The Three Days' Tournament

Of the value of folk-lore and folk-tale as witnesses in the case of a group of stories based largely upon popular tradition, and in their earlier stages of evolution the property of popular story-tellers, we are only slowly becoming aware. But the study of story-transmission has in these last years made immense strides, and may now claim to be fairly based upon sound scientific principles. The extent to which such a study, accurately and carefully carried on, may reflect light upon allied subjects, such as the Arthurian cycle, has yet to be realised. It may be hoped that these pages will lend encouragement to the following up of this special line of investigation.

But there is a danger in our path. Admiration for the learning and indefatigable industry of German scholars has, I fear, caused too many of us to erect into a fetich the result of their labours, and to hold ourselves thereby absolved from the toil of first-hand investigation. This is to render no true service to the cause of scholarship; no one man, no group of men, may claim to be infallible. The result of recent investigation into the value and correctness of Dr. Sommer’s Studies on the Sources of Malory,68 a book which for ten years past has been unhesitatingly accepted in scholarly circles as a reliable authority, should be an object lesson to all of us in the necessity of caution, and the individual responsibility which rests upon each to ascertain independently, so far as it be possible, the correctness and solidity of the ground upon which we found our arguments and our conclusions.

Careful and systematic work, with, from time to time, the revision and comparison of results, only to be attained by publication, will, I believe, before very long, enable us to place the criticism of the Arthurian cycle upon a really satisfactory basis. At present it is vain to hope that any one of us can produce, in this particular line of literary investigation, a magnum opus that shall be beyond the necessity of revision, and sealed with the stamp of permanent and enduring value.

1

Professor Foerster’s edition of the poems of Chrétien de Troyes are probably the most satisfactory critical texts we at present possess, but the value of these is greatly impaired by the controversial use made of the prefaces attached to them.

2

These and other details will be found in Mr. Ward’s article on ‘Ipomedon,’ Catalogue of Romances, vol. i.

3

Ipomedon in drei englischen Bearbeitungen: Breslau 1889.

4

Supra, p. xxix.

5

The fact that, as we have pointed out, he sometimes agrees with one, sometimes with the other version, seems to indicate that he knew the common original of both.

6

Ipomedon, A. l. 5500.

7

Lanzelet, Von Zatzikhoven, ll. 2911-15.

8

Dutch Lancelot, vol. i. ll. 42,819 et seq.

9

Ipomedon, p. xxviii.

10

For the various epilogues and ascriptions of authorship, cf. Die Sage vom Gral, Birch-Hirschfeld, chap. vii.

11

Cf. Birch-Hirschfeld, supra.

12

Vide De Nugis Curialium, ed. Wright, p. viii.

13

Cf. supra, p. 5.

14

Cf. P. Paris, Romans de la Table Ronde, vol. iii.

15

Cf. D. L., vol. i. ll. 19,595 et seq.; Legend of Sir Lancelot, p. 235.

16

Cf. supra, p. 5.

17

The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac, Grimm Library, vol. xii.

18

Cf. the reference to this adventure in Morien, quoted supra, p. 5.

19

For these three colours in this connection, cf. my translation of Parzival, vol. i. p. 317.

20

P. 5.

21

Cf. Lanzelet, ll. 9309 et seq.

22

Hucher, Le Grand S. Graal, vol. i. p. 421.

23

Professor Foerster’s remark (Charrette, Introduction, p. xlvi), that Hugo would, not improbably, take with him a copy of the last romance which had created a popular furore, is one of those gratuitous assumptions which, to the learned professor, assume the virtue of facts, but which cannot be admitted, by any serious critic, as a contribution to the argument. Professor Foerster seems to imagine a twelfth century ‘Mudie’ with a ‘run’ on the latest novel! If the source of the Lanzelet had created in any sense a furore, it would scarcely have disappeared so completely. Considering the slowness of reproduction in those days, it is at least as likely that the book was an old and valued favourite; but as I said above, such hypotheses do not advance the question one way or the other.

24

Cf. Cligés, ll. 4575-4985.

25

Charrette, p. xliii.

26

P. cxxvi.

27

P. cxxxviii.

28

P. xix.

29

I believe myself that the two works of the greatest importance for determining the evolution of the Arthurian cycle are these lost French sources of the Lanzelet and of the Parzival. It is not, I think, impossible that fragments at least may remain entombed in some library. When their importance is more generally recognised there may perhaps be an organised attempt made at their discovery.

30

I have not seen either of these German fragments. Professor Foerster’s tendency to claim as Chrétien’s undoubted property everything that even remotely resembles the work of the French poet makes caution needful. I give the statement entirely upon his authority. With regard to the passage in the Parzival, Book XII. l. 116, et seq., at first sight it seems clearly to refer to Chrétien’s poem; but, as Professor Foerster himself admits, the work clearly consists of two sections, and it seems quite possible that the first part, the story of Alexander and Soredamors, may have been known independently. As the testimony of the Perceval poems proves, there was current a love story connected with a sister of Gawain. The weak point in this Parzival allusion is, that the poet is recalling the torments that Gawain and his kin have suffered through ‘Minne.’ Now the love story of Cligés and Phenice is far more tragic than that of Cligés’ parents; and it is difficult to understand why, if the writer knew the whole poem, he should refer only to the weaker illustration, as both are equally connected with Gawain. I suspect myself that the allusion was in Wolfram’s source, and refers to the source of the Cligés.

31

Printed in Weber’s Metrical Romances, vol. i.

32

Cf. Legend of Sir Lancelot, p. 81.

33

Ibid. p. 5.

34

Chaps. ii and iv.

35

Vol. ii. No. XLIII.

36

Tiroler Kinder- und Haus-Märchen.

37

Contes Lorrains, vol. i. No. I.

38

Contes Lorrains, vol. i. No. XII.

39

Contes Lorrains, vol. ii. p. 96.

40

Op. cit., vol. ii. No. LV.

41

Grimm Library, vols. ii., iii., v.

42

Perseus, vol. iii. p. 4.

43

Perseus, vol. iii. p. 15.

44

Cf. The Cuchullin Saga, Grimm Library, vol. viii. p. 81.

45

Vol. i. p. 96.

46

Cf. supra, p. 23.

47

A reference to Fortunio, one of the tales of our group, included in the fifteenth century collection of Straparola.

48

The additions in italics are mine.—J. L. W.

49

To this our present investigation enables us to add that while M. Cosquin’s shepherd lad unites the pastoral features with the courtly tournament, the Greek variant retains the flying steeds and gives us the tournament to boot.

50

The number is of course far greater, but Mr. Campbell unfortunately did not live to know the Contes Lorrains or the Perseus.

51

Popular Tales of the West Highlands, vol. iv. pp. 277, 278.

52

‘The Black Horse,’ More Celtic Fairy Tales, p. 226.

53

Mr. Hartland also draws attention to the parallel between the three disguises of the hero and the three dresses of the heroine in certain variants of the Cinderella story. In the Aschenbrödel the robes are woven of sun, moon, and stars.

54

Berlin, 1881.

55

Harvard Studies and Notes, vol. v. pp. 94, 95.

56

John Rous, Life of Richard, Earl of Warwick.

57

I should like to draw the attention of readers to the fact that these two ‘triplets’ of colours are also to be met with elsewhere. Thus black, white, and red are found, as we have seen, in a famous incident of the Perceval; and that curious book, Durandus on Symbolism, gives them as the colours of the three veils covering the altar at Passiontide. White, green, and red are found in the legend of the Tree of Life, and Solomon’s Ship, preserved in the Queste and Grand Saint Graal. A friend, learned in such matters, has informed me that these sets of colours represent certain alchemical processes, and in that connection were well known in mediæval times. It seems possible that there may have been some hidden and mystical significance attached to their earliest use; we have not fathomed all the secrets of folk-lore.

58

P. 25.

59

For details of Map’s life, cf. Dictionary of National Biography, and the Introduction to Wright’s edition of De Nugis Curialium.

60

I would draw the attention of students of the Lais of Marie de France to the fact that Map gives several versions of the wedding of a knight with a fairy, or Otherworld, mistress. Also a version of a visit to the Otherworld kingdom with an ending closely corresponding with that of the Voyage of Bran, and Guingamor, and in each case he locates the story in Wales. It is perfectly clear that tales, such as we find in the Lais, were at least as well known in these islands as on the Continent.

61

Legend of Sir Lancelot, p. 83.

62

Legend of Sir Lancelot, p. 11. The folk-lore allusions in the Lanzelet are worth following up.

63

I am indebted to Mr. W. B. Blaikie for kindly verifying the quotation for me.

64

Cf. Charrette, p. lxxvii.

65

Legend of Sir Lancelot, p. 46 et seq.

66

The theory which I advanced in chap. vii. of the Legend of Sir Lancelot with regard to the temporary disappearance of the tradition of Guinevere’s infidelity is, I think, strengthened by the evidence of the various ‘chastity-test’ Lais, Horn, Mantle, Glove. We might reasonably expect Guinevere to come but poorly out of such an ordeal; as a rule, however, she escapes very easily, far more easily, indeed, than the majority of the ladies of the court. In one case we are clearly given to understand that her sole error, a trivial one, has been one of thought. Now the lais represent, as is generally admitted, an early stage of romantic evolution, and taken into consideration with the evidence of the earlier poems, they certainly appear to strengthen the argument tentatively put forward in my Lancelot, e.g. that the tradition of the queen’s faithlessness to her husband belonged to the historic legend and was, as such, preserved in the pseudo-chronicles; it had no existence in the romantic legend till introduced under the influence of a special social condition, and in this its later form, it is not to be regarded as a survival of the historic Modred story, but as a later and independent development.

67

Cf. Popular Studies, No. 10 (Nutt), The Romance Cycle of Charlemagne and his Peers, where I have pointed out the fundamental differences between the cycles.

68

On this point, cf. Mr. Greg’s review of my Lancelot studies, Folk-Lore, December 1901.