This is a distorted reminiscence of the practice which seems to have obtained in the courts of Welsh princes, that a high officer should hold the king's feet in his lap while he sat at meat.
“Hawthorn, King of the Giants.”
The gods of the family of Dōn are thus conceived as servitors to Arthur, who in this story is evidently the god Artaius.
“She of the White Track.” Compare the description of Etain, pp. [157], [158].
There is no other mention of this Kenverchyn or of how Owain got his raven-army, also referred to in “The Dream of Rhonabwy.” We have here evidently a piece of antique mythology embedded in a more modern fabric.
Like the Breton Tale of “Peronnik the Fool,” translated in “Le Foyer Bréton,” by Emile Souvestre. The syllable Per which occurs in all forms of the hero's name means in Welsh and Cornish a bowl or vessel (Irish coire—see [a]p. 35, note]). No satisfactory derivation has in any case been found of the latter part of the name.
“They are nourished by a stone of most noble nature ... it is called lapsit exillîs; the stone is also called the Grail.” The term lapsit exillîs appears to be a corruption for lapis ex celis, “the stone from heaven.”
The true derivation is from the Low Latin cratella, a small vessel or chalice.
A similar selective action is ascribed to the Grail by Wolfram. It can only be lifted by a pure maiden when carried into the hall, and a heathen cannot see it or be benefited by it. The same idea is also strongly marked in the story narrating the early history of the Grail by Robert de Borron, about 1210: the impure and sinful cannot benefit by it. Borron, however, does not touch upon the Perceval or “quest” portion of the story at all.
Hades.