In other words, the distinction between the cycles respectively attributed to Borron and to Map is not only the presence or absence of the personages of the Tristan story (as Dr. Wechssler supposes), but the much more important and radical distinction that, in the first the Queste was originally a Perceval, in the second always a Galahad Queste. It is surprising that this distinction had not occurred to the original framer of the thesis, any one familiar with the genuine Borron romances must be aware that the Queste they presuppose is a Perceval Queste. Probably the disinclination, to which I have referred above, to connect Lancelot with any Grail hero save his own son had very much to do with the matter; further, I do not think that Dr. Wechssler had formed a clear idea of the process of evolution of the cycle he postulated, which he represents as progressing by contraction, i.e. the earliest form being the fullest, or why that cycle should have been connected with the name of Robert de Borron. In fact, he reserves the discussion of the questions concerning original formation for another study.
Now I would submit that the rational progress of evolution is by expansion, not by contraction, and that the name of Robert de Borron became associated with a cycle representing the ensemble of Arthurian romance because there was a smaller cycle which was really the work of the genuine Robert de Borron, which smaller cycle formed the germ of the later and more extended body of romance.[141]
Scholars have long ago recognised that the three works attributed to Robert de Borron, and which, as we possess them, probably represent prose versions of that writer's original poems, are closely connected with each other, and have every appearance of having been intended to form one consecutive work. These three are the Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, and Perceval, which latter is only represented by one MS. and is what we generally call the 'Didot' Perceval.[142]
Now if we examine the Didot Perceval, as printed by Mr. Hucher in vol. i. of Le Saint Graal, we shall find that the last twenty pages, succeeding Perceval's achievement of the Grail Quest, are devoted to Arthur's expedition to France, his conquest of Frollo and war with Rome, succeeded by Mordred's treachery, the final battle and Arthur's departure for Avalon—in fact, precisely the contents of the Mort Artur, which, as we know, generally follows the Queste, only related in a more concise and summary manner;[143] and one more in accordance with the Chronicles than is the case with the other prose romances.
I think it is quite clear that the Perceval, whether in the original form in which Borron wrote it or not, as we possess it, shows distinct traces of having formed the concluding portion of a cycle.
It is quite obvious that a genuine Borron cycle, such as suggested above, would contain the germ of later expansion. Thus the Joseph of Arimathea certainly appears to represent what we may perhaps call the first draft of the Grand S. Graal. Merlin was certainly expanded into the Merlin Vulgate and Suite. Perceval represents Queste and Mort Artur. Only the Lancelot is unrepresented, and with that I do not think the original 'Borron' cycle had anything to do.
The introduction of the Lancelot probably belongs, as Dr. Wechssler suggests, to a subsequent writer, who borrowed the more famous name, to the pseudo-Borron; and from the quotation given by M. Paulin Paris, I should think it likely that, at first, the juxtaposition of the Lancelot and Perceval-Grail stories was purely external, and that they did not affect each other by contamination. The Didot Perceval may well have been the Queste of the earliest pseudo-Borron, whether or not it represents the Queste of the genuine Borron cycle.[144]
But the growing popularity of the Lancelot story would render such a contamination inevitable, and I am strongly tempted to believe that in that perplexing romance, the prose Perceval li Gallois, we have the Queste of a later pseudo-Borron cyclic redaction. The perplexing features of this version are well known: the whole tone is highly ecclesiastic, there are numerous references to an earlier Perceval story, Lancelot plays an important rôle, yet Galahad is unknown, and there are certain mysterious folk-lore features not met with elsewhere. Hitherto no one has succeeded in satisfactorily placing this romance. I would suggest that it represents the Queste of a late pseudo-Borron Lancelot-Perceval-Grail cycle; and I am encouraged in this supposition by the fact that this romance knows the Questing-Beast, a mysterious creation only found in the Suite Merlin and the Tristan Palamedes romances. Now the Suite Merlin claims to be by Robert de Borron, and the introduction of the Tristan figures into the Arthurian story is, as we saw above, held by Dr. Wechssler to be the distinctive 'note' of the Borron-cycle.[145]