Guinevere to end her days in peace with Arthur, as Helen returns to live and die in the house of Menelaos. Like Paris, whom Menelaos admitted to an equally trustful friend- ship, Lancelot had done a great wrong ; and even when Arthur has closed his brief but splendid career, Guinevere tells Lancelot that all love on earth is over between them. Their lips may not meet even in the last kiss which should seal the death-warrant of their old affection. Arthur is gone. When he will come back again, no man may tell ; but Guinevere is more faithful now to the word which she had pledged to him than she had been while his glorious form rose pre-eminent among the bravest knights of Christendom. Yet in spite of all that Christian influence has done to modify and ennoble the stor}', the myth required that Guinevere should be separated from Lancelot, as Helen is torn away from Paris ; and the narrative pre- sents us from time to time with touches which vividly recall the old Greek and Teutonic myths. Thus Sir Urre of Hungary has wounds which only Lancelot can heal, as Oinone alone can heal Paris ; and the last battle with Modred is begun when a knight draws his sword on an adder that has stung him in the foot, like the snake which bit


 * See book ii. clmp. il. sect. I2.