together, of the two kindred theories, Nitze's appears the more acceptable, although in the opinion of the present writer, even this does not get beyond the realm of ingenious conjecture.

Such similarities as may exist between the Grail rites and those of the agrarian cults of the ancients do not conflict, after all, with the theory that the former were made up of Christian elements for the rites of the Christian church itself, as is well-known, developed under the influence of the old pagan mysteries, 15 just as the leading Christian festivals are definitely traceable to festivals of the old pagan religions. This is true, for instance, of Christmas, Easter and the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. Accordingly features of the Grail theme which offer analogies to these agrarian cults are found also in Christian legend, which derived them no doubt from those cults. For instance, just as vegetation dies with Adonis, so in some Christian legends it is said to have died as the result of the death of our Lord. Similarly the lance of Longinus in Christian legend is not only a symbol of peace, but, like the lance of the Grail romances, a symbol of destruction. 16 Altogether, however, where we have such features common to Christian legend and the ancient cults, it is much more likely that the Grail romances derived them from the former than from any supposed underground perpetuation of the latter. Certainly, as regards the Grail procession, the procession of talismans, we can find parallels to all of these in Christian ritual,17 whereas we really know nothing definite about the objects that figured in the rites of the agrarian divinities of antiquity. So Christian ritual is far more likely to have been the immediate source.

18

Miss Peebles, pp. 200f. rightly stresses this fact. Nitze, PMLA, XXIV, 372, note 1, and Brugger, Zs. f. frz. Spr. u. Litt., XXXVI, 69, recognize it, but do not give it, I believe, its due weight in its bearing on the eucharistic origin of the Grail legend.

16

Cp. Miss Peebles, p. 192 and note.

17

Cp. Heinzel, pp. 7 ff.

Hesperia, Ergänzungsreihe: 8.

19

Chapter IV.
Continuations of Chrétien.

Chrétien's unfinished Perceval was carried on by later poets, and these continuations 1 combined are about five times as long as the original poem. The poets who are responsible for the continuations are as follows. 1. An anonymous writer, usually called in discussions of these matters Pseudo-Gautier or Pseudo-Wauchier. His work which relates Gawain's adventures extends through 1. 21916. 2. Wauchier de Denain (to employ

1

2

For a study of the MSS. of the continuations see Hugo Waitz, Die Fortsetzungen von Chrétien's Perceval le Gallois nach den Pariser Handschriften (Straßburg, 1890), and J. L. Weston, Legend of Sir Perceval, II. 27 ff. et passim, (London, 1906). The MSS. vary considerably. For differences of view between Waitz and Miss Weston as to the priority of the redactions see the latter, pp. 47f. His work was formerly cited generally under the name of Gaucher de Dourdan or Gautier de Doulens, but P. Meyer, Romania, XXXII, 583ff. (1903), has established Wauchier de Denain as the correct form. For MS. variants of the name see Potvin's Perceval le Gallois, V, 109, note 2, Birch-Hirschfeld, pp. 88f., and P. Meyer, loc. cit., p. 585. For Wauchier's literary activities see P. Meyer, Histoire Littéraire de la France, XXXIII, 258 ff. (1906).

Birch - Hirschfeld, pp. 89 ff., and Miss Weston, Legend of Sir Perceval, II, 235 et passim, regard the first continuation of Chrétien, which I have ascribed above to Pseudo-Wauchier, as really by Wauchier. Miss Weston excepts apparently (cp. p. 214, note) 11. 10602-11596 (Chastel Merveilleus episode), as the work of "the copyists". It seems to me more likely, however, that Wauchier's work only begins with the narrative of Perceval's adventures that is to say, with 1. 21917. This view has been held by G. Paris, Histoire Littéraire de la France, XXX, 27, and Manuel, p. 98, Nutt, pp. 70 ff., Schorbach, edition of Wisse-Colin's Low German fourteenth century version of the Perceval. (Strassburg, 1888), pp. XXXV, XXXVIIIf., W. Golther, Zs. f. ver

-

the form of the name which is now common), who continues it through 1. 34934. He appears to have been at one time in the

gleichende Litteraturgeschichte, Neue Folge, III, 419 (1890), R. Heinzel, Über die französischen Gralromane, p. 58 (good summary of the argument therefor) and A. Jeanroy, Revue des Langues Romanes, L, 542, note (1907). It is borne out by the Berne MS., which, after an introduction of 13 lines, begins at this point. See A. Rochat: Über einen bisher unbekannten Percheval li Galois (Zürich, 1855). Interpolations, too, are much more frequent in Pseudo-Wauchier. Besides those printed as such by Potvin in appendices, III, 369 ff. and IV, 343 ff., the description of the tournament, l. 13481-14943 (not in the Mons MS.), which is one of the feeblest things in Arthurian romance, certainly belongs in this category. It is to be observed, moreover, that Wauchier and Pseudo-Wauchier conflict in their conceptions of the Grail castle, and scarcely harmonize in their use of the Bel Inconnu tale. Cp. particularly 20380 ff. and 38 401 ff., respectively, where Wauchier takes no account of what Pseudo-Wauchier had said of this son of Gawain. G. Paris, Manuel, p. 105, believed, indeed, that Wauchier was unacquainted with Pseudo-Wauchier's work. But this is refuted by the undeniable dependence of the account, 11. 33440ff. which Gawain gives to his son, Guinglain, of his visit to the Grail Castle (including the circumstances that led up to it) on the account (1. 19664 ff.) of the same episode in Pseudo-Wauchier. Cp. Heinzel,

pp. 52f.

The only reasons which Miss Weston gives, I, 235, for discarding Pseudo-Wauchier are: 1. that the Gawain adventures in the two parts are of the same kind; 2. both refer to the same authority (Bleheris). The first statement, however, is not quite exact, for in Wauchier we have no adventure imputed to Gawain like the visit of this character to the Grail castle in Pseudo-Wauchier, ll. 19991 ff., and, in general, the adventures in the Arthurian romances are so much alike in kind that obviously the similarity would afford no criterion of authorship. The second point has been found convincing by Brugger, Zs. f. frz. Spr. u. Litt., XXXI, 141. But granting that the citation of "Bleheris" as an authority (instead of the corresponding "li escris" of the Mons MS., printed by Potvin, 1. 31675), which occurs only in the British Museum Add. 36, 614 (for the readings of this and the other MSS. cp. Miss Weston in Romania, XXXIV, 100f.), is really due to Wauchier, and is not simply a scribe's emendation of a passage that had become corrupt in the MS. tradition, it may have been very well suggested to him by Pseudo-Wauchier's citation of this same authority in l. 19434, where the Mons MS. (printed by Potvin, III, 344) has "Brandelis",

service of the Countess Jeanne of Flanders, who ruled from 1206 to 1244, but the composition of his part of the Conte del Graal probably falls in the twelfth century. Wauchier's work was itself continued by two different writers, who each take up the narrative at the point where he left off. These writers are named respectively Manessier (Manecier) and Gerbert. 3. Manessier, who wrote at the command of the Countess Jeanne of Flanders, mentioned above, carries it on to 1. 45379. 4. Gerbert, who seems identical with Gerbert de Montreuil, author of the Roman de la Violette,3 inserts 15,000 lines between Wauchier and Manessier. To this day, Gerbert's intercalation has been printed only in part, viz. Potvin, VI, 161ff. and Romania, XXXV, 501ff. (the episode which Bédier calls Tristan Ménestrel).

As regards the dates of these continuators, we have no precise evidence on the subject. We know that Wauchier was writing

but the other MSS. have "Bleheris" or "Bleobleheris", as Miss Weston (I, 241, including note) has pointed out. From what has just been observed in the preceding paragraph, it is established beyond question that Wauchier was acquainted with Pseudo-Wauchier's work.

3

The identity, first suggested by Francisque Michel, in his edition of the Tristan poems, I, p. civ, note 75, has been generally accepted since. Cp. Birch-Hirschfeld, Die Sage vom Graal, pp. 110ff., G. Paris, Manuel, p. 106, Kraus, Über Girbert de Montreuil und seine Werke (Würzburg diss., Erlangen, 1897), Maurice Wilmotte, in the proceedings of the Académie Royale de Belgique for 1900: Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres, etc., pp. 166-189. The last-named is much the most important discussion of the subject. Wilmotte lays particular stress on the abundance of leonine rhymes which distinguish the two among the poems of the time, and decides that there are "de sérieuses probabilités" in favor of the identity.

The Roman de la Violette is based on the same motif as Shakespeare's Cymbeline the foolish wager about a woman's chastity that has such serious consequences.

4

The most careful examination of the question is by E. Brugger, Zs. f. frz. Spr. u. Litt., XXXVI, 45ff. (1910). Brugger, however, takes no account of Wilmotte's paper on Gerbert which I have cited in the previous note. In this paper the author has pointed out that in the "lutte de Tristan" episode (Tristan prevails in succession over Gifflet, Lancelot, Yvain and Gawain), which occupies about 1500

at some time between 1190 and 1212 (limits of the rule of Philip, Marquis of Namur, for whom he executed a translation of the Vitac Patrum), how much earlier or how much later there is no means of determining. It is most probable, however, that his addition to Chrétien's Perceval belongs to the latter years of the

lines in Gerbert's continuation, though it hardly figures at all in Potvin's analysis, Gerbert had in mind the prose Tristan. There is no reason to believe that that work was in existence before 1220, at the earliest, so that this would give us a new terminus a quo for Gerbert's addition to Chrétien's poem.

In Romania, XXXV, 497 ff. (1906) Bédier has edited this "lutte de Tristan" episode and Miss Weston has added notes. She regards it as an interpolation embodying lost materials: 1. a Perceval poem, 2. a short episodic Tristan poem. The names, however, in the episode betray the lateness of its composition: "Meraugis" from Meraugis de Portlesguez, "Roi des C. Chevaliers" and "Claudas de la Deserte" from the prose Lancelot. So too probably "Bruns sans Pitie" is taken from the prose Lancelot." Besides, Tristan, as a conventional knight, derives plainly from the prose Tristan (cp. Löseth, pp. 256f.), not from any old tradition. Golther, Tristan und Isolde, p. 226 ff. is inclined to accept the existence of no. 2.

Gerbert states, Potvin, VI, 212f. that he has taken up the work (i. e. of continuing Chrétien's Perceval), "Quant chascuns trovere le laisse." Brugger, loc. cit., p. 52, interprets this as implying that he did not know of Manessier's continuation, and, consequently, that he wrote contemporaneously with the latter or immediately thereafter. This interpretation, to be sure, is not necessary, and the fact overlooked by Brugger that Gerbert wrote after the prose Tristan tells against his conclusion. G. Paris, Histoire Littéraire de la France, XXX, 42, believes that Gerbert is unacquainted with Manessier. Heinzel, on the other hand, pp. 75f., has argued that Gerbert knew all the continuations of Chrétien's Perceval. All the points of distinctive agreement between Gerbert and Manessier which he cites (p. 76) are unsatisfactory. The first of the three, indeed, is cited by Heinzel through an error, for the passage (11. 29682 ff.) really occurs in Wauchier, not Manessier. It concerns the adventure of a knight in a tomb. The second (the breaking of Perceval's sword) is too commonplace to possess any weight, and the third (temptation of Perceval by a devil in woman's shape) may very well have been borrowed by Gerbert from the Grand S. Graal. On the whole, there is no proof that Gerbert knew Manessier.