Whence come the names of Ryence and Rhittar? They connect themselves closely with the universal words for ruler, the Gadhaelic righ, Teuton rik, Latin rex, and the rajah of India. Rhys is, in Welsh, a rushing man or warrior, and most likely comes from the same source; and Rhesus, the chieftain, slain by Ulysses and Diomed, on the night of his arrival before Troy, probably was called from some extinct word of the same origin.
At any rate Rhys has ever since been a Welsh name, sometimes spelt in English according to its pronunciation as Reece, and sometimes as Rice. It has furnished the surnames of Rice, Rees.
In Brittany we meet a saint called by the diminutive of Rhys, Riok, or Rieuk. His legend begins with one of the allegories that arose from the prophecy, that the weaned child should put his hand on the cockatrice’s den, for when he was almost an infant he was employed by the holy knight Derrien, to lead away in a scarf a terrible basilisk, whom the saint had tamed by making the sign of the cross over him. His parents were heathens, but were convinced by this miracle; and he became, in after years, a great saint, living for forty-one years on a rock on the sea-coast, eating nothing but herbs and little fish, and wearing a plain garment which when it wore out was supplied by a certain ruddy moss growing all over his body. His name has continued in use in Brittany.[[104]]
[104]. Mabinogion; Pitre Chevalier, Bretagne; Mallory, Morte d'Arthur; Jones, Welsh Sketches.
Section VII.—Percival.
No name has had more derivations suggested for it than this. The Norman family so called came from Perche-val, the valley of the Perche; but as to the knight of romance, he was at first supposed to be Perce-val, pierce the valley, on the principle on which Percy was hatched out of Pierce-eye, and the story invented of the Piercie who thrust his spear with the keys dangling on it into the eye of Malcolm Ceanômor at Alnwick Castle. The romance of Perceforest was even named on the principle that it was as suitable to pierce the forest as the valley. Mr. Keightley derives the name from the Arabic Parse, or Parschfal, poor dummling, who appears to have been the hero of an Eastern tale of a wonderful cup, whence arose the mysterious allegory of the Holy Greal. A Provençal Troubadour, named Kyot, or Guiot, professes to have found at Toledo a book written in heathen characters by a magician, Saracen on the father’s side, but descended by his mother from Solomon. His book is lost, but two founded on it survive,—the German romance of Parzifal, by Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the Norman French, Sir Perceval, of Walter Mapes, Archdeacon of Oxford under Henry II.
Equally old, however, is a Welsh legend of Peredur, who is perhaps Pair-kedor, the warrior of the cauldron; Pair-cyfaill would then be champion of the cauldron, or bowl; Peredur was certainly a historical person, and may perhaps be the same as Perceval. Chrétien de Troyes has a long poem on the story of Perceval, and his adventures are almost identical with those of the Peredur of the Mabinogion.
The story of the orphan, stirred up to chivalry by the sight of the knight whom he took for an angel, the same as that of Mervyn les Breiz, here appears, and Perceval or Peredur shows some kindred with the dummling of Persia by his ignorance and dulness till he comes to the castle, where he sees the wounded king, the bleeding lance, and the Greal or bowl of pure gold, that are the great features in his history. Probably, the magic bowl was an Indo-European idea, but there seems to have been Druidic traditions about a magic bowl, which Bran the Blessed obtained from a great black man in Ireland, and which cured mortal wounds and raised the dead. It was one of the thirteen wonders of the Isle of Britain, and disappeared with Merddin in his glass vessel.
However, in the twelfth century, the ideas of this vessel had assumed a Christian form. It was the bowl used at the institution of the Holy Eucharist, and the lance was that of Longinus the centurion, brought to Bran by Joseph of Arimathea, and thenceforth its quest became the emblem of the Christian search for holiness through the world, only gratified by gleams here, but with full fruition hereafter. Perceval, once the companion and guard of the sacred Grail, gradually descended from his high estate, and became only a knight of the Round Table, high and pure of faith and spotless of life, but only on the same terms as the rest, and though not failing in the quest, still inferior to Galahad.