Volume 1 / Book 6 — BOOK VI TRADITIONAL EVENTS
Jessie L. (Jessie Laidlay) Weston translation
Blood drops on the snow and love-trance of hero. Chrêtien: Peredur.
Overthrows Kay and Segramor. (Perceval Li Gallois relates a similar incident of Gawain.)
Hero is cursed by Grail messenger for his failure to ask the question. Chrêtien: Peredur. (In Perceval there is a cursing by Merlin.)
Page 159, line 2—'From Karidöl and his kingdom.' Karidöl=Carduel or Cardoile, the Anglo-Norman form of Carlisle. This is undoubtedly Arthur's original capital, but throughout this poem Nantes seems to be regarded as the royal city. Curiously enough we find the two names combined in Gautier de Doulens, one of the continuators of Li Conte del Graal, who introduces, as one of his dramatis personæ, Carduel of Nantes.
Page 160, line 29—'Whitsuntide.' An examination of the Romances will show this statement to be correct; Pentecost and Christmas seem to have been the two feasts held in especial honour at King Arthur's court.
Page 160, line 49—'Blood-drops on the snow.' Both Wolfram and Chrêtien insist only on the two colours, red and white, and the fact that they are puzzled by, and think it necessary to explain, the presence of snow at Whitsuntide shows that they are taking over the incident from an older source. As a matter of fact it is to be found in tales unconnected with the Arthurian cycle, and of varying nationality. In Peredur (Welsh) a raven has settled upon the body of a wild goose killed by a falcon, and the hero thinks of three colours (black, for hair; white, for skin; red, for cheeks); in the Fate of the Sons of Usnech, an Irish tale written down before the middle of the twelfth century, and probably centuries older, these three colours are likewise present, but it is a calf instead of a wild goose that is slain, and it is the heroine, not the hero, who is fascinated by the colours. The incident has always been a favourite one with Celtic story-tellers (cf. Argyll Tales, M'Innes and Nutt, pp. 431-34), and curiously it is the slain-bird, instead of the slain-calf version which predominates, although the Fate of the Sons of Usnech is probably the most famous of all Irish stories, and no traceable literary influence of the Welsh tale upon Irish romance is known. Those familiar with Grimm's fairy tales will remember a similar incident in the story of Snowdrop, where the queen pricks her finger, and wishes for a daughter with hair as black as the ebony window-frame, skin as white as the snow, and cheeks as red as the blood; but here, of course, the 'fascination' element is absent. I have attempted to show ('the lai of Eliduc and the mürchen of Schneewittchen,'Folk Lore. iii. I), that the Gaelic version of the Schneewittchen type of story represents the earliest attainable form of the story.—[A. N.]
Page 162, line 87—'Segramor,' or Saigremors. This knight is a familiar figure in the Arthurian Romances, and the episode is quite in accordance with his general character. Chrêtien calls him 'Le Desreè' (uncurbed, impetuous). In Malory he is 'Le Desirous.' Cf. also Book VIII. p. 241.
Page 163, line 121—'To seek for the magic pheasant.' Simrock thinks this an allusion to a popular folk-tale, in which a magician, condemned to death, contrives to escape by setting his judges and executioner to seek for the fallen bird, by the irresistible strains of his magic pipe.
Page 166, line 235—'Heinrich of Veldeck.' A German poet who lived towards the end of the twelfth century. His translation of the Æneid, founded on a French version of the poem, was extremely popular, and Wolfram frequently refers to it in his Parzival.
Page 169, line 321—'Herman of Thuringia.' This Landgrave of Thuringia is well known to history as a generous patron of the literature of his day. His court at the Wartburg was the resort of all the leading poets, and it filled a place in the literary life of the twelfth century only comparable to that taken by the neighbouring court of Weimar six hundred years later. The terms in which Wolfram speaks of the guests at the Wartburg is quite in keeping with what is known of the Landgrave's lavish hospitality.
Simrock renders a passage from Walther von der Vogelweide which describes the tumultuous life of the court as follows:
'Wer in den Ohren siech ist oder krank im Haupt, Der meide ja Thuringen's Hof, wenn er mir glaubt. Käm er dahin, er würde ganz bethöret; Ich drang so lange zu, dass ich nicht mehr vermag, Ein Zug fährt ein, ein andrer aus, so Nacht als Tag, Ein wunder ists, dass da noch Jemand höret.'
The Wartburg-krieg, a poem of the end of the thirteenth century, in which the principal poets of the age are represented as competing in song before the Landgrave, supposes this contest to take place in 1207, and is doubtless an echo of what was no unusual incident at that date. Wolfram's poem of Willehalm was composed at the wish of the Landgrave, and in it he speaks of the death of his patron. Herman died in 1216, and the brilliant life at the Wartburg came to an end; his successor Ludwig, the husband of S. Elizabeth, having little taste for literature.
Page 169, line 325—'And so Knight Walter singeth.' Walther von der Vogelweide, one of the most famous of German lyric poets, was of knightly birth but small means; he seems to have supported himself by his art, leading a wandering life at the principal courts of his day. Of his connection with Wolfram nothing is known, save the fact of their being together at the court of the Landgrave Herman in the early years of the thirteenth century. The line here quoted does not occur in any of Walther's extant poems.
Page 169, line 328—'Heinrich of Rispach.' Nothing seems to be known of the character here referred to. From the fact that there is a Rispach in the neighbourhood of Eschenbach, Bartsch conjectures that it was some one personally known to Wolfram.
Page 171, line 385—'The time when the knife's sharp blade.' Wolfram is here quoting from an unknown source. No such adventures are recorded in any Romance that has come down to us; but they are quite in keeping with Gawain's character.
Page 176, line 529—'The right of the Round Table.' This custom is alluded to in other Arthurian Romances, and we meet with it again in Book XIII. Here Wolfram seems to imply merely that the king did not eat in public with his knights, i.e. at the Round Table, before they had heard of some knightly venture; in Book XIII. he speaks as if no meal might be partaken of by any of the courtiers till this came to pass. The first rendering seems to be the correct one. [The whole incident is thoroughly in keeping with the conventions of early Irish romance, in which the personages are invariably subject to strict rules and obligations, geasa, to use the Irish word.—A.N.]
Page 177, line 585—'The Grail Messenger.' This incident occurs in both Chrêtien and Peredur, but the messenger is unnamed, or simply termed 'The Loathly Damsel.' Such a damsel is met with in the Perceval, but when she reaches King Arthur's Court she is transformed into a maiden of surpassing beauty. It will be noted that one of the queens imprisoned in Château Merveil also bears the name of Kondrie (p. 189). Mr. Nutt, in his Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, suggests this was originally the Loathly Damsel released from the transforming spell. (It may be noted that Wagner has kept this idea, and in the first act his Kundrie is the Loathly Messenger; in the second, 'Kondrie la Belle.') Chrêtien's description of Kondrie's appearance is even more repulsive than Wolfram's. In Book X. we have a curious account of the origin of these strange people.
[The 'Loathly Damsel' is one of those personages that most clearly testify to the reliance of the romance-writers upon a traditional popular basis, and also in this instance to the specific Celtic origin of that popular basis. A commonplace of folk-tales of the 'task' class is that the hero is helped by a personage having private ends of his or her own to serve, as, until the hero achieves the Quest (which he never does unaided), the helper cannot be released from a spell, generally of transformation into an animal, but sometimes into a shape of surpassingly hideous ugliness. The oldest European variant of this latter type with which I am acquainted is to be found in an Irish folk-tale imbedded in the so-called Cormac's Glossary, a compilation of the tenth century. I have given this in full (Argyllshire Tales, M'Innes and Nutt, pp. 467, 468). In its outré horror the description of the bespelled king's son strikingly recalls that of Kundrie. Such a task story, in which the hero is helped by a transformed personage, who cannot be delivered until the Quest is achieved, is one of the main staples of the Perceval cycle, but it is only in the Welsh tale of Peredur that the incident appears in a straightforward and intelligible form. The sudden transformation from foulness to radiant beauty is met with in another connection earlier in Ireland than elsewhere in Europe: the incident of the Perilous Kiss, in which the embrace of a courteous knight frees a bespelled damsel from loathly disguise, an incident frequently associated with Gawain, is, as I have shown (Academy, April 30, 1892), of early occurrence in Ireland. Another element which goes to the complex individuality of Kundrie can be paralleled from early Irish romance. As the female messenger of the fairy dynasty of Mazadan, she corresponds to Leborcham, the female messenger of the semi-mythic King Conchobor, the head and centre of the oldest Irish cycle of heroic romance. Like Kundrie, Leborcham was of startling and unnatural hideousness, and she is brought into special connection with Cuchulainn the chief hero of the Ulster cycle, as Kundrie is with Perceval the chief hero of one group of the Arthur romances.—A.N.]
Page 181, line 697—'Château Merveil.' The adventure of this magic castle, achieved by Gawain, is related at length in Book XI.
Page 184, line 806—'Kingrimursel.' The name of this character in Chrêtien is Guigambresil, of which this is evidently the German rendering. Here, again, Wolfram either heard or read Gingambresil.
Page 185, line 839—'Tribalibot.' This is India.
Page 186, line 859—'The heathen queen of Ianfus.' The name of this queen, we find from line 1009, was Ekuba; one of the few classical names we find in this poem.
Page 189, line 977—'The Greek, Sir Klias.' This is Cligès, the hero of Chrêtien's poem of that name, son of the Greek Emperor Alexander and Surdamour, sister to Gawain, cf. Book XII. Malory has Sir Clegis, probably the same name.
Page 190, line 1002—'Twelve spears of Angram.' Angram was probably in India, and noted for its steel. Oraste-Gentesein seems to be the name of the country from which the reed, or bamboo, was brought. Cf. Book VII. pp. 218, 219.