The Lost Land of King Arthur

by John Cuming Walters

That holy Vision, Galahad, go on.”

To this very spot, too, if legend be true, the knights who had failed returned.

The story of the Holy Grail is too profound and complex a study to be treated in these pages save in the most superficial and limited manner. Volumes have been and still can be devoted to the subject, and yet not exhaust all that is to be told of this world-legend with its infinite variations and its numberless phases and meanings. Like a river of many obscure sources, most of which are now partly known, thanks to the perseverance of the most devoted and painstaking of exploring scholars, it gathers in volume upon the way, and to trace it backward or onward involves an equally long and tortuous journey. The primary form of the legend, the actual beginning of the Grail romance cycle, remains a mystery and seemingly undiscoverable. The oldest poems on the subject, those of Christien de Troyes and Robert de Borron, were founded upon a model, or models, absolutely untraced. That it was a primitive Celtic tradition admits of no doubt, but when Walter Map incorporated the legend into the Arthurian story in the thirteenth century there were Latin, German, and French originals for him to work upon. In one chief version of the narrative Perceval is the supreme figure; in the other Galahad, Perceval, and Bors all achieve a measure of success, the first named being the absolute victor and the others being admitted to partial triumph. The Christian element in the cycle is distinct almost throughout, and the many versions have one point in common—the sanctity of the Grail, its connection with the Saviour, or with John the Baptist, and its continued miraculous power proceeding from this connection. But the Celtic originals would be free from traces of Christian symbolism. In Malory we find the Holy Vessel in the possession of King Pelleas, nigh cousin to Joseph. When the king and Sir Lancelot went to take their repast a dove entered the window of the castle, and she bore in her bill a little censer of gold from which proceeded a savour as if all the spicery of the world had been there. The table was forthwith filled with good meats and drinks by means of the Grail, “the richest thing that any man hath living,” as King Pelleas declared. Whether the Grail was a chalice which received the blood of the crucified Lord; whether, as others have affirmed, it was the dish on which the head of John the Baptist had lain; or whether it was a miraculous stone which fell from the crown of the revolting angels made for Lucifer, the belief in its reality in early times must have been sincere and ineradicable. It was said to have sustained Joseph during an imprisonment of forty-two years; the fisherman king, Pelleas, needed no food while it was in his keeping. This is set forth in Wolfram’s “Parzival”—

“Whate’er one’s wishes did command,

That found he ready to his hand.”

Wolfram von Eschenbach, to whom both Germans and English owe so much, found a collection of badly joined fables which he turned into an epic, making Parzival (Perceval) the hero and the Grail quest the central incident. Wolfram knew nothing of Joseph of Arimathæa; but Mr. Alfred Nutt has pointed out that the Joseph form of the Grail story and the Perceval form may really form one organic whole, or the one part may be an explanatory after-thought. Whether the Christian element was influenced by Celtic tradition, or whether the Christian legend was superimposed upon the Celtic basis, is the subtle point which few care to say is decided. The suggestion has been thrown out that the Grail legend may even be of Jewish origin, and that in singing of their Holy City whose walls should be called “salvation,” whose gates “praise,” and whose “stones should be laid in fair colours,” they supplied the germ from which in mediæval ages the Grail-myth sprang. The Grail was an article of strong belief with the Templars who worshipped the head of John the Baptist, which was reported to have been found in the fourth century, to have kept an Emperor from dying at Constantinople, and to have provided nourishment for all who were engaged upon religious crusades. The idea of the Holy City seems again to recall the aspiration of the Templars, and the Sarras of romance may have been none other than Jerusalem. Mr. Nutt has been able to adduce Celtic parallels for all the leading incidents in the romance of the Grail, while the many inconsistencies in the versions are explained by the fusion of two originally distinct groups of stories. It is, as Mr. Nutt aptly says, the Christian transformation of the old Celtic myths and folk-tales which “gave them their wide vogue in the Middle Ages, which endowed the theme with such fascination for the preachers and philosophers who use it as a vehicle for their teaching, and which has endeared it to all lovers of mystic symbolism.”

Four of Malory’s “Books” treat of the quest of the Holy Grail and of the adventures of the knights who undertook it. These “Books” supply the spiritual and religious leaven of the romance. Only by stainless and honourable lives, not by prowess and courage, so the knights were taught, could the final goal be reached. Success in the tournament and in war was achieved by inferior means. Hardihood and skill were of no avail where the Grail was the prize. “I let you to wit,” said King Pelleas, “here shall no knight win worship but if he be of worship himself and good living, and that loveth God; and else he getteth no worship here, be he ever so hardy.” Sinful Lancelot was fated to test this truth. Struggle manfully as he would, victory was not for him, though, as the old hermit told Sir Bors, “had not his sin been, he had passed all the knights that ever were in his days”; but “sin is so foul in him that he may not achieve such holy deeds.” The devoted knights might speak of Lancelot’s nobleness and courtesy, his beauty and gentleness, but the quest was not for him. His expiation was severe. Of the hundred and fifty knights—“the fairest fellowship and the truest of knighthood that ever were seen together in any realm of the world—whom King Arthur reluctantly allowed to seek for the Grail, only one, the virgin Galahad, could enter the Castle of Maidens and deliver the prisoners, could hear the voices of angels foretelling his triumph, could find the Grail, and could be crowned in the holy city of Sarras, the ‘spiritual place.’” It was in this city that Joseph had been succoured; it was here that Perceval’s sister was entombed; it was here by general assent that the pure Galahad was proclaimed king; and it was here that the Grail remained. “And when he was come for to behold the land, he let make about the table of silver a chest of gold and of precious stones, that covered the holy vessel; and every day in the morning the three fellows (Perceval and Bors with Galahad) would come before it, and say their devotions.” At the year’s end Galahad saw a man kneeling before the Grail; he was in the likeness of the bishop: it was Joseph. The saint told the virgin knight that his victory had been complete and his life perfect. “And therewith,” runs the beautiful chronicle, “he kneeled down before the table and made his prayers; and then suddenly his soul departed unto Jesus Christ, and a great multitude of angels bare his soul up to heaven that his two fellows might behold it; also, his two fellows saw come from heaven a hand, but they saw not the body, and then it came right to the vessel and took it, and the spear, and so bare it up to heaven. Since then was there never a man so hardy for to say that he had seen the Sancgreal.”

Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle]

ST. KNIGHTON’S GLEN