From Ritual to Romance | Page 7

that it correlaates, and explains." (Cornford,
Origins of Attic Comedy.)
CHAPTER I

Introductory
In view of the extensive literature to which the Grail legend has already
given birth it may seem that the addition of another volume to the
already existing corpus calls for some words of apology and
explanation. When the student of the subject contemplates the countless
essays and brochures, the volumes of studies and criticism, which have
been devoted to this fascinating subject, the conflicting character of
their aims, their hopelessly contradictory results, he, or she, may well
hesitate before adding another element to such a veritable witches'
cauldron of apparently profitless study. And indeed, were I not
convinced that the theory advocated in the following pages contains in
itself the element that will resolve these conflicting ingredients into one
harmonious compound I should hardly feel justified in offering a
further contribution to the subject.
But it is precisely because upwards of thirty years' steady and
persevering study of the Grail texts has brought me gradually and
inevitably to certain very definite conclusions, has placed me in
possession of evidence hitherto ignored, or unsuspected, that I venture
to offer the result in these studies, trusting that they may be accepted as,
what I believe them to be, a genuine Elucidation of the Grail problem.
My fellow-workers in this field know all too well the essential elements
of that problem; I do not need here to go over already well-trodden
ground; it will be sufficient to point out certain salient features of the
position.
The main difficulty of our research lies in the fact that the Grail legend
consists of a congeries of widely differing elements--elements which at
first sight appear hopelessly incongruous, if not completely
contradictory, yet at the same time are present to an extent, and in a
form, which no honest critic can afford to ignore.
Thus it has been perfectly possible for one group of scholars, relying
upon the undeniably Christian-Legendary elements, preponderant in
certain versions, to maintain the thesis that the Grail legend is ab initio
a Christian, and ecclesiastical, legend, and to analyse the literature on

that basis alone.
Another group, with equal reason, have pointed to the strongly marked
Folk-lore features preserved in the tale, to its kinship with other themes,
mainly of Celtic provenance, and have argued that, while the later
versions of the cycle have been worked over by ecclesiastical writers in
the interests of edification, the story itself is non-Christian, and
Folk-lore in origin.
Both groups have a basis of truth for their arguments: the features upon
which they rely are, in each case, undeniably present, yet at the same
time each line of argument is faced with certain insuperable difficulties,
fatal to the claims advanced.
Thus, the theory of Christian origin breaks down when faced with the
awkward fact that there is no Christian legend concerning Joseph of
Arimathea and the Grail. Neither in Legendary, nor in Art, is there any
trace of the story; it has no existence outside the Grail literature, it is
the creation of romance, and no genuine tradition.
On this very ground it was severely criticized by the Dutch writer Jacob
van Maerlant, in 1260. In his Merlin he denounces the whole Grail
history as lies, asserting that the Church knows nothing of it--which is
true.
In the same way the advocate of a Folk-lore origin is met with the
objection that the section of the cycle for which such a source can be
definitely proved, i.e., the Perceval story, has originally nothing
whatever to do with the Grail; and that, while parallels can be found for
this or that feature of the legend, such parallels are isolated in character
and involve the breaking up of the tale into a composite of mutually
independent themes. A prototype, containing the main features of the
Grail story--the Waste Land, the Fisher King, the Hidden Castle with
its solemn Feast, and mysterious Feeding Vessel, the Bleeding Lance
and Cup--does not, so far as we know, exist. None of the great
collections of Folk-tales, due to the industry of a Cosquin, a Hartland,
or a Campbell, has preserved specimens of such a type; it is not such a
story as, e.g., The Three Days Tournament, examples of which are

found all over the world. Yet neither the advocate of a Christian origin,
nor the Folk-lorist, can afford to ignore the arguments, and evidence of
the opposing school, and while the result of half a century of patient
investigation has been to show that the origin of the Grail story must be
sought elsewhere than in ecclesiastical legend, or popular tale, I hold
that the result has equally been to demonstrate that neither of these
solutions should be ignored, but that the ultimate source must be sought
for in a