“And again they went on to another castle, from which came a band of knights, who told them of the custom of the place, that every maiden who passed by must yield a dish full of her blood. ‘That shall she not do,’ said Galahad, ‘while I live’; and fierce was the struggle that followed; and the sword of Galahad, which was the sword of King David, smote them down on every side, until those who remained alive craved peace, and bade Galahad and his fellows come into the castle for the night; ‘and on the morn,’ they said, ‘we dare say ye will be of one accord with us, when ye know the reason for our custom?’ So awhile they rested, and the knights told them that in the castle there lay a lady sick to death, who might never gain back her life, until she should be anointed with the blood of a pure maiden who was a king’s daughter. Then said Percivale’s sister, ‘I will yield it, and so shall I get health to my soul, and there shall be no battle on the morn.’ And even so was it done; but the blood which she gave was so much that she might not live; and as her strength passed away, she said to Percivale, ‘I die, brother, for the healing of this lady.’ ... Thus was the lady of the castle healed; and the gentle maiden, [Percivale’s sister,] ... died.”[245]
In the old Scandinavian legends, there are indications of the traditional belief in the power of transferred life through a bath of blood. Siegfried, or Sigurd, a descendant of Odin, slew Fafner, a dragon-shaped guardian of ill-gotten treasure. In the hot blood of that dragon, he bathed himself, and so took on, as it were, an outer covering of new life, rendering himself sword-proof, save at a single point where a leaf of the linden-tree fell between his shoulders, and shielded the flesh from the life-imparting blood.[246] On this incident it is, that the main tragedy in the Nibelungen Lied pivots; where Siegfried’s wife, Kriemhild, tells the treacherous Hagan of her husband’s one vulnerable point:
“Said she, My husband’s daring, and thereto stout of limb;
Of old, when on the mountain he slew the dragon grim,
In its blood he bathed him, and thence no more can feel,
In his charmed person, the deadly dint of steel.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
“As from the dragon’s death-wounds gushed out the crimson gore,
With the smoking torrent, the warrior washed him o’er.
A leaf then ’twixt his shoulders fell from the linden bough;