Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail/Introduction
INTRODUCTION.
The present work is, as its title states, a collection of "Studies." It does not profess to give an exhaustive or orderly account of the Grail romance cycle; it deals with particular aspects of the legend, and makes no pretence of exhausting even these.
It may be urged that as this is the case the basis of the work is too broad for the superstructure, and that there was no need to give full summaries of the leading forms of the legend, or to discuss at such length their relation one to another, when it was only intended to follow up one of the many problems which this romance cycle presents. Had there existed any work in English which did in any measure what the writer has here attempted to do, he would only too gladly have given more space and more time to the elaboration of the special subject of these studies. But the only work of the kind is in German, Birch-Hirschfeld's Die Gralsage. Many interested in the Arthurian romances do not know German; and some who profess an interest in them, and who do know German, are not, to judge by their writings, acquainted with Birch-Hirschfeld's work. It seemed worth while, therefore, to present the facts about the cycle with greater fulness than would have been necessary had those facts been generally accessible. The writer felt, too, that whatever judgment might be passed upon his own speculations, his statements of fact might give his book some value in the eyes of students. He also wished to give all who felt an interest in the line of investigation he opened up the opportunity of pursuing it further, or the means of checking his assertions and conjectures.
The writer has taken his texts as he found them. He has studied the subject matter of the romances, not the words in which they have been handed down. Those who seek for philological disquisitions are, therefore, warned that they will find nothing to interest them; and those scholars who are well acquainted with the printed texts, but who are on the search for fresh MS. evidence, must not look here for such. On the other hand, as the printed texts are for the most of such rarity and price as to be practically inaccessible to anyone not within reach of a large library, the writer trusts that his abstract of them will be welcome to many. He has striven to take note of all works of real value bearing upon the subject. He endeavoured, though unsuccessfully, to obtain a copy of M. Gaston Paris' account of the Arthurian romances which, though it has been for some months in print, is not yet published.
The writer has done his best to separate the certain from the conjectural. Like M. Renan, in a similar case, he begs the reader to supply the "perhaps" and the "possibly's" that may sometimes have dropt out. The whole subject is fraught with difficulty, and there are special reasons why all results must for some time to come be looked upon as conjectural. These are glanced at here and there in the course of these studies, but it may be well to put them together in this place. Firstly, whatever opinions be held as to which are the older forms of the legend, it is certain that in no one case do we possess a primary form. All the versions that have come down to us presuppose, even where they do not actually testify to, a model. Two of the forms which there is substantial agreement in reckoning among the oldest, the poems of Chrestien de Troyes and Robert de Borron, were never finished by the authors; sequels exist to both, of a later date and obviously affected by other forms of the legend. A reconstruction of the original story is under these circumstances a task of great uncertainty. So much for the difficulty inherent in the nature of the evidence, a difficulty which it is to be feared will always beset the student of this literature, as no new texts are likely to be found. Secondly, this evidence, such as it is, is not accessible in a form of which the most can be made. The most important member of the group, the Conte du Graal, only exists in one text, and that from a late and poor MS. It is certain that a critical edition, based upon a survey of the entire MS. evidence, will throw great light upon all the questions here treated of. The Mabinogi of Peredur has not yet been critically edited, nor have the MSS. of the other romances yielded up all that can be learnt from them. Thirdly, whatever opinion be held respecting the connection of the North French romances and Celtic tradition, connection of some kind must be admitted. Now the study of Celtic tradition is only beginning to be placed upon a firm basis, and the stores of Celtic myth and legend are only beginning to be thrown open to the non-Celtic scholar. Were there in existence a Celtic parallel to Grimm's great work on German Mythology, the views for which the writer contends would have been, in all likelihood, admitted ere now, and there would have been no necessity for this work at all.
Whilst some of the reasons which render the study of the Grail legends so fascinating, because so problematic, will probably always remain in force, others will vanish before the increase of knowledge. When the diplomatic evidence is accessible in a trustworthy form; when the romances have received all the light that can be shed upon them from Celtic history, philology, and mythology, the future student will have a comparatively easy task. One of the writer's chief objects has been to excite an interest in these romances among those who are able to examine the Celtic elements in them far more efficiently than he could do. Welsh philologists can do much to explain the Onomasticon Arthurianum; Cymric history generally may elucidate the subject matter. But as a whole Welsh literature is late, meagre, and has kept little that is archaic. The study of Irish promises far better results. Of all the races of modern Europe the Irish have the most considerable and the most archaic mass of pre-Christian traditions. By the side of their heroic traditional literature that of Cymry or Teuton (High and Low), or Slav is recent, scanty, and unoriginal.
A few words must be said in defence of the free use made of conjecture in the course of these studies. This is well nigh unavoidable from the way in which the texts we have to deal with have come down to us. What M. Renan has said about the Hebrew historical scriptures is excellently exemplified in the Grail romances. There was no fixed text, no definite or rounded sequence of incidents, of which scribes respected the integrity. On the contrary, each successive transcriber was only anxious to add some fresh adventure to the interminable tale, and those MSS. were most thought of which contained the greatest number of lines. The earlier MSS. have, therefore, almost entirely disappeared, and we are dealing with works which we know to have been composed in the twelfth century, but of which we have only thirteenth or fourteenth century transcripts. Inconsistencies in the conduct of the story are the inevitable consequence in most cases, but sometimes the latest arranger had an eye for unity of effect, and attained this by the simple process of altering the old account so as to make it fit with the new. In dealing with the text of an individual author, whether ancient or modern, it would be in the last degree uncritical to explain difficulties by such hypotheses as the loss of an earlier draft, or the foisting into the work of later and incongruous incidents and conceptions. Not so in the case of the romances; this method of explanation is natural and legitimate, but none the less is it largely conjectural.
The writer may be blamed for not having presented his subject in a more engaging and more lucid form. He would plead in excuse the circumstances under which his work has been carried on. When the only hours of study are those which remain after the claims, neither few nor light, of business and other duties have been met, it is hard to give an appearance of unity to a number of minute detail studies, and to weld them together into one harmonious whole. The fact that the work has been written, and printed, at considerable intervals of time may, it is hoped, be accepted as some excuse for inconsistency in the terminology.
The writer has many acknowledgments to make. First and chief to Dr. Birch-Hirschfeld, but for whose labours, covering well nigh the whole field of the Grail cycle, he would not have been able to take in hand his work at all; then to Dr. Furnivall, to whose enthusiasm and spirit the publication of some of the most important texts are due. In these two cases the writer acknowledges his gratitude with the more readiness that he has felt compelled to come to an opposite conclusion from that arrived at by Dr. Birch-Hirschfeld respecting the genesis and growth of the legend, and because he has had to differ from Dr. Furnivall's estimate of the moral value of the Galahad romances. To M. Hucher, to Mons. Ch. Potvin, the editor, single-handed, of the Conte du Graal, to M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, to Professor Ernst Martin, to the veteran San-Marte, to Herr Otto Küpp, and to Herr Paul Steinbach, these studies owe much. Professor Rhys' Hibbert Lectures came into the writer's hands as he was preparing the latter portion of the book for the press; they were of great service to him, and he was especially gratified to find opinions at which he had arrived confirmed on altogether independent grounds by Professor Rhys' high authority. The writer is also indebted to him, to Mr. H. L. D. Ward, of the British Museum, and to his friend Mr. Egerton Phillimore for help given while the sheets were passing through the press. Lastly, the writer desires to pay an especial tribute of gratitude and respect to that admirable scholar, J. F. Campbell. Of all the masters in folk-lore, Jacob Grimm not excepted, none had a keener eye or surer, more instinctively right judgment.
Although the writer admits, nay, insists upon the conjectural character of his results, he believes he is on the right track, and that if the Grail romances be worked out from any other point of view than the one here taken, the same goal will be reached. It should be said that some of the conclusions, which he can claim as his own by right of first mention, were stated by him in a paper he read before the Folk-Lore Society in 1880 (afterwards reprinted, Celtic Magazine, 1887, August-October); and in a paper he read before the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, in 1884.
These studies have been a delight and a solace to the writer; had it been otherwise, he would still feel himself amply repaid for his work by the thought that he had made a contribution, however slight, to the criticism of the Legend of the Holy Grail.