The genuine and independent nature of the Great Fool prose opening being thus established, it is in the highest degree suggestive to find in the accompanying Lay points of contact with the Grail Legend as given in Chrestien. Three versions of this Lay have been printed in English, that edited by Mr. John O’Daly (Transactions of the Ossianic Society, vol. vi., pp. 161, et seq.); Mr. Campbell’s (West Highland Tales, vol. iii. pp. 154, et seq.) and Mr. Kennedy’s prose version (Bardic Stories of Ireland, pp. 151, et seq.). O’Daly’s, as the most complete and coherent, forms the staple of the following summary, passages found in it alone being italicised.[77]
Summary of the Lay of the Great Fool.—(1) There was a great fool who subdued the world by strength of body; (2) He comes to the King of Lochlin to win a fair woman, learns she is guarded by seven score heroes, overthrows them, and carries her off; (C. and K. plunging at once in medias res, introduce the Great Fool and his lady love out walking); (3) The two enter a valley, are meet by a “Gruagach” (champion, sorcerer), in his hand a goblet with drink; (4) The Great Fool thirsts, and though warned by his lady love drinks deep of the proffered cup; the “Gruagach” departs and the Great Fool finds himself minus his two legs; (5) The two go onward, and (“swifter was he at his two knees than six at their swiftness of foot;” C.) A deer nears them followed by a white hound, the Great Fool slays the deer and seizes the hound; (6) whose owner coming up claims but finally yields it, and offers the Great Fool food and drink during life; (7) The three fare together (the glen they had passed through had ever been full of glamour) till they come to a fair city filled with the glitter of gold, dwelt in solely by the owner of the white hound and his wife, “whiter than very snow her form, gentle her eye, and her teeth like a flower”; (8) She asks concerning her husband’s guests, and, learning the Great Fool’s prowess, marvels he should have let himself be deprived of his legs; (9) The host departs, leaving his house, wife, and store of gold in the Great Fool’s keeping, he is to let no man in, no one out should any come in, nor is he to sleep; (10) Spite his lady love’s urgings the Great Fool yields to slumber, when in comes a young champion and snatches a kiss from the host’s wife, (“She was not ill pleased that he came,” C.); (11) The Great Fool’s love awakening him reproaches him for having slept—he arises to guard the door, in vain does the intruder offer gold, three cauldrons full and seven hundred townlands, he shall not get out; (12) At the instigation of the host’s wife the intruder restores the Great Fool’s legs, but not then even will the hero let him go—pay for the kiss he must when the host returns; threats to deprive him of his legs are in vain, as are likewise the entreaties of the host’s wife (All this is developed with great prolixity in O’Daly, but there is nothing substantial added to the account in C.); (13) Finally the intruder discloses that he himself is the host, and he was the Gruagach, whose magic cup deprived the Great Fool of his legs, and he is, “his own gentle brother long in search of him, now that he has found him he is released from sorcery.” The two kiss (C. and K. end here). (14) The two brothers fare forth, encounter a giant with an eye larger than a moon and an iron club, wherewith he hits the Great Fool a crack that brings him to his knees, but the latter arising closes with the giant, kills him and takes his club, the two then attack four other giants, three of whom the Great Fool slays with his club, and the fourth yields to him. The brothers take possession of the giant’s castle and all its wealth.
There are obvious similarities between the Lay and the story found in the Mabinogi and the Conte du Graal. A stag hunt is prominent in both, and whilst engaged in it the hero falls under “illusion,” in both too the incident of the seizure of the hound appears, though in a different connection. Finally in the Lay, as in the Mabinogi, the mover in the enchantment is a kinsman whose own release from spells depends upon the hero’s coming successfully out of the trials to which he exposes him. But while the general idea is the same, the way in which it is worked out is so different that it is impossible to conceive of the one story having been borrowed from the other. What can safely be claimed is that the Great Fool, counterpart of Peredur-Perceval in the adventures of his youth and up-bringing, is also, to a certain extent, his counterpart in the most prominent of his later adventures, that of the stag hunt. It is thus fairly certain that all this part of the Conte du Graal is, like the Enfances, a working up of Celtic folk-tales. The giant fight which concludes the Lay may be compared with that in Sir Perceval and in Morvan le Breiz, and such a comparison makes it extremely likely that the incident thus preserved by independent and widely differing offshoots from the same folk-tale stem, belongs to the oldest form of the story.
The analogies of the Lay with the Perceval sage are not yet exhausted. In virtue of the relationship between the two chief characters, the Lay belongs to the “twin-brother cycle.” This group of folk-tales, some account of which is given below,[78] is closely related on the one hand to the “dragon slayer” group of märchen, on the other hand to the Expulsion and Return formula tales. In many versions of the latter (the most famous being that of Romulus and Remus) the hero is one of twins, and, after sharing for a while with his brother, strife breaks out between them. In the folk-tale this strife leads to final reconciliation, or is indeed a means of unravelling the plot. In the hero-tale on the other hand the strife mostly ends with the death or defeat of the one brother. It would seem that when the folk-tale got associated with a definite hero (generally the founder and patron of a race) and became in brief a hero-tale, the necessity of exalting the race hero brought about a modification of the plot. If this is so the folk-tale group of the “two brothers” must be looked upon as older than the corresponding portion of the Expulsion and Return hero-tales, and not as a mere weakened echo of the latter. To return to the twin-brother features. The Peredur-Perceval sage has a twin-sister, and is parallel herein to the Fionn sage in one of its forms (“How the Een was set up”), though curiously enough not to the Great Fool folk-tale (otherwise so similar to “How the Een was set up”), which, as in the Lay, has a brother. But beyond this formal recognition of the incident in the Perceval sage, I am inclined to look upon the Perceval-Gawain dualism as another form of it. This dualism has been somewhat obscured by the literary form in which the sage has been preserved and the tendency to exalt and idealise one hero. In the present case this tendency has not developed so far as to seriously diminish the importance of Gawain; his adventures are, however, left in a much more primitive and märchenhaft shape, and hence, as will be shown later on, are extremely valuable in any attempt to reach the early form of the story.[79]
If Simrock’s words quoted on the title page were indeed conclusive—“If that race among whom the ‘Great Fool’ folk-tale was found independent of the Grail story had the best claim to be regarded as having wrought into one these two elements”—then my task might be considered at an end. I have shown that this race was that of the Celtic dwellers in these islands, among whom this tale is found not only in a fuller and more significant form than elsewhere, but in a form that connects it with the French Grail romance. But the conclusion that the Conte du Graal is in the main a working up of Celtic popular traditions, which had clustered round a hero, whose fortunes bore, in part, a striking resemblance to those of Fionn, the typical representative of the Expulsion and Return formula cycle among the Celts, though hardly to be gainsaid, does not seem to help much towards settling the question of the origin of the Grail itself. The story would appear to be Celtic except just the central incident upon which the whole turns. For the English Sir Perceval, which undoubtedly follows older models, breathes no word of search for any magic talisman, let alone the Grail, whilst the Mabinogi, which is also older in parts than the Conte du Graal, gives a different turn to and assigns a different motif for the hero’s conduct. The avenging of a kinsman’s harm upon certain supernatural beings, and the consequent release from enchantment of another kinsman, supply the elements of a clear and consistent action to which parallels may easily be adduced from folk-tales, but one quite distinct from the release of a kinsman through the medium of certain talismans and certain magic formulæ. Numerous as have been the points of contact hitherto established between Celtic folk belief and the French romance, the parallel would seem to break down at its most essential point, and the contention that the Grail is a foreign element in the Celtic legend would still seem to be justified. Before, however, this can be asserted, what I have called the central episode of the romance requires more searching and detailed examination than it has had, and some accessory features, which, on the hypothesis of the Christian legendary origin of the Grail, remain impenetrable puzzles must be commented upon. And another instructive point of contact between romance and folk-tale must be previously noticed, connected as it is with stories already dealt with in this chapter.
In the latest portion of the Conte du Graal, the interpolation of Gerbert, the following incident occurs:—The hero meets four knights carrying their wounded father, who turns out to be Gonemans, the same who armed him knight. He vows vengeance upon Gonemans’ enemies, but his efforts are at first of no avail. As fast as in the daytime he slays them, at night they are brought back to life by “Une vieille” who is thus described:—
La poitrine ot agüe et sèche;
Ele arsist ausi come une esche
Si on boutast en li le fu.[80]
······
La bouche avoit grant à merveilles
Et fendue dusqu’as oreilles,
Qu’ele avoit longues et tendans;
Lons et lez et gausnes les dans
Avoit. (Potvin vi., 183, 184.)
II. barisiax d’ivoire gent;
containing a “poison,” the same whereof Christ made use in the Sepulchre, and which serves here to bring the dead back to life and to rejoin heads cut off from bodies. She goes to work thus:—