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Chapter II.

The Theory of Celtic Origin.

I have so far presented the theory which appears to me to offer the most acceptable explanation of the origin of the Grail. We have, however, the rival theory of Celtic origin to consider, the most important advocates of which have been the late Alfred Nutt, and, among living scholars, A. C. L. Brown.2 Nutt was primarily a folk-lorist and he accordingly approaches the subject

1

In his chief work, Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail (London, 1888) also, in the Legends of the Holy Grail (No. 14 of Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance, and Folk-Lore, London, 1902), and other minor publications.

2

In various papers, to be named as occasion arises. So, too Rhys in Ch. 13, "Origins of the Holy Grail," and Ch. 14, "Glastonbury and Gower," of his work, cited in the next to the last note. For the reasons there stated, however, despite his eminence as a Welsh scholar, Rhys's contributions to the present subject are not profitable reading. Indeed, they strike me as fantastic to the last degree. Ch. 15, "Isles of the Dead," on the other hand, has an independent value for its discussion of such conceptions in the Celtic world.

In his review of Nutt's Studies, Romania, XVIII, 588 ff. (1889) G. Paris thinks that Nutt has proved "l'origine celtique d'une grande partie des élements qui figurent dans les romans du saint graal." He commends, especially, in this connection, the Gaelic tale of the Great Fool, which the English scholar adduces as a parallel to the accounts of Perceval's youth in the Arthurian romances. On the other hand, he speaks of Nutt's parallels to the Grail itself as merely plausible and of his hypothesis "sur l'origine britannique de la 'préhistoire' du graal" as wanting in solidity. But after Zimmer, Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, June 10, 1890, objected to the Great Fool parallel as too modern, Nutt, Folk-Lore, III, 401 f. withdrew that parallel, "for the present, at least," and, as far as I am aware, never brought it forward again in his discussions of the Grail.

from that point of view. He says: "Leaving subsidiary details out of account, we may bring all the instances in which the Grail appears under two formulas: that of the kinsman avenging a blood feud by the means of the three magic talismans, sword and lance and vessel; and that of the visit to the Bespelled Castle, the inmates of which enjoy, thanks to the magic vessel, a supernaturally prolonged life, from which they are released by the hero's question concerning that vessel. The one we may call the feud quest, the other the unspelling quest." "The castle to which the avenger must penetrate to win the talismans [i.e. vessel, sword, etc.] and that to which the hero comes with the intent of freeing its lords are both symbols of the otherworld" (p. 183). He finds the original of the Grail, then, in certain magic vessels that had the power of supplying food to an unlimited extent. He cites the cauldron of the Dagda (the good god) in the Irish legend of the Tuatha de Danann (a race of fairies and wizards who possessed Ireland before the Milesian invasion). There is considerable doubt, however, about the antiquity of this tradition. Less open to suspicion on this score is the next saga of The Battle of Magh Rath, which relates to events that took place in the seventh century and which seems to have been written down in the latter half of the twelfth century (p. 185). Here we are told how the sons of the King of Alba sought to obtain from their father the 'Caire Ainsicen' so called, because it was the caire or cauldron which was used to return his own proper share to each and no party ever went away from it unsatisfied; for whatever quantity was put into it there was never boiled of it but what was sufficient for the company according to their grade or rank. "The [Irish] writer then goes on to instance similar cauldrons te be met with in the older history of Ireland. These may nearly all be referred to the oldest Irish heroic cycle, the Ultonian, of which Cuchullain is the most prominent figure" (p. 185). Two of the instances in question are cited from two of the most celebrated tales of this cycle the Toghail Bruighne da Derga and the Tale of Mac Datho's Pig.

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Nutt cited, also (p. 186), the cauldron of Bran in the Welsh tale of Branwen, the daughter of Llyr, which dates from the end of the twelfth century or beginning of the thirteenth. Here, however, the vessel is not food-producing, but it has (like Medea's cauldron) the power of bringing the dead to life again. As is said in the tale: "The property of it is that if one of thy men be slain to-day and be cast therein, the morrow he will be as well as ever he was at his best, except that he will not regain his speech." There is also a vessel of balsam in various Gaelic tales that has this revivifying power.

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A. C. L. Brown has similarly identified the Bleeding Lance of Chrétien with the Luin of Celtchar of Irish saga a marvellous spear. In the Bruden Da Derga (= Destruction of Da Derga's Palace) it is said of this lance that "a cauldron full of poison is needed to quench it when a deed of manslaying is expected. Unless this come to the lance, it flames on its haft and will go through its bearer or the master of the palace wherein it is. If it is to be a blow that is to given thereby, it will kill a man at every blow, when it is at that feat from one hour to another, though it may not reach him. And if it be a cast, it will kill nine men at every cast, and one of the nine will be a king or crown prince or chieftain of the reavers" (Brown, p. 18). In another Irish saga, the Mesca Ulad (= Intoxication of the Ultonians), the cauldron which was

4

5

Cp. Loth's Mabinogion, I, 30.

Rhys, Arthurian Legend, pp. 305 ff., however, has cited foodproducing vessels from Welsh tradition. He thinks (p. 312) that the Mwys (basket) of Gwyddno Garanhir, described in Kulhwch and Olwen (Loth's Mabinogion, 1, 305) is more nearly, "the pagan prototype of the Grail of Christian romance" than anything else in Welsh. Although the whole world, in groups of thrice nine men, should present themselves, every man would find food to his taste in this basket.

6

A. C. L. Brown argues, Kittredge Anniversary Papers, p. 244, note 2, for a connection between the regenerating Celtic cauldron and the cauldron of plenty. All that one can legitimately say on the subject, however, is that they are both fairy-tale fancies of a kindred order. So, too, it seems to me, with the cauldron of inspiration in the Welsh story of Gwion, cited by Nutt, pp. 210f.

7

Cp. his article, "The Bleeding Lance", PMLA, XXV, 1 H. (1910).

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...

needed to quench the ardour of the wondrous spear is described as 'a blood-black cauldron of horrid, noxious liquid . . . composed through sorcery of the blood of dogs, cats and Druids" (p. 22). Brown, himself, however, acknowledges (p. 23) that perpetual bleeding is not mentioned in the Irish sagas as one of the marvellous properties of the Luin, and the same is true of all other wonderful weapons in Irish and Welsh saga. A spear dipped into a cauldron of blood to render it innocuous to its owner and those nearby is, certainly, a very different affair from the lance of Chrétien's procession. As Miss Peebles (p. 194) very sensibly remarks: "With the Christian lance [i.e. lance of Longinus] so obviously and suitably at hand, in literature, which, as writers of romances, themselves, they must have known, in art productions which they must have seen, and in the drama with which they must have been familiar, why should the Grail romancers seek a bleeding lance in the Luin of Celtchar, which after all does not bleed."8

Professor Brown cites (pp. 42ff.) also in this connection the story of Balin and the Dolorous Stroke which is found in the HuthMerlin, I, 231ff.: In the palace of King Pellehan, pursued by its lord, Balin comes to a room filled with the fragrance of spices with a great silver bowl on a table in the centre and within this basin stood a lance perpendicularly pointing downward, "and any one looking at it would have marvelled because it was not inserted nor supported, nor fastened anywhere." Balin was on the point of taking it and a voice said to him: "Do not take it, sinner."

8

Brugger, Zs. f. frz. Spr. u. Litt., XXXVI, 189 f., in reviewing Brown's study, also, denies any connection of the spear of the Grail procession with this Luin of Celtechar, although he, like Brown, believes in the Celtic origin of the Grail legend.

In his article, "An Old Irish Parallel to the Motive of the Bleeding Lance," Eriu, VI, 156f. (1912) Kuno Meyer has printed an Irish poem which is supposed to offer a parallel to the lance of the Grail story: A chieftain pollutes the hall of Tara by secretly and mischievously bringing into it a bloody head on a pole or lance of the quicken-tree, while the king was holding a feast. Meyer thinks that the text is probably of the tenth century. Obviously, however, we have here again merely a bloody, not a bleeding lance.

But he did not refrain on this account from taking it with both hands and he struck with it Pellehan who was coming against him so vehemently that he thrust it through both of his thighs." The king fell to the earth and the knight returned the lance to the place from which he had taken it, and when he had replaced it, it stood as before. This was the Dolorous Stroke which Merlin had prophesied (I, 231) would put the kingdom in distress for twentytwo years and would wound the most holy man there was in the world." And so, as a matter of fact, desolation does overtake the land. Later on Balin is slain in a duel with his brother unnatural combat which has been made the subject of poems by both Tennyson (Balin and Balan) and Swinburne (The Tale of Balen). The Huth-Merlin, however, is a late prose-romance, and, like all the prose-romances, it is not based directly on Celtic sources

an

on the contrary, it is made up mainly by rehashing episodes in previous romances, and this very story of Balin and the Dolorous Stroke is plainly an invention that combines features of the Grail Castle episodes of the earlier romances with other features that are drawn from the prose Lancelot, the episode of Gawain and the Perilous Bed.10

Altogether Professor Brown (p. 57) takes the Grail, Lance, and Sword of Chrétien's Grail Procession as going back to the shining talismans of the Tuatha Da Danaan, viz. the Stone of Destiny, the Cauldron of the Dagda," the Spear of Lug and the

9

The development of the various versions from the Middle Ages down has been discussed by E. Vettermann, Die Balendichtungen und ihre Quellen (Halle, 1918). The book has no original value, however, for the affiliation of the mediaeval versions.

10 In the review of Brown's paper on the Bleeding Lance, Brugger, p. 190, expresses the same view that I have here expressed. He points to the following romances as sources of the Balaain episodes in the Huth-Merlin: Meriadeuc, Meraugis, the first continuation to Chrétien's Perceval (or its source), Grand Saint Graal. On this subject see also Heinzel, p. 31, and Brugger, ibid., XXXI, pp. 132 ff.

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In his "From Cauldron of Plenty to Grail," Modern Philology, XIV, 385 ff. (1916) Brown has collected from Irish literature especially from the imrama examples which are intended to illustrate the supposed derivation of the Grail from a Celtic cauldron Hesperia, Ergänzungsreihe; 8.

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