Page [48], line 406—'No wife was she but a maiden.' Book IX. p. 283, where a full account of Herzeleide's marriage will be found, 'Herzeleide.' The modern German rendering of this name carries with it its own interpretation in the play of words familiar through Wagner's Parsifal, 'Ihr brach das Leid das Herz und Herzeleide starb.' But the original form, Herzeloyde, indicates, in Bartsch's opinion, a Southern French modification, loyde being a variant of hildis, oildis. The name Rischoydè, we know in its form of Richilda, and Herzeloyde seems to come from the same root. Professor Rhys (Arthurian Romance, p. 180) has suggested derivation from the Welsh argelwythes = 'the lady,' but the suggestion has not won general acceptance.
Page [54], line 614—'The maid and her lands he won.' Readers will doubtless remark the fact that though we meet with numerous allusions to marriages and marriage festivities throughout the poem, yet in no single instance is the marriage attended by a religious ceremony. This is an indication of the original date of the story, which testifies to a very early stage of social development. The original idea of marriage was that of a contract made by mutual consent publicly before witnesses, as we find here in the marriages of Gamuret with Belakané and Herzeleide, or later on in Book IV., the marriage of Parzival and Kondwiramur. The mutual promise being given and witnessed, the contract was complete, and the marriage might be consummated at once. The office of the Church seems at first to have been confined to conferring a benediction on a union already completed, and therefore we find that, even so late as the thirteenth century, the religious ceremony followed, and did not precede, the marriage night. San Marte, in his note on the subject, quotes more than one romance of this date where this is the case, and it was not till the idea of marriage as a sacrament had displaced that of marriage as a civil contract that the religious ceremony became essential to a valid union. The fact that Wolfram, with his high ideas of the binding nature of the marriage-vow, never once mentions the religious ceremony is a strong argument in favour of the presumption that the subject-matter of the Parzival is considerably older than his treatment of it. Marriage between a Christian and a heathen was held to be null and void, and, according to the ideas of the age, Herzeleide was fully within her rights in claiming Gamuret as her husband and in regarding his previous marriage as non-existent. The costly presents made by the bridegroom, as for instance the gift of Waleis and Norgals to Herzeleide by her first husband, seem to have been a survival of the idea that the woman was property, to be bought by the intending husband. The bride, on her part, gave equally rich gifts, so we find Kondwiramur bestowing castles and lands on Parzival, and the mutual interchange of these gifts was an essential part of the marriage contract.
Page [56], line 674—'The panther.' The badge of the House of Anjou was a leopard.
Page [59], lines 744, 745. The idea that a diamond might be softened by the application of a he-goat's blood is very old. San Marte says it is mentioned by Pliny. Hartmann refers to it in his Erec, and it seems to have been a general belief in the Middle Ages.
BOOK III
The first two books of this poem are peculiar to Wolfram. Among the different versions of the Perceval legend which we possess there is a curious diversity of statement as to the parentage of the hero; though, as a rule, they agree in the main facts of the death of his father, either before, or shortly after, Perceval's birth, and his being brought up in the desert by his widowed mother.
With the Third Book we find ourselves on ground common to most transcribers of the legend; and in this and the following books a table of the traditional events contained in the book, with the other versions of the story in which they occur, will be given. The following are the Romances of the Grail-cycle which deal more particularly with the Perceval legend.—
Li Conte del Graal, poem by Chrêtien de Troyes; left unfinished at Chrêtien's death; it was continued by three other writers; the poem as we have it, is the work of at least four different hands.
Peredur: Welsh tale found in the Red Book of Hergest.
Perceval: A French prose romance, ascribed by many critics to Robert de Borron.