Jessie Laidlay Weston

“ He consults his diviners, who tell him that the foundations must be watered with the blood of a child who has never had a father; the king accordingly sends messengers through the land in search of such a prodigy. They come to the city where Merlin and his mother dwell at the moment when the boy is cast out from the companionship of the other lads on the ground that he has had no father. ”

“ Here the Grail, the chalice of the Last Supper, is at the same time, as in the Gawain stories, self-acting and food-supplying.
The last three romances unite, it will be seen, the quest and the early history. Introductory to the Galahad quest, and dealing only with the early history, is the Grand Saint Graal, a work of interminable length, based upon the Joseph of Arimathea, which has undergone numerous revisions and amplifications: its precise relation to the Lancelot, with which it has now much matter in common, is not easy to determine. ”

“ The Lancelot-Guenevere romance took form and shape in the artificial atmosphere encouraged by such patronesses of literature as Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie, Comtesse de Champagne (for whom Chrétien de Troyes wrote his Chevalier de la Charrette) , and reflects the low social morality of a time when love between husband and wife was declared impossible. But though Guenevere has changed her lover, the tradition of her infidelity is of much earlier date and formed a part of the primitive Arthurian legend. Who the original lover was is doubtful ”

“ Another represents his prison as one of air; he is invisible to all, but can see and hear, and occasionally speak to passers by; thus he holds converse with Gawain. In the prose Perceval he retires voluntarily to an “Esplumeor” erected by himself, and is seen no more of man.
The curious personality of Merlin is now generally recognized as being very largely due to the prolific invention of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Nennius, upon whose Historia Geoffrey enlarged and “improved,” gives indeed the story of Vortigern and the tower, but the boy’s name is Ambrosius. ”

“ As in the book of Job, a special family is singled out as subjects of the diabolic experiment, their property is destroyed, one after the other perishes miserably, till one daughter, who has placed herself under the special protection of the Church, is left alone. The demon takes advantage of an unguarded moment of despair, and Merlin is engendered. ”

“ Students of the original romances are aware that there is in these texts an extraordinary diversity of statement as to the nature and origin of the Grail, and that it is extremely difficult to determine the precise value of these differing versions. [1] Broadly speaking the Grail romances have been divided into two main classes: (1) those dealing with the search for the Grail, the Quest, and (2) those relating to its early history. ”

“ Thanks, however, to the prompt action of the mother’s confessor, Blayse, in at once baptizing the child of this abnormal birth, the mother truly protesting that she has had intercourse with no man, Merlin is claimed for Christianity, but remains dowered with demoniac powers of insight and prophecy. An infant in arms, he saves his mother’s life and confounds her accusers by his knowledge of their family secrets. Meanwhile Vortigern, king of the Britons, is in despair at the failure of his efforts to build a tower in a certain spot ”

“ It is worth noting that Layamon, whose translation of Wace’s Brut is of so much interest, on account of the variants he introduces into the text, gives a much more favourable form of the “Birth” story; the father is a glorious and supernatural being, who appears to the mother in her dreams. ”

“ For the Fécamp legend see Leroux de Lincey’s Essai sur l’abbaye de Fescamp (1840) ; for the Volto Santo and kindred legends, Ernest von Dobschütz, Christus-Bilder (Leipzig, 1899) . (J. L. W.)
↑ The etymology of the O. Fr. graal or greal, of which “grail” is an adaptation, has been much discussed. The Low Lat. original, gradale or grasale, a flat dish or platter, has generally been taken to represent a diminutive cratella of crater, bowl, or a lost cratale, formed from the same word (see W. W. Skeat, Preface to Joseph of Arimathie, Early Eng. Text Soc.) ”

“ Diu Crône, edited by Scholl (Stuttgart, 1852) , vol. vi. of Arthurian Romances (Nutt) , gives a translation of the Bleheris, Diu Crône and Prose Lancelot visits.
The Conte del Graal, or Perceval, is only accessible in the edition of M. Potvin (6 vols., 1866–1871) . The Mons MS., from which this has been printed, has proved to be an exceedingly poor and untrustworthy text. Parzival, by Wolfram von Eschenbach, has been frequently and well edited; the edition by Bartsch (1875–1877) , in Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters, contains full notes and a glossary. ”