for then he would have freed Arthur from his magic sleep. Never again could he reach that hall.
This version, besides being practically inedited has the merit of exemplifying that association of the sword with the Lord of the Bespelled Castle to which I have already alluded.
The instances of the visit to the otherworld which have thus far been collected from Celtic mythic literature, and which have been used as parallels to the unspelling quest of the romances, are more closely akin to one example of this incident, Perceval's visit to the Castle of Maidens, than to that found in Heinrich and the Didot-Perceval. None, indeed, throw any light upon that death-in-life which is the special feature in these two works. All are of one kind in so far as the disposition of the inmates towards the visitor is concerned; he is received with courtesy when he is not actually allured into the castle, and the trials to which he is subjected are neither painful nor humiliating. But it will not have escaped attention that the Conte du Graal contains another form of the visit, one which I have hitherto left unnoticed, in Gawain's visit to the Magic Castle. A new conception is here introduced: the Lord of the Castle[1] is an evil being, who holds captive fair dames and damsels; they it is, and not he, whom the hero must deliver, and the act of deliverance subjects him to trial and peril (supra, p. 14, Chr. Inc. 17). Let us see if this form affords any explanation of the mysterious features of Heinrich's version. This incident may, it is easily conceivable, be treated in two ways; the hero may be a worthy knight and succeed, or a caitiff and fail. A story of this latter kind may throw some light upon Gawain's adventures at the Magic Castle. The story in question (The Son of Bad Counsel) is ascribed by Kennedy, Legendary Fictions, pp.
- ↑ In Chrestien the part of the Magician Lord is little insisted upon. But in Wolfram he is a very important personage. It may here be noted that the effects which are to follow in Chrestien the doing away with the enchantments of this Castle, answer far more accurately to the description given by the loathly Grail-Maiden of the benefits which would have accrued had Perceval put the question at the Court of the Fisher King than to anything actually described as the effect of that question being put, either by Gautier, Manessier, or Gerbert. This castle seems, too, to be the one in which lodge the Knights, each having his lady love with him, which the loathly maiden announces to be her home.
