("How the Een was set up"), though curiously enough not to the Great Fool folk-tale (otherwise so similar to "How the Een was set up"), which, as in the Lay, has a brother. But beyond this formal recognition of the incident in the Perceval sage, I am inclined to look upon the Perceval-Gawain dualism as another form of it. This dualism has been somewhat obscured by the literary form in which the sage has been preserved and the tendency to exalt and idealise one hero. In the present case this tendency has not developed so far as to seriously diminish the importance of Gawain; his adventures are, however, left in a much more primitive and märchenhaft shape, and hence, as will be shown later on, are extremely valuable in any attempt to reach the early form of the story.[1]
If Simrock's words quoted on the title page were indeed conclusive—"If that race among whom the 'Great Fool' folk-tale was found independent of the Grail story had the best claim to be regarded as having wrought into one these two elements"—then my task might be considered at an end. I have shown that this race was that of the Celtic dwellers in these islands, among whom this tale is found not only in a fuller and more significant form than elsewhere, but in a form that connects it with the French Grail romance. But the conclusion that the Conte du Graal is in the main a working up of Celtic popular traditions, which had clustered round a hero, whose fortunes bore, in part, a striking resemblance to those of Fionn, the typical representative of the Expulsion and Return formula cycle among the Celts, though hardly to be gainsaid, does not seem to help much towards settling the question of the origin of the Grail itself. The story would appear to be Celtic except just the central incident upon which the whole turns. For the English Sir Perceval, which undoubtedly follows older models, breathes no word of search for any magic talisman, let alone the Grail, whilst the Mabinogi, which is also older in parts than the Conte du Graal, gives a different turn
- ↑ The brother feature appears likewise in Wolfram von Eschenbach, where Parzival's final and hardest struggle is against the unknown brother, as the Great Fool's is against the Gruagach. This may be added to other indications that Wolfram did have some other version before him besides Chrestien's.
