The Wagner Story Book: Firelight Tales of the Great Music Dramas

by William Henry Frost

"Oh, yes, I suppose so," she said, "but this has been such a nice year that I don't like to have it go. But now tell me what is in the fire."

"There are so many strange things in it that I scarcely know how to begin to tell you about them. I am very much afraid that I shall not make you understand all that I see in the fire to-night, and I am the more afraid of it because I am not at all sure that I can quite understand it all myself. But first the reddest and brightest spot in the whole fire begins to grow redder and brighter and to take a new shape. It is the shape of a goblet. It is of clear crystal and its sharp angles and edges sparkle with many colors, but within it that strange, deep red glows and shines and grows brighter still, till it beats and throbs as if it were alive. And all around it, too, there is a circle of soft rays of light, like a halo.

"Perhaps you know what this is, but I am afraid you don't Do you remember what I told you once about the Holy Grail? This is the Holy Grail—the cup from which the Saviour drank at the Last Supper, and in which afterwards His blood was caught as He hung upon the cross. It is that blood in the cup which is still alive and glows and beats and throbs. This Holy Grail, as I told you before, is guarded by a band of knights in a beautiful temple, which nobody can find except those whom the Grail itself has chosen and allowed to come. I can see the temple now. It has a high, light, graceful dome, which rests on tall pillars of marble that is like snow. The whole temple may be of something like snow, too, for it melts away so that I cannot see it and comes again, then half of it is gone and then the other half, so that I scarcely know whether I see it at all. Perhaps it is the smoke of the fire that makes it seem so. But I can see that the dome is all covered with figures and traceries of gold, which bloom out bright like flowers whenever the whole dome looks plainest, and then fade again. But when the smoke comes across the whole picture and darkens it for a moment, then the lines upon the dome show through it like fire, and they change and waver, and then the whole temple is gone again.

"You remember something about the Grail's knights. The Knight of the Swan was one of them. They live here in the temple, except when they are sent away on some journey, to help some one who is in trouble, to do some act of justice, to fight for the right, or to punish the wrong. And whether they stay here or go as far away as they can, they never need any food except what the Grail gives them. The Grail chooses them at first, feeds them afterwards, and gives them their commands, for sometimes, in that halo that shines around it, there appear letters and words to tell the knights what they should know. And once a year, on Good Friday, a white dove flies into the temple and rests upon the Holy Grail, to give it more of these powers for the coming year.

"I see now a strange-looking man with a dark face and deep, bright eyes which seem never to rest, but always to look and search for something that they never find. Yet now and then a cruel light comes into them and makes them blaze for an instant, and his hard lips smile a little, and then his face grows stern and gloomy again. He is a wicked magician. Once he wanted to join the Knights of the Grail. He could even be their king, he thought. But the Grail chose its own knights and it did not choose him. Then he swore that he would be avenged upon the Grail knights; he would tempt them away from the temple, he would overthrow them, he would find a way to steal the Grail itself. It was for this that he learned his magic. He built an enchanted castle not far from the Temple of the Grail and filled it with every kind of pleasure that he could devise. Then he tried to entice good knights to come to his castle, and if any knight came, if any stayed in the enchanted halls to eat or drink or dance or play, that knight was lost forever. He could go back to his old friends and his old life no more, and his use in the world was ended.

"Again I see a woman—a woman yet more strange than this man. You will think so when I tell you who she is. You remember the wife of the King, whose daughter danced before the King and pleased him so much that he promised her any gift she should ask; how the Queen told her to ask for the head of the great prophet, who was in prison, and how the head was cut off and brought to her. This woman whom I see was that Queen. The old stories say that she saw the Saviour as He passed, bearing His cross upon His back, and that she laughed at Him. He only looked at her sorrowfully and spoke no word. But always from that time she was forced to wander through the world, and laugh at everything that was true and good. Can you think of anything more horrible? After a long, weary time she wished that she might die, but still through all lands she journeyed, laughing at everything she saw that was sweet and pure and holy. The wish to die grew and grew till it was her only longing. But she could not die. For hundreds of years she has lived unchanged. Some say that she can never die or grow old till the best knight of all the world shall come and pardon her great sins. Others say that she must live till one comes whom she cannot tempt away by her beauty from the path he follows.

"For she is very beautiful. It is not the beauty of a common woman that she has, but something far beyond it. She can be tender, sweet, gentle, enticing, and then in an instant proud, defiant, radiant. Perhaps the wicked magician has given her some of this wonderful beauty by his magic, for she is in his power and helps him to entrap knights into his castle, where they lose all hope of returning to the life of the world and of doing good in it. She does not wish to do this, but the magician compels her. So always she must tempt and entice at his command the knights who come near his castle, and always she must long for one to come whom she cannot tempt, for then she will be free. The knights of the Grail are not the men for whom she waits. To tempt them is only too easy. Even their King cannot resist her.

"I see the King of the Grail now. He holds a spear in his hand that is almost as great and wonderful a thing as the Grail itself. From the point of the spear flows a little stream of blood. It trickles down the shaft of the spear to the King's hand that holds it, but the blood does not stain the hand; it flows over it and leaves it clean and white. It is the very spear with which the Roman soldier wounded the side of the Saviour, and ever since that time the blood has run from its point. But the King has wandered too far away from the Temple of the Grail and too near the magician's enchanted castle. The magician sees him and sends the woman to try to bring him within his power. Such wonderful beauty as hers the King has never seen before. For one instant in looking at her he forgets to guard the spear; he lets it go from his hand, the magician seizes it and strikes the King with it in the side. He is borne back to the temple with just such a wound as that other which this same spear made so many years ago. And the magician has the spear. As he holds it the blood flows from its point and trickles down the shaft, and as it flows over his hand it stains it a deep, ugly red. He carries the spear to his castle. He has stolen this, and now he will wait on and watch for a chance to steal the Grail.

"And the wound in the King's side will not heal. All that can be done with medicines and balsams and ointments is done, but they are of no use. Many years pass—yes, just while we are looking into the fire—and still the wound is the same, still it burns and stings, and still it bleeds again whenever the King uncovers the Grail so that it may feed the knights who are in the temple and help those who are far away. Some wounds, some sicknesses, the Grail itself can cure, but it cannot cure this, or it will not. Yet once, while the King knelt before it, he saw words that shone like fire in the halo around it, and they said: 'Wait for the simple Fool, taught by pity, for him I have chosen.' Perhaps you do not see quite what that means. Well, I don't think the King quite knows what it means either, but he knows that he has something to wait for, and that is better than knowing nothing at all about it. That was years ago, and still the wound burns and stings, and still it bleeds when the King uncovers the Grail.

"When we look into the fire we can go back through the years just as well as forward. So now, going back for a little while and far away from the Temple of the Grail, I see something very different from what we have seen before. I see a boy who lives with his mother in a forest. His father was a knight and was killed in battle. His mother feared that when he grew up he would want to be a knight too, and would be killed in the same way, so she brought him here to the forest and kept him away from the great world where men live and work and fight, and never let him know anything about knights or battles or tournaments or the courts of kings. She lets him learn to shoot with a bow as he grows up, and to hunt the beasts of the woods. He can hit any bird that flies with his arrows, and he runs so fast that he can catch the deer by the horns.