A subject upon which such a mass of criticism and scholarship has accumulated cannot here be discussed in full, but the learned work of the late Alfred Nutt, and the acute researches into the heart of the mystery made by Miss Jessie Weston, one of the most patient and diligent students of a difficult problem, establish almost beyond dispute that the Grail, in its earlier manifestations, bore no relation to the history of the Christian faith. The magic symbols that stood ready to the hand of those who gave to the legend its final religious shape had indisputably an earlier and a different significance. The dripping lance, that now becomes the weapon that pierced the Body of the Redeemer; the Cup containing the blood that flowed from His Side, had figured first as life-giving symbols before they had taken on the holier character with which they are endowed by the chroniclers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
This was well established by Mr. Alfred Nutt, who referred their origin to the earlier forms of Celtic folklore; and in Miss Jessie Weston’s latest contribution to the literature of the subject, published in June of the present year, a powerful plea is put forward for the interpretation of the story in the light of the earlier forms of nature-worship, linked by far-reaching tradition with the ritual of the Adonis cult, and associated with the quest for the principle of Life itself. It is unquestionably true that this theory explains as no other can many of the features of the Grail story which have no relation to Christianity. The Fisher King, the Guardian of the precious Grail, is a title which cannot be understood unless we take account of primitive tradition, in which the fish is widely employed as a symbol of life, and the fate and character of the maimed king who guards the Grail, as well as the mystic instruments which accompany its revelation, are equally referable to Pagan ritual belonging to earlier forms of nature-worship.
This is not the place to follow in detail the many intricate and puzzling problems which beset the history of the Grail. It is, indeed, a fascinating theme, and has already attracted the learning and research of many scholars in England, Germany, and France, and is perhaps destined, in the absence of some of the earlier texts from which the legend was drawn, never to receive a final and wholly satisfying solution. Here, however, we are concerned only with those features of the story at a date when it had already received the stamp of Christian sentiment, and more especially with that particular form of it embodied by the composer, Richard Wagner, in his world-famous opera.
Apart from the hero himself, the characters engaged in the drama are not numerous. There is the aged Titurel; the wounded Amfortas whose sufferings, imposed as the penalty of unlawful love, must endure till the coming of the deliverer, Parsifal; Klingsor, the malign ruler of the enchanted castle, served by the spell-bound Kundry, an enchantress, only to be released from her thraldom by the knight who successfully resists her witch-like fascinations; and Gurnemanz, through whose aid and guidance the hero is finally enabled to accomplish his task. All appear in Wolfram’s romance, under the names retained by Wagner; and the types recur also in other versions of the legend, sometimes under different names, and with endless variations in the adventures befalling them. Parsifal is our own Sir Perceval, a knight of Arthur’s Court, the Peredur of the Mabinogion, not, however, the earliest or the latest hero of the Grail quest. Before him in historic position is Sir Gawain, who, as already noted, plays the rôle of deliverer in the poem of Bleheris; while in the later romances his place is taken by the chaste Sir Galahad, the son of Sir Lancelot, who—by reason of his sin with Guinevere—was denied the reward of achieving the quest in his own person. In like manner the Grail King, Amfortas, takes on other titles, according to the particular source of the legend, while the part played by Kundry as the Grail messenger is only a variant of the rôle assigned to the “Loathly Damsel,” with the added qualities of the sorceress, who serves the sinister purpose of Klingsor in the enchanted castle.
But a comparison of all these legends leaves undisturbed the fact that in its original shape the story and its environment are British, and, further, that it first took literary form in the work of a Welsh poet. Issuing thence, as we now know, this and other of the Arthurian romances spread like a flame over the Western world, finding their principal exponents in Germany and France, but extending even to Sicily, where there is still a tradition that in the mirage that floats between the island and the mainland can be seen the sleeping form of King Arthur embedded in the heart of Etna, and awaiting the sound of the horn that shall summon him back to his kingdom. It is not a little strange that these legends, doomed to the long sleep of King Arthur himself, should have awakened to new vitality in the work of our own modern poets, and should equally have attracted the genius of the great German composer.
To those who are interested in the dramatic side of Wagner’s genius, the study of Wolfram’s beautiful poem, to which he is directly indebted, will not be without fruitful results. As a general comment, it may be said that the dramatist misses something of the spirit of romance, something also of the atmosphere of chivalry to be found in the master whom he has followed. On the other hand, it will be clearly seen that he had handled this material with the vision of a dramatist, supported by an imagination which seizes, instinctively and surely, upon personages and incidents that enforce the ethical message he seeks to deliver. Perhaps the most beautiful part of Wolfram’s poem, of necessity excluded from the closer action of drama, concerns Parsifal’s earlier years, before he had won the right to carry arms as one of the knights of King Arthur’s Court. Gahmuret, his father, in search of adventure, had first taken service under Baruc, and had won the love of the heathen queen, Belakane, who bore him a son, Feirefiz, the father of Prester John. But before the birth of the child, Gahmuret, returning to Europe, had sought and won the love of Queen Herzeleide, the mother of the Grail hero. Gahmuret was manifestly very conscious of his restless temperament, and duly warned his newly-won bride that what had happened before might recur.
Then he looked on Queen Herzeleide, and he spake to her courteously:
“If in joy we would live, O Lady, then my warder thou shalt not be,
When loosed from the bonds of sorrow, for knighthood my heart is fain;
If thou holdest me back from Tourney I may practise such wiles again