Bibliography.—For the Gawain Grail visits see the Potvin edition of the Perceval, which, however, only gives the Bleheris version; the second visit is found in the best and most complete MSS., such as 12,576 and 12,577 (Fonds français) of the Paris library. Diu Crône, edited by Scholl (Stuttgart, 1852). vol. vi. of Arthurian Romances (Nutt), gives a translation of the Bleheris, Diu Crône and Prose Lancelot visits.
The Conte del Graal, or Perceval, is only accessible in the edition of M. Potvin (6 vols., 1866-1871). The Mons MS., from which this has been printed, has proved to be an exceedingly poor and untrustworthy text. Parzival, by Wolfram von Eschenbach, has been frequently and well edited; the edition by Bartsch (1875-1877), in Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters, contains full notes and a glossary. Suitable for the more advanced student are those by K. Lachmann (1891), Leitzmann (1902-1903) and E. Martin (1903). There are modern German translations by Simrock (very close to the original) and Hertz (excellent notes). English translation with notes and appendices by J. L. Weston. “Didot” Perceval, ed. Hucher, Le Saint Graal (1875-1878), vol. i. Perlesvaus was printed by Potvin, under the title of Perceval le Gallois, in vol. i. of the edition above referred to; a Welsh version from the Hengwert MS. was published with translation by Canon R. Williams (2 vols., 1876-1892). Under the title of The High History of the Holy Grail a fine version was published by Dr Sebastian Evans in the Temple Classics (2 vols., 1898). The Grand Saint Graal was published by Hucher as given above; this edition includes the Joseph of Arimathea. A 15th century metrical English adaptation by one Henry Lovelich, was printed by Dr Furnivall for the Roxburghe Club 1861-1863; a new edition was undertaken for the Early English Text Society. Quête du Saint Graal can best be studied in Malory’s somewhat abridged translation, books xiii.-xviii. of the Morte Arthur. It has also been printed by Dr Furnivall for the Roxburghe Club, from a MS. in the British Museum. Neither of these texts is, however, very good, and the student who can decipher old Dutch would do well to read it in the metrical translation published by Joenckbloet, Roman van Lanceloet, as the original here was considerably fuller.
For general treatment of the subject see Legend of Sir Perceval, by J. L. Weston, Grimm Library, vol. xvii. (1906); Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, by A. Nutt (1888), and a more concise treatment of the subject by the same writer in No. 14 of Popular Studies (1902); Professor Birch-Hirschfeld’s Die Sage vom Gral (1877). The late Professor Heinzel’s Die alt-französischen Gral-Romane contains a mass of valuable matter, but is very confused and ill-arranged. For the Fécamp legend see Leroux de Lincey’s Essai sur l’abbaye de Fescamp (1840); for the Volto Santo and kindred legends, Ernest von Dobschütz, Christus-Bilder (Leipzig, 1899).
(J. L. W.)
[1] The etymology of the O. Fr. graal or greal, of which “grail” is an adaptation, has been much discussed. The Low Lat. original, gradale or grasale, a flat dish or platter, has generally been taken to represent a diminutive cratella of crater, bowl, or a lost cratale, formed from the same word (see W. W. Skeat, Preface to Joseph of Arimathie, Early Eng. Text Soc).—Ed.
GRAIN (derived through the French from Lat. granum, seed, from an Aryan root meaning “to wear down,” which also appears in the common Teutonic word “corn”), a word particularly applied to the seed, in botanical language the “fruit,” of cereals, and hence applied, as a collective term to cereal plants generally, to which, in English, the term “corn” is also applied (see [Grain Trade]). Apart from this, the chief meaning, the word is used of the malt refuse of brewing and distilling, and of many hard rounded small particles, resembling the seeds of plants, such as “grains” of sand, salt, gold, gunpowder, &c. “Grain” is also the name of the smallest unit of weight, both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Its origin is supposed to be the weight of a grain of wheat, dried and gathered from the middle of the ear. The troy grain = 1/5760 of a ℔, the avoirdupois grain = 1/7000 of a ℔. In diamond weighing the grain = ¼ of the carat, = .7925 of the troy grain. The word “grains” was early used, as also in French, of the small seed-like insects supposed formerly to be the berries of trees, from which a scarlet dye was extracted (see [Cochineal] and [Kermes]). From the Fr. en graine, literally in dye, comes the French verb engrainer, Eng. “engrain” or “ingrain,” meaning to dye in any fast colour. From the further use of “grain” for the texture of substances, such as wood, meat, &c., “engrained” or “ingrained” means ineradicable, impregnated, dyed through and through. The “grain” of leather is the side of a skin showing the fibre after the hair has been removed. The imitating in paint of the grain of different kinds of woods is known as “graining” (see [Painter-Work]). “Grain,” or more commonly in the plural “grains,” construed as a singular, is the name of an instrument with two or more barbed prongs, used for spearing fish. This word is Scandinavian in origin, and is connected with Dan. green, Swed. gren, branch, and means the fork of a tree, of the body, or the prongs of a fork, &c. It is not connected with “groin,” the inguinal parts of the body, which in its earliest forms appears as grynde.