GRAHAM’S DYKE (or Sheugh = trench), a local name for the Roman fortified frontier, consisting of rampart, forts and road, which ran across the narrow isthmus of Scotland from the Forth to the Clyde (about 36 m.), and formed from A.D. 140 till about 185 the northern frontier of Roman Britain. The name is locally explained as recording a victorious assault on the defences by one Robert Graham and his men; it has also been connected with the Grampian Hills and the Latin surveying term groma. But, as is shown by its earliest recorded spelling, Grymisdyke (Fordun, A.D. 1385), it is the same as the term Grim’s Ditch which occurs several times in England in connexion with early ramparts—for example, near Wallingford in south Oxfordshire or between Berkhampstead (Herts) and Bradenham (Bucks). Grim seems to be a Teutonic god or devil, who might be credited with the wish to build earthworks in unreasonably short periods of time. By antiquaries the Graham’s Dyke is usually styled the Wall of Pius or the Antonine Vallum, after the emperor Antoninus Pius, in whose reign it was constructed. See further [Britain]: Roman.
(F. J. H.)
GRAHAM’S TOWN, a city of South Africa, the administrative centre for the eastern part of the Cape province, 106 m. by rail N.E. of Port Elizabeth and 43 m. by rail N.N.W. of Port Alfred. Pop. (1904) 13,887, of whom 7283 were whites and 1837 were electors. The town is built in a basin of the grassy hills forming the spurs of the Zuurberg, 1760 ft. above sea-level. It is a pleasant place of residence, has a remarkably healthy climate, and is regarded as the most English-like town in the Cape. The streets are broad, and most of them lined with trees. In the High Street are the law courts, the Anglican cathedral of St George, built from designs by Sir Gilbert Scott, and Commemoration Chapel, the chief place of worship of the Wesleyans, erected by the British emigrants of 1820. The Roman Catholic cathedral of St Patrick, a Gothic building, is to the left of the High Street. The town hall, also in the Gothic style, has a square clock tower built on arches over the pavement. Graham’s Town is one of the chief educational centres in the Cape province. Besides the public schools and the Rhodes University College (which in 1904 took over part of the work carried on since 1855 by St Andrew’s College), scholastic institutions are maintained by religious bodies. The town possesses two large hospitals, which receive patients from all parts of South Africa, and the government bacteriological institute. It is the centre of trade for an extensive pastoral and agricultural district. Owing to the sour quality of the herbage in the surrounding zuurveld, stock-breeding and wool-growing have been, however, to some extent replaced by ostrich-farming, for which industry Graham’s Town is the most important entrepôt. Dairy farming is much practised in the neighbourhood.
In 1812 the site of the town was chosen as the headquarters of the British troops engaged in protecting the frontier of Cape Colony from the inroads of the Kaffirs, and it was named after Colonel John Graham (1778-1821), then commanding the forces. (Graham had commanded the light infantry battalion at the taking of the Cape by the British in the action of the 6th of January 1806. He also took part in campaigns in Italy and Holland during the Napoleonic wars.) In 1819 an attempt was made by the Kaffirs to surprise Graham’s Town, and 10,000 men attacked it, but they were repulsed by the garrison, which numbered not more than 320 men, infantry and artillery, under Lieut.-Colonel (afterwards General Sir) Thomas Willshire. In 1822 the town was chosen as the headquarters of the 4000 British immigrants who had reached Cape Colony in 1820. It has maintained its position as the most important inland town of the eastern part of the Cape province. In 1864 the Cape parliament met in Graham’s Town, the only instance of the legislature sitting elsewhere than in Cape Town. It is governed by a municipality. The rateable value in 1906 was £891,536 and the rate levied 2½d. in the pound.
See T. Sheffield, The Story of the Settlement ... (2nd ed., Graham’s Town, 1884); C. T. Campbell, British South Africa ... with notices of some of the British Settlers of 1820 (London, 1897).
GRAIL, THE HOLY, the famous talisman of Arthurian romance, the object of quest on the part of the knights of the Round Table. It is mainly, if not wholly, known to English readers through the medium of Malory’s translation of the French Quête du Saint Graal, where it is the cup or chalice of the Last Supper, in which the blood which flowed from the wounds of the crucified Saviour has been miraculously preserved. Students of the original romances are aware that there is in these texts an extraordinary diversity of statement as to the nature and origin of the Grail, and that it is extremely difficult to determine the precise value of these differing versions.[1] Broadly speaking the Grail romances have been divided into two main classes: (1) those dealing with the search for the Grail, the Quest, and (2) those relating to its early history. These latter appear to be dependent on the former, for whereas we may have a Quest romance without any insistence on the previous history of the Grail, that history is never found without some allusion to the hero who is destined to bring the quest to its successful termination. The Quest versions again fall into three distinct classes, differentiated by the personality of the hero who is respectively Gawain, Perceval or Galahad. The most important and interesting group is that connected with Perceval, and he was regarded as the original Grail hero, Gawain being, as it were, his understudy. Recent discoveries, however, point to a different conclusion, and indicate that the Gawain stories represent an early tradition, and that we must seek in them rather than in the Perceval versions for indications as to the ultimate origin of the Grail.
The character of this talisman or relic varies greatly, as will be seen from the following summary.