Page [179], line 441—'If I, for your sake, be baptizèd.' It should be noted that Feirefis is not in the least influenced by any religious motive in seeking Baptism; throughout, as in the combat with Parzival in Book XV., it is Love that is his guiding impulse.
Page [181], line 501—'God is Man,' etc. Cf. p. [171] where Trevrezent makes use of exactly the same words.
Page [181], line 506—'Each tree from the water draweth,' etc. This and the following lines are inscribed on the fountain erected in 1860 to the memory of the poet, in the market-place of Ober-Eschenbach.
Page [182], line 526—'The Templar whom God henceforward.' In the face of the antiquity of the Swan-knight legend, it is impossible to regard this as more than an ingenious attempt on the part either of Wolfram or of his French authority to account for Lohengrin's prohibition of the question, cf. Note on 'Lohengrin.'
Page [183], line 562—'Anfortas, he sent a message.' Cf. Book IX. p. 285.
Page [183], line 566—'Lœhprisein,' Book VIII. and Note. 'Lœhtamreis,' Book XII. and Note.
Page [183], line 580—'Camelot.' This is the only mention in this poem of the town so well known in other versions of the Arthurian legend.
Page [184], line 589—'Prester John.' The belief in a Christian kingdom in the East, ruled over by a king who was at the same time a priest was very widely spread in the Middle Ages, but it is very curious to find it thus connected with the Grail legend. Simrock takes this connection to be a confirmation of his theory, that the Grail myth was originally closely connected with St. John the Baptist. According to Der jüngere Titurel, a poem which, professedly written by Wolfram and long supposed to be his, is now known to be the work of a certain Albert von Scharffenburg, the Grail with its guardians, Parzival, Lohengrin, Kondwiramur, and all the Templars, eventually left Monsalväsch, and found a home in the domains of Prester John, but the story seems to be due rather to the imagination of the writer than to any real legendary source.
Page [184], line 610, and seq.—'The Lohengrin myth.' This legend of a supernatural benefactor or deliverer, who arrives at the land which he is to benefit in a boat, miraculously guided, and leaves it in the same way, is extremely widely spread, and may be regarded rather as the property of the Aryan race as a whole, than of one nation in particular. In its earliest forms, such as the legend of Sceaf among the Anglo-Saxons, and Höni in the Faroe Isles, the hero is undoubtedly of divine origin, and the second of these seems to be the first in which the swan element is introduced. The original signification appears to be that of a 'year-myth,' symbolising the conflict between the seasons; the god of spring first overcoming, and then in his turn being overcome by, the power of winter. Bloete, in an article on the subject in the Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum, explains the connection with the swan by the fact that this is a migratory bird, and that in the days when the lower part of the Rhine formed a marshy Delta, swans frequented these lowlands in large numbers on their way to, and from, their summer quarters in Northern Europe. In this way the birds were the heralds alike of the coming and of the departing light and warmth, and became associated with the embodied genius of spring and summer. It is certainly a curious fact that the legend of the Swan-knight in its developed form is distinctly to be traced to these countries. The original association with the god of light, Bloete thinks, was the work of Keltic fancy, and by them imparted to their Batavian successors in the lowlands of the Rhine. By the thirteenth century, the story had clothed itself in distinctly chivalric form, the hero was no longer a god, but a knight, and in this shape the legend became connected with the origin of more than one noble family of the day; notably with that of Godfrey de Bouillon, the Crusader. It is noticeable in this connection that Gerbert, one of the continuators of Chrêtien, has a passage prophesying that of Perceval's race shall spring the 'Swan-knight and the Deliverer of the Holy Sepulchre.'