Note 106 — Chapter IV · ROMANCE

For a learned and suggestive study of the various versions of the Grail legend, see Miss J. L. Weston’s The Legend of Sir Perceval (2 vols.) in the Grimm Library (Nutt). Miss Weston there distinguishes three stages in the growth of the legend as “the Folklore, the Literary and the Mystical.” In the Mystical, an element which she holds to be “entirely foreign to the original tale,” viz., the Grail quest, “modified and finally transformed it.” The folk-tale “assumed an ecclesiastical and mystical character. The hero became a champion of Christianity and Holy Church, and as such displayed the qualities most approved by the religious views of the time: he became not merely chaste, but an ascetic celibate, and any connection with women was dropped altogether” (Vol. I. p. 117).