[119] Unless the passage relating to Carl the Great quoted by Grimm (D.M., III., 286) from Mon. Germ. Hist., Vol. VIII., 215, “inde fabulosum illud confictum de Carolo Magno, quasi de mortuis in id ipsum resuscitato, et alio nescio quo nihilominus redivivo,” be older.
[120] Liebrecht’s edition of the Otia Imperialia, Hanover, 1856, p. 12, and note p. 55.
[121] Martin Zur Gralsage, p. 31, arguing from the historical connection of Frederick II. with Sicily, thinks that the localisation of this Arthurian legend in that isle was the reason of its being associated with the Hohenstauffen; in other words, the famous German legend would be an indirect offshot of the Arthurian cycle. I cannot follow Martin here. I see no reason for doubting the genuineness of the traditions collected by Kuhn and Schwartz, or for disbelieving that Teutons had this myth as well as Celts. It is no part of my thesis to exalt Celtic tradition at the expense of German; almost all the parallels I have adduced between the romances and Celtic mythology and folk-lore could be matched from those of Germany. But the romances are historically associated with Celtic tradition, and the parallels found in the latter are closer and more numerous than those which could be recovered from German tradition. It is, therefore, the most simple course to refer the romances to the former instead of to the latter.
[122] See Grimm, D.M., Ch. XXXII.; Fitzgerald, Rev. Celt., IV., 198; and the references in Liebrecht, op. cit.
[123] Personally communicated by the Rev. Mr. Sorby, of Sheffield.
[124] In Chrestien the part of the Magician Lord is little insisted upon. But in Wolfram he is a very important personage. It may here be noted that the effects which are to follow in Chrestien the doing away with the enchantments of this Castle, answer far more accurately to the description given by the loathly Grail-Maiden of the benefits which would have accrued had Perceval put the question at the Court of the Fisher King than to anything actually described as the effect of that question being put, either by Gautier, Manessier, or Gerbert. This castle seems, too, to be the one in which lodge the Knights, each having his lady love with him, which the loathly maiden announces to be her home.
[125] Kennedy follows in the main Oss. Soc., Vol. II, pp. 118, et. seq., an eighteenth century version translated by Mr. O’Kearney. This particular episode is found, pp. 147, et. seq. I follow the Oss. Soc. version in preference to Kennedy’s where they differ.
[126] The story as found in Heinrich may be compared with the folk-tale of the Sleeping Beauty. She is a maiden sunk in a death-in-life sleep together with all her belongings until she be awakened by the kiss of the destined prince. May we not conjecture that in an older form of the story than any we now possess, the court of the princess vanished when the releasing kiss restored her to real life and left her alone with the prince? The comparison has this further interest, that the folk-tale is a variant of an old myth which figures prominently in the hero-tales of the Teutonic race (Lay of Skirni, Lay of Swipday and Menglad, Saga of Sigurd and Brunhild), and that in its most famous form Siegfried, answering in Teutonic myth to Fionn, is its hero. But Peredur is a Cymric Fionn, so that the parallel between the two heroes, Celtic and Teutonic, is closer than at first appears when Siegfried is compared only to his Gaelic counterpart.
[127] I have not examined Gawain’s visit to the Magic Castle in detail, in the first place because it only bears indirectly upon the Grail-Quest, and then because I hope before very long to study the personality of Gawain in the romances, and to throw light upon it from Celtic mythic tradition in the same way that I have tried in the foregoing pages to do in the case of Perceval.
[128] Kennedy, Legendary Fictions, p. 154, et. seq.