After the lance and the graal, they bring out a broken sword; the fisher-king presents it to his nephew, begging him to reunite the fragments; in which he succeeds. The king then tells him that, according to prophecies, the bravest and most pious knight in the whole world was to perform this act; that he himself had attempted to weld the pieces together, but had been chastised for his rashness by receiving a wound in the thigh. “I shall be healed,” he added, “on the same day that sees the knight Pertiniax perish,—that treacherous knight who broke this wonderful sword in slaying my brother.”
Perceval kills Pertiniax, thanks to the aid of the holy graal, cuts off his head, and brings it to the fisher-king, who gets well, and abdicates in favour of his nephew.
The points of accordance between this poem and the Breton story are not very difficult to trace. In the two recitals we hear of the conquest of a basin and a lance, the possession of which ensures corresponding advantages; the heroes both of the French and Armorican version are subjected to dangers and temptations, and success assures to them alike—a crown. Some points of resemblance may even perhaps be discovered between the idiot Peronnik, going ever onwards he knows not whither, and extracting from the farmer’s wife his rye-bread, his fresh-churned butter, and his Sunday dripping; and this Perceval, simple, ignorant, boorish, who begins by eating two roebuck pasties, and drinking a great flagon of wine.
Certainly the different details, and the trials imposed on Peronnik, are not in general much like the probation to which Perceval was subjected; but, on the other hand, they closely resemble those to which Perédur, the hero of the Gallic tradition, was exposed. It would seem, therefore, that this Armorican story has drunk successively from the two fountains of French and Breton legendary lore. Born of the Gallic tradition, modified by the French version, and finally accommodated to the popular genius of our province, it has become such as we have it at this day.
Peronnik the idiot seems, moreover, to us worthy of being studied by those who seek, above all else in tradition, for traces of the popular genius. Idiotism, amongst all tribes of Celtic race, was never looked on as a degradation, but rather as a peculiar condition wherein individuals could attain to certain perceptions unknown to the vulgar; and the Celts were led to imagine that they had an acquaintance with the invisible world not permitted to other men. Thus the words of the idiot were looked on as prophetic; a hidden meaning was sought for in his acts; he was, in fact, considered, in the energetic language of an old poet, as having his feet in this world, and his eyes in the other.
Brittany has preserved in part this ancient reverence for persons of weak mind. It is by no means unusual in the farms of Léon to see some of these unfortunates, clad, whatever may be their age, in a long dress with bone buttons, and holding a white wand in their hands. They are tenderly cared for, and only spoken of under the endearing title of dear innocents, unless in their absence, when they are called diskyant, that is to say, without knowledge. They stay at home with the women and little children; they are never called upon to perform any labour; and when they die, they are wept over by their relations.
I remember meeting with one of these idiots one day, in the neighbourhood of Morlaix; he was seated before a farm-house door, and his sister, a young girl, was feeding him. Her caressing kindness struck me.
“Then you are very fond of this poor innocent?” I asked, in Breton.
“It is God who gave him to us,” she replied.