I believe I have the first pointed out the insistence by both Wolfram and Gerbert upon the hero’s love to and duty towards his wife.
The name of Parzival’s uncle in Wolfram, Gurnemanz, is nearer to the form in Gerbert, Gornumant, than to that in Chrestien, Gonemant.
The matter may be summed up thus: it is very improbable that Wolfram should have invented those parts of the story found in him alone; the parts common to him and Chrestien are frequently more archaic in his case; there are numerous points of contact between him and Gerbert. All this speaks for another French source than Chrestien. On the other hand, it is almost inconceivable that such a source should have presented the Grail as Wolfram presents it.
I cannot affect to consider the question decidedly settled one way or the other, and have, therefore, preferred to make no use of Wolfram. I would only point out that if the contentions of the foregoing studies be admitted, they strongly favour the genuineness of the non-Chrestien section of Wolfram’s poem,[161] though I admit they throw no light upon his special presentment of the Grail itself.
APPENDIX B.
The Prologue to the Grand St. Graal and the Brandan Legend.
I believe the only parallel to this prologue to be the one furnished by that form of the Brandan legend of which Schröder has printed a German version (Sanct Brandan) at Erlangen, in 1871, from a MS. of the fourteenth century, but the first composition of which he places (p. 15) in the last quarter of the twelfth century. The text in question will be found pp. 51, et seq.: Brandan, a servant of God, seeks out marvels in rare books, he finds that two paradises were on earth, that another world was situated under this one, so that when it is here night it is day there, and of a fish so big that forests grew on his back, also that the grace of God allowed some respite every Saturday night to the torments of Judas. Angry at all these things he burnt the book. But the voice of God spake to him, “Dear friend Brandan thou hast done wrong, and through thy wrath I see My wonders lost.” The holy Christ bade him fare nine years on the ocean, until he see whether these marvels were real or a lie. Thereafter Brandan makes ready a ship to set forth on his travels.
This version was very popular in Germany. Schröder prints a Low German adaptation, and a chap book one, frequently reprinted during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. But besides this form there was another, now lost, which can be partially recovered from the allusions to it in the Wartburg Krieg, a German poem of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, and which is as follows:—An angel brings Brandan a book from heaven: Brandan finds so many incredible things in it that he taxes book and angel with lying, and burns the book. For his unfaith he must wander till he find it. God’s grace grants him this at last; an angel gives him the sign of two fires burning, which are the eyes of an ox, upon whose tongue he shall find the book. He hands it to Uranias, who brings it to Scotland (i.e., of course Ireland) Schröder, p. 9.