Note 98 — Chapter VI

Merlin, Sommer's ed., chap. xxxiii. The Lancelot legend appears to me to offer a very interesting parallel to the methods employed by the compilers of the Chansons de Geste, which are so ably pointed out by M. Leon Gautier in his Epopées Françaises. The original story of the hero forms a nucleus from which other romances depart in a downward direction—dealing with sons and, perhaps, grandsons;—in an upward, dealing with father and grandfather—till a complete cycle is thus formed. We have exactly this process in Lancelot—the Queste extols the deeds of his son, the Merlin those of his father; and we have indications that the story was well on the way to the evolution of a secondary branch, that of Bohort and his son. None of the other Arthurian heroes has undergone a parallel development.