“the wind-hollowed heights and gusty bays
Of sheer Tintagel, fair with famous days.”[102]
Whence the French romancers derived the story it is impossible to say; but it is probable that it existed in the form of scattered popular lays long before the middle of the twelfth century. Fragments of two Tristan poems by the Anglo-Normans, Béroul and Thomas, otherwise known as Thomas de Bretagne, have come down to us.[103] These two poems were the foundations, respectively, of the German metrical versions of the story by Eilhart von Oberge and Gottfried von Strassburg.
The most intricate, though not the least fascinating, problem connected with the Arthurian legends is that of accounting for the origin, and for the attachment to the original Arthurian stock, of the story of the Grail and its quest. Here, at any rate, we have presented to us, in Tennyson’s words, “Soul at war with Sense”; and it is clear enough that the gradual manipulation of the Grail stories marks a deliberate effort by ecclesiastical writers to neutralise the influence of the dangerous ideals of chivalry upon Arthurian romance. Celibacy had to be shown to be compatible with true knighthood; there was no reason why a knight-errant should make love, and, all too often, illicit love, the sole motive of his quest for adventure. So, we have ultimately created for us the character of Galahad, who
“never felt the kiss of love
Nor maiden’s hand in his,”
and who alone, by virtue of his purity, is allowed to “find the Holy Grail.” The earlier forms of the Grail legend know nothing of Galahad, nor is there any reason for supposing that they had any religious significance. Gawain, apparently,—he who, in his progress through the romances, degenerates so much as to be finally described as “light in life and light in death,”[104]—was the original hero of the Grail quest. It is Perceval, however, who is the central figure of the best-known versions of the story—as, for example, the Conte del Graal, the Welsh Peredur, and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. But Perceval was not immaculate, and so had to be superseded by one who “exemplified, in a yet more uncompromising, yet more inhuman, spirit, the ideal of militant asceticism,”[105]—the virginal and youngest knight of the Round Table, Galahad. And, in order to establish Galahad’s right to a place in the Arthurian fellowship, he is introduced as the son of Lancelot. Here is an artistic touch deserving much more appreciation than it has yet generally received. The sin of Lancelot is largely expiated by the unsullied purity of his son. Truly, the “militant ascetics” knew their romantic business as well as the best of the secular scribes.[106]
It is unnecessary, here, to outline the various ramifications of the Grail legend, or to summarise the conflicting theories advanced as to its origin and meaning. It comes to be connected with Arthur’s court mainly through the knightly Perceval, who, though ultimately deposed as the Grail hero by Galahad, remains to the end the real protagonist of the story. The Grail romances are usually divided into two classes,—one dealing with the “Quest” proper, and the other with the “Early History” of the Holy Grail. In the “Quest” group of stories—three of which have been named above—the main interest lies in the personality of Perceval, and in his adventures in search of certain talismans, which include a sword, a bleeding lance and a “grail,” the latter, in Chrétien’s poem, a magic vessel, in Wolfram’s, a stone. The “Early History” group—of which the chief representatives are the Joseph of Arimathea and the Merlin of Robert de Borron, and the Quête del St Graal attributed to Map,—dwell chiefly upon the origin and nature of these talismans. The Grail legends, as given in these and other romances, and so far as they can be put into a coherent whole, are undoubtedly a compound of remote mythical and pagan elements, probably Celtic,[107] and of later accretions due to monastic writers deliberately bent upon edification. A flagrant example of the way in which the legends were turned to ecclesiastical uses is furnished by the identification of the Grail with the cup of the Last Supper, which Pilate gave to Joseph of Arimathea, and in which Joseph treasured the blood that flowed from the Saviour’s wounds on the Cross. Joseph brought this cup to Britain, and thus the Grail came to be connected with the mythical story which attributed to Joseph the first evangelisation of these islands.
It has been said that Gawain was, in all probability, the original hero of the Grail quest.[108] Whatever the truth may be about that matter, there can be no doubt that Gawain is the most famous of all the knights grouped around Arthur in pre-romantic tradition. He figures largely in the Welsh Triads and in the Mabinogion under the name of Gwalchmei, and in the story of Arthur’s wars as told by Geoffrey he is the king’s most powerful lieutenant. Originally a mythical hero, he was probably the centre of a cycle of traditional stories as old as, if not older than, anything fabled or sung of Arthur.[109] No other knight of the Arthurian court is the hero of so many episodic romances and poems, while there is no more prominent figure in Arthurian literature generally. No other knight, however, is subjected to such churlish treatment at the hands of the romancers as he. In the earlier stages of Arthurian story—in the Mabinogion, especially,—Gawain appears as the very flower of chivalrous knighthood, no less courteous and gracious than brave. His degradation is due largely to the later manipulators of the Grail legends, who could not brook the importance attached to so worldly a character. Malory and Tennyson follow in their footsteps, until for modern readers Gawain is branded with the words put into the mouth of Bedivere in The Passing of Arthur,—of Bedivere, who, as one of Gawain’s oldest associates in Arthur’s service, ought to have been spared the indignity of having attributed to him so mean an aspersion upon a comrade in arms:
“Light was Gawain in life, and light in death