Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/243

puzzling features in the development of the romances. I thus rest my case, not so much upon the accumulative effect of the similarities which I have pointed out between the romances and Celtic tradition, as upon the fact that this reference of the romances to certain definite cycles of Celtic myth and legend makes us understand, what otherwise we cannot do, how they came by their present shape. It now remains to be seen if this reference, can in any way explain the Christian element in the legend, which I have hitherto left almost entirely out of account. Birch-Hirschfeld's hypothesis is condemned, in my opinion, by its failure to account for the Celtic element; although I do not think an explanation of a late and intruding feature is as incumbent upon me as that of the original Celtic basis of the legend is upon him, I yet feel that an hypothesis which has nothing to say on such a vital point can hardly be considered satisfactory. It is the Christian transformation of the old Celtic myths and folk-tales which gave them their wide vogue in the Middle Ages, which endowed the theme with such fascination for the preachers and philosophers who used it as a vehicle for their teaching, and which has endeared it to all lovers of mystic symbolism. The question how and why the Celtic tales which I have tried, not unsuccessfully I trust, to disentangle from the romances were ever brought into contact with Christ and His disciples, and how the old mystic vessel of healing, increase, and knowledge became at last the sacramental cup, must, therefore, be faced. The hypotheses set forth in the preceding page might be accepted in their entirety, and the merit of this transformation still be claimed, as Birch-Hirschfeld claims it, for the North French poets, to whom we owe the present versions of the romances. On first reading Birch-Hirschfeld's book, I thought this claim one of the flaws in his argument, and, as will be seen by reference to Chapter IV., other investigators, who accept the Christian origin of the larger part of the legend, hold that it has been shaped in these islands, or in accordance with Celtic traditions now lost. I think we can go a step farther. A number of myths and tales have been used to illustrate the romances. In them may be found the personages through whom probably took place the first contact between Celtic mythic tradition and Christian legend.