This is the Perceval who was only a name to Chrétien! But Chrétien's hero knows him! Can we avoid the conclusion that, at the time Cligés was written, Perceval was already the hero of a well-known and highly popular tale; so popular that the author felt justified in displacing in his favour the hero (Erec) whose deeds he had already sung with such marked success? If the story of Perceval li Galois be due to Chrétien, then we must believe that, having conceived the tale in his mind, and paved the way for its reception by the above reference, he yet abstained from presenting it to the public for nearly thirty years! Or could Perceval have been the hero of some other tale, the popularity of which has waned before that of Chrétien's poem? Of any story connected with him save the Enfances-Grail adventure there is no trace, and of these we have variants of the former minus the Grail tradition (Peredur and the English Sir Percyvelle); but all the Grail stories know the Enfances.
It is also significant that Chrétien in the Erec mentions both Gurnemanz (Gornemant) and L'Orguelleus de la Lande, both of them noted characters of the Perceval story; in fact, but for that story the former would be nothing more than a name to us.
I have remarked in a note to chap. ii. that Chrétien apparently also knew the enchanter of the Lanzelet. I had not noted this till I had completed my study of the poem, and, as a footnote is apt to be overlooked, I draw attention to it here. In the list of the knights of the Round Table given in Erec, Chrétien ranks as eighth Mauduiz li Sages; in Hartmann's translation the name is given as Malduiz li Sages; Diu Krône has Malduz der Weise; the Lanzelet spells the enchanter's name Malduz or Malduc, and qualifies him as der Wîse.[87]
I do not think there can be the least doubt that it is one and the same individual who is referred to in these quotations, and the only adventure known of him, and one which would fully account for his sobriquet li Sages, is one which is preserved in a poem bristling with Perceval allusions,[88] the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven.
I have said above that a critical edition of the Lanzelet is urgently needed, and I should not be surprised if the result of a close examination of that poem were to show good reasons for fixing the date of the Perceval story (as a Perceval and not a mere Dümmling story) at a much earlier period than we have hitherto been inclined to admit.[89]
Is it not the fact that story-tellers in mediæval times depended for their popularity less upon the manner in which they told their stories than on the stories themselves? i.e., if they wished to write a really popular poem they took a subject already popular, and which they knew would be secure of a favourable hearing. Are we really so unreasonable when we contend that it was the traditional, folk-lore, popular character of the stories told in Erec, Yvain, and Perceval, which made them so much more popular than Cligés? The Charrette is so manifestly inferior to Chrétien's other works that we will not call it as evidence; it was, and deserved to be, little known. But Cligés stands on a different footing. The story is interesting, it is well written, and the love-tale of Alexander and Soredamors contains some of the poet's most characteristic writing; yet, compared with the other poems, it took little hold on the popular fancy. Was it not because the story was unknown to the general public with whom the tale itself counted for more than the skill with which it was told?
I cannot but think that to treat such stories as the three named above, solely as Arthurian stories, is to base our criticism of them on an entirely false foundation: they are only Arthurian in a secondary sense, and criticism of them, to be accurate and scientific, must be founded as much on folk-lore as on literary data. Nor, I submit, are arguments, which may be sound enough as applied to the rise of the Arthurian romantic legend, of necessity equally sound when applied to stories of independent origin incorporated in that legend. I do not say for a moment that Arthur as a romantic hero is a continental creation, personally I very much doubt it; but of this I am quite certain, were that continental origin proved up to the hilt, it would still leave unsolved the problem of the origin of these stories.
Before closing this chapter I would touch for a moment on the geographical questions involved; for it seems to me that not sufficient account has been taken of the marked difference between the geography of these three and that of Chrétien's remaining two poems. The first three have a common character. Yvain's adventures pass in and on the borders of Wales. He starts from Carduel en Galles (Kardyf in the English version), and after one night's rest reaches the fountain. It is at Chester, not otherwise an Arthurian town, but one well within the bounds of the story, that his wife's messenger finds him. Erec is 'd'Estregalles'; the towns are Caradigan, Carduel, Cærnant, Nantes. So with Perceval, who is li Galois, we have Carduel, Dinasdron, the Forest of Broceliande—exactly the geography we might expect in stories of Welsh origin redacted on Armorican ground. Many of the names here, as in certain of the lais, may be either insular or continental, inasmuch as they are common to the Celtic race on both sides of the Channel.