For many reasons it appears to me that this reading deserves more attention than it has yet received. It is, to say the least, curious that Chrétien should go out of his way to remark upon a lai dealing with an absolutely unknown personage and one to whom he never refers again. Chrétien's poems stand, not at the commencement of the Arthurian tradition, but at a very advanced stage of its evolution: had there been current at that date, the end of the twelfth century, a lai important enough to be chronicled in this unusual manner (I can recall no other instance in Chrétien's poems), some trace of the hero of the lai, if not the poem itself, would surely have been preserved to us. On the other hand, the version given in the Welsh tale has a break precisely at this point, showing where the primary redaction ended, and the character of the tale is, as we have seen, such as might well be preserved in a lai. I believe that Chrétien is here indicating the original source of this section of his poem.
The passage, moreover, has a curious affinity with one to which I shall have occasion to refer later on, where the carelessness of a copyist in running together two or three words has created what the editor of the text read as a proper name, a reading adopted by his critics. But here the text had not been worked over, and the result was a confused reading which has baffled more than one commentator. The mere chance that the right reading (here undoubted) has been preserved in a text hitherto unaccountably neglected has enabled me to detect the error; but had the copyists of the Queste been as careful to preserve the grammatical sense as those of the Yvain, we should have been much puzzled to decide whether D'Estrois de Gariles was or was not originally des trois de Gaule![80]
It is a question for experts in palæography which is the more likely error to be made, the running of two or three words into one, eventually read as a proper name, or the separation of the letters composing a proper name into two or three words.
It appears to me that the arguments advanced for the above view are, as compared with Professor Foerster's arguments, objective versus subjective. Professor Foerster sees in the story of Yvain and his lady a resemblance to the tale of the Widow of Ephesus, therefore he concludes that Chrétien based his romance on that story; but in support of his theory he offers no proof whatever: there is no evidence that Chrétien knew the tale, no reference to a book in which it might be contained, no correspondence of name or phrase, and the most characteristic incidents, the dwelling by the grave, and the insult to the corpse, have no parallel in the romance.[81] The evidence is purely subjective; satisfactory to the framer of the theory, but not satisfactory to others.
The evidence for the theory advanced above is, on the contrary, purely objective. The story must be of such a character that it might be told as a lai—it is of such a character, i.e. folk-lore and traditional; proof—the rain-making incident, and correspondence with the motif of 'slayer and slain.' We must have proof that Chrétien knew the lais current in his day—he refers to one of the most famous, Guingamor, and couples the hero with that of another, Graalent. We should like a reference to a lai connected with the story—we have the reference, at the very point where, according to our theory, we might expect to find it. Further, the reading of one MS., and that neither a late nor a poor one, gives a remarkable indication of the contents of the lai. If on these grounds we decline to accept the Widow of Ephesus theory we are surely neither prejudiced nor oblivious of facts.[82]
Nor is Professor Foerster more fortunate in his theory of the origin of Perceval. He states it at great length in the introduction to the Charrette,[83] but the main points may be summarised thus. The book given to Chrétien by Count Philip of Flanders was a Grail as distinct from a Perceval romance. The two were independent stories and their combination was the work of Chrétien de Troyes. 'Dieser original Gralroman enthielt natürlich keinen Perceval und auch nicht dessen Sagen-motiv, sondern wird den uns sonst bekannten Gral-texten ähnlich gewesen sein.'[84] 'Sollte das livre aber, aller Unwahrscheinlichkeit zu trotz, dennoch ein Perceval (d. h. Dümmlings-) Roman gewesen sein, so erklärt sich ebenfalls warum das livre nicht gefunden worden ist: der Name Perceval stand natürlich nicht in demselben sondern ist durch Kristian von einem schon in Erec genannten Ritter auf den Helden übertragen worden.'[85]
Into such pitfalls can the obstinate adherence to a preconceived idea lead the most distinguished scholar! What are the facts? In Erec, Chrétien mentions Perceval by his full title, Perceval li Galois, as at Arthur's court, but does not include him in the list of knights of the Round Table;[86] but in Cligés, written some years later than Erec, and according to Professor Foerster himself between twenty and thirty years before the Perceval, the whole position is changed: Perceval is not merely one of Arthur's knights, but second in rank, inferior only to Gawain, thus displacing Erec, whose praises Chrétien had sung at length, and superior to Lancelot, whom the poet also celebrated before he wrote of Perceval.
This is the position. Cligés has come to a tournament at Ossenefort, and has on the first two days overthrown successively Segramore and Lancelot; on the third day:
Del ranc devers Ossenefort
Part uns vassaus de grant renon,
Percevaus li Galois ot non.
Lués que Cligés le vit movoir
Et de son non oï le voir,
Que Perceval l'oï nomer,
Mout desirre a lui asanbler.'—Cligés, 4826-32.