Perceval sage, then comes the Thornton Sir Perceval, a genuine popular production derived probably from a Welsh original. In spite of what San Marte says, the Grail incident is found in the Mabinogi, and it might seem as if Chrestien had simply amplified the latter. On San Marte's theory of the (Southern) origin of the Grail myth, this, however, is impossible, and the fact that the Mabinogi contains this incident is a proof of its lateness.
Up to 1861 all writers upon the Grail legend were under this disadvantage, that they had no complete text of any part of the cycle before them,[1] and were obliged to trust largely to extracts and to more or less carefully compiled summaries. In that year Mr. Furnivall, by the issue for the Roxburghe Club of the Grand St. Graal, together with a reprint of Robert de Borron's poem (first edited in 1841 by M. Franc. Michel), provided students with materials of first-rate importance. His introductory words are strongly against the Celtic origin of the story, and are backed up by a quotation from Mr. D. W. Nash, in which that "authority who really knows his subject" gives the measure of his critical acumen by the statement that the Mabinogi of Peredur can have nothing to do with the earliest form of the legend, because "in Sir T. Malory, Perceval occupies the second place to Galahad." In fact, neither the editor nor Mr. Nash seems to have tried to place the different versions, and their assertions are thus of little value, though they contributed, nevertheless, to discredit the Celtic hypothesis. San Marte, in an essay prefixed to the first volume, repeated his well-known views respecting the source of Wolfram's poems, and, incidentally, protested against the idea that the Mabinogi is but a Welshified French romance.
In 1862 the accomplished editor of the "Popular Tales of the West Highlands," Mr. J.F. Campbell, published in his second volume (p. 152) some remarks on the Story of the Lay of the Great Fool, which ended thus, "I am inclined . . . . to consider this 'Lay' as one episode in the adventures of a Celtic hero, who, in
- ↑ Excepting, of course, the late fifteenth and early sixteeth century Paris imprints, which represented as a rule, however, the latest and most interpolated forms, and Mons. Fr. Michel's edition of Borron's poem.
