Whence this knowledge and popularity of the gospel in England several centuries before it entered prominently into the literature of any other European people? Wülcker can only point by way of answer to the early spread of Christianity in these Islands, and to the possibility of this gospel having reached England before it did France or Germany. He also insists upon the early development of Anglo-Saxon literature.
Whether the fact that the apocryphal writings which told of Joseph were known here when they were unknown on the Continent be held to warrant or no the existence of a specifically British Joseph legend, they at all events prove that he was a familiar and favourite legendary figure on British soil. It would be rash to go any farther, and to argue from the inadequacy of the reasons by which Wülcker seeks to account for the early knowledge of the Evangelium Nicodemi in England, that Joseph enjoyed particular favour among the British Christians, and that it was from them the tidings of him spread among their Saxon conquerors.
The legendary popularity of Joseph in these islands, though not in any special capacity of Apostle of Britain, is thus attested. Let us admit for argument’s sake that the conversion legend did first take shape in the twelfth century, is it not more likely to have done so here, where the apocryphal writings about him were widely spread, than in France, where they were practically unknown? And why if Borron, or any other French poet, wanted to connect the Holy Vessel legend which he had imagined with Arthur, should he go out of his way to invent the personages of Brons and Alain? The story as found in the Queste would surely have been a far more natural one for him. And why the insistence upon Avalon? We have plain proof that Borron did not understand the word, as he explains it by a ridiculous pun (supra, [p. 78]).[142]
These difficulties are met in a large measure if we look upon Bran (Brons) as the starting point of the Christian transformation of the legend. In any case we may say that a conversion legend, whether associated with Joseph or anyone else, would almost inevitably have gravitated towards Glastonbury, but there are special reasons why this should be the case with a Bran legend. Avalon is certainly the Welsh equivalent of the Irish Tír na n-Og, the land of youth, the land beyond the waves, the Celtic paradise. When or how this Cymric myth was localised at Glastonbury we know not.[143] We only know that Glastonbury was one of the first places in the island to be devoted to Christian worship. Is it too rash a conjecture that the Christian church may have taken the place of some Celtic temple or holy spot specially dedicated to the cult of the dead, and of that Lord of the Shades from which the Celts feigned their descent? The position of Glastonbury, not far from that western sea beyond which lie the happy isles of the dead, would favour such an hypothesis. Although direct proof is wanting, I believe that the localisation is old and genuine: Bran, ruler of the otherworld, of Avalon, would thus come into natural contact with Glastonbury; and if, as I assume, Joseph took his place in the conversion legend the association would extend to him. The after development of the legend would then be almost a matter of course. Bran, the ruler in Avalon, would pass on his magic gear (cauldron, spear, and sword, as in the case of the Tuatha de Dannan) to Bran the Blessed, who would in his turn transfer them to Joseph. And once the latter had entered into the legend, he would not fail to recall that last scene of the Lord’s life with which he was so closely associated, not by any pseudo-gospel but by the canonical writings themselves, and thus the gear of the old Celtic gods became transformed into such objects as were most prominent in the story of the Passion and of the scene that immediately preceded it. The spear became that one wherewith Christ’s side was pierced. As for the vessel, the sacramental nature is the last stage of its Christian development; its original object was merely to explain the sustenance of Joseph in prison, and to provide a miraculous refreshment for the Grail host, as is shown by the Early History portion of the Conte du Graal and by the Queste. In a dim and confused way the circumstances of the Resurrection helped to effect the change of the pagan resuscitation-cauldron into a symbol of the risen Lord. And some now lost feature of the original legend—some insistence upon the contents of the vessel, some assimilation of them to blood—may have suggested the use to which the vessel was first put.
This hypothesis assumes many things. It assumes a Bran conversion legend, of which the only evidence of anything like the same date as the romances is a single epithet; it assumes that the hero of this legend was originally an old Celtic divinity; it assumes a Joseph conversion legend, for which there is really no other evidence than that of the romances; it assumes the amalgamation of the two legends, and that Joseph took over in a large measure the rôle and characteristics of Brons. And when it is recollected that the primary assumption, the identification of the two Brans, rests in a large measure upon the appearance of the fish in the Brons legend, that this fish is nowhere in Celtic tradition associated with Bran, that it is associated on the other hand with a being, Fionn, whom we have compared with Peredur, but that it is absent from the Peredur-saga, the hypothesis must be admitted to be of a tentative nature. I fully appreciate the force of the objections that can be urged against it; at the same time it has the merit of accounting for many puzzling features in the legend. When in the same story two personages can be distinguished whose rôle is more or less of the same nature, when the one personage is subordinated in one version and has disappeared altogether from the other, it is quite legitimate to conclude that two originally independent accounts have become blended, and that one has absorbed the other. The hypothesis is on safe ground so far. It thus explains the presence of Brons in the legend, as well as his absence from some versions of it; it has something to say in explanation of the connection with Glastonbury; it explains in what way the Celtic traditions were started on their path of transformation; and it provides for that transformation taking the very course it did. There is nothing to be urged against it on a priori grounds; once admit the premisses, and the rest follows easily and naturally. Its conjectural character (the main objection to it) is shared in an even higher degree by the other hypotheses, which have essayed to account for the growth and origin of the legend, and they have the disadvantage of being inherently impossible.
In the light of the foregoing investigations and hypotheses we may now amplify the sketch history of the whole cycle given in [Chapter III.] The Peredur-saga probably came into existence in much its later form at an early date in the Middle Ages. A number of older mythical tales centered in a, perhaps, historical personage. The circumstances of his life and adventures may have given them not only cohesion, but may also have coloured and distorted them; nevertheless they remained, in the main, mythical tales of the same kind as those found all over the world. One of these tales was undoubtedly a Cymric variant of the Celtic form of the Expulsion and Return formula; another dealt with the hero’s journey to the Land of Shades; traces of many others are to be found in the Mabinogi. Another Celtic worthy, Gwalchmai, was early associated with Peredur, and the two stood in some such relation to each other as the twin brethren of a widely spread folk-tale group. Curiously enough, whilst comparatively few incidents in the Peredur-saga were worked up into the version which served as immediate model to the North French romances, that version contained many adventures of Gwalchmai’s which have not been preserved in Welsh. We can trace three main crystallizations of the original saga-mass; one represented by the Proto-Mabinogi contained the feud quest, and, probably, some only of the other adventures found in the present Mabinogi; the second, based more on the lines of the Expulsion and Return formula, is represented by the Thornton MS. romance; in the third the feud quest was mixed up with the hero’s visit to the Bespelled Castle, and those portions of the Gwalchmai-saga which told of his visit to Castle Perillous as well as to the Bespelled Castle. Whilst the Proto-Mabinogi was probably in prose, the Proto-Conte du Graal was probably in verse, a collection of short lais like those of Marie de France. Meanwhile, one of the chief personages of the older mythic world which appear in the Peredur-saga, Bran, the Lord of the Land of Shades, of the Bespelled Castle, of the cauldron of healing, increase and wisdom, and of the knowledge-giving salmon, had become the Apostle of Britain, his pagan attributes thus suffering a Christian change, which was perfected when Joseph took the place of Brons, bringing with him his gospel associations and the apocryphal legends that had clustered round his name. Thus a portion of the saga was Christianised, whilst the other portion lost its old, fixed popular character, owing to the fusion of originally distinct elements, and the consequent unsettling both of the outlines and of the details of the story. Incidents and features which in the earlier folk-tale stage were sharply defined and intelligible became vague and mysterious. In this state, and bearing upon it the peculiarly weird and fantastic impress of Celtic mythic tradition, the story, or story-mass rather, lay ready to the hand of courtly poet or of clerical mystic. At first Christian symbolism was introduced in a slight and meagre way—the Brons-Joseph legend supplied the Christian meaning of the talismans, and that was all. But the Joseph legend was soon vigorously developed by the author of the work which underlies the Queste and the Grand St. Graal. He may either not have known or have deliberately discarded Brons, the old Celtic hero of the conversion, as he certainly deliberately thrust down from his place of pre-eminence Perceval, the Celtic hero of the Quest, substituting for him a new hero, Galahad, and for the adventures of the Conte du Graal, based as they were upon no guiding conceptions, fresh adventures intended to glorify physical chastity. With all his mystic fervour he failed to see the full capacities of the theme, his presentment of the Grail itself being in especial either over-material or over-spiritual. But his work exercised a profound influence, as is seen in the case of Chrestien’s continuators. Robert de Borron, on the other hand, if to him the merit must be assigned, if he was not simply transcribing an older, forgotten version, was a more original thinker, if a less gifted writer. Although he was not able to entirely harmonise the conflicting accounts of which he made use, he yet succeeded in keeping close to the old lines of the legend whilst giving a consistent symbolical meaning to all its details. His work came too late, however, to exercise the influence it should have done upon the development of the legend; the writers who knew it were mere heapers together of adventures, and the very man who composed a sequel to it abandoned Robert’s main conception.
The history of the Legend of the Holy Grail is, thus, the history of the gradual transformation of old Celtic folk-tales into a poem charged with Christian symbolism and mysticism. This transformation, at first the inevitable outcome of its pre-Christian development, was hastened later by the perception that it was a fitting vehicle for certain moral and spiritual ideas. These have been touched upon incidentally in the course of these studies, but they and their manifestation in modern as well as in mediæval literature deserve fuller notice.