From Ritual to Romance

FROM RITUAL TO ROMANCE BY JESSIE L. WESTON

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Books about King Arthur, Camelot, and Knights of the Round Table, available from Seltzer Books:

Bulfinch's Mythology

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The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions

History of the Britons by Nennius

Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut by Wace

Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes

Morte Darthur by Thomas Malory

The Mabinogion

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

High History of the Holy Graal

Morien, an Arthurian Romance

From Ritual to Romance by Jessie Weston

Idylls of the King by Tennyson

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Preface

CHAPTER I  Introductory

CHAPTER II   The Task of the Hero

CHAPTER III  The Freeing of the Waters

CHAPTER IV  Tammuz and Adonis

CHAPTER V  Medieval and Modern Forms of Nature Ritual

CHAPTER VI  The Symbols

CHAPTER VII  The Sword Dance

CHAPTER VIII   The Medicine Man

CHAPTER IX  The Fisher King

CHAPTER X  The Secret of the Grail (1) The Mysteries

CHAPTER XI  The Secret of the Grail (2) The Naassene Document

CHAPTER XII  Mithra and Attis

CHAPTER XIII  The Perilous Chapel

CHAPTER XIV  The Author

CHAPTER I  Introductory

Nature of the Grail problem.  Unsatisfactory character of the results achieved.  Objections to Christian Legendary origin; to Folk-lore origin.  Elements in both theories sound.  Solution to be sought in a direction which will do justice to both.  Sir J. G. Frazer's Golden Bough indicates possible line of research.  Sir W. Ridgeway's criticism of Vegetation theory examined.  Dramas and Dramatic Dances. The Living and not the Dead King the factor of importance. Impossibility of proving human origin for Vegetation Deities.  Not Death but Resurrection the essential centre of Ritual.  Muharram too late in date and lacks Resurrection feature.  Relation between defunct heroes and special localities.  Sanctity possibly antecedent to connection.  Mana not necessarily a case of relics.  Sir J. G. Frazer's theory holds good.  Remarks on method and design of present Studies.  pp. 1-11

CHAPTER II  The Task of the Hero

Essential to determine the nature of the task imposed on the hero. Versions examined.  The Gawain forms--Bleheris, Diu Crone.  Perceval versions--Gerbert, prose Perceval, Chretien de Troyes, Perlesvaus, Manessier, Peredur, Parzival, Galahad-Queste.  Result, primary task healing of Fisher King and removal of curse of Waste Land.  The two inter-dependent.  Illness of King entails misfortune on Land.  Enquiry into nature of King's disability.  Sone de Nansai.  For elucidation of problem necessary to bear in mind close connection between Land and Ruler.  Importance of Waste Land motif for criticism.  pp. 12-24

CHAPTER III  The Freeing of the Waters

Enquiry may commence with early Aryan tradition.  The Rig-Veda. Extreme importance assinged to Indra's feat of Freeing of the Waters.  This also specific achievement of Grail heroes.  Extracts from Rig-Veda.  Dramatic poems and monologues.  Professor von Schroeder's theory.  Mysterium and Mimus.  Rishyacringa drama. Parallels with Perceval story.  Result, the specific task of the Grail hero not a literary invention but an inheritance of Aryan tradition. pp. 25-33

CHAPTER IV  Tammuz and Adonis

General objects to be attained by these Nature Cults.  Stimulation of Fertility.  Animal and Vegetable.  Principle of Life untimately conceived of in anthropomorphic form.  This process already advanced in Rig-Veda.  Greek Mythology preserves intermediate stage.  The Eniautos Daimon.  Tammuz--earliest known representative of Dying God. Character of the worship.  Origin of the name.  Lament for Tammuz. His death affects not only Vegetation but Animal life.  Lack of Artistic representation of Mysteries.  Mr Langdon's suggestion. Ritual possibility dramatic.  Summary of evidence. Adonis--Phoenician-Greek equivalent of Tammuz.  Probably the most popular and best known form of Nature Cult.  Mythological tale of Adonis.  Enquiry into nature of injury.  Importance of recognizing true nature of these cults and of the ritual observed.  Varying dates of celebration.  Adonis probably originally Eniautos Daimon. Principle of Life in general, hence lack of fixity in date.  Details of the ritual.  Parallels with the Grail legend examined.  Dead Knight or Disabled King.  Consequent misfortunes of the Land.  The Weeping Women.  The Hairless Maiden.  Position of Castle.  Summing up.  Can incidents of such remote antiquity be used as criticism for a Medieval text?  pp. 34-51

CHAPTER V  Medieval and Modern Forms of Nature Ritual

Is it possible to establish chain of descent connecting early Aryan and Babylonian Ritual with Classic, Medieval and Modern forms of Nature worship?  Survival of Adonis cult established.  Evidence of Mannhardt and Frazer.  Existing Continental customs recognized as survivals of ancient beliefs.  Instances.  'Directly related' to Attis-Adonis cult.  Von Schroeder establishes parallel between existing Fertility procession and Rig-Veda poem.  Identification of Life Principle with King.  Prosperity of land dependent on king as representative of god.  Celts.  Greeks.  Modern instances, the Shilluk Kings.  Parallel between Shilluk King, Grail King and Vegetation Deity.  Sone de Nansai and the Lament for Tammuz.  Identity of situation.  Plea for unprejudiced criticism.  Impossibility of such parallels being fortuitous; the result of deliberate intention, not an accident of literary invention.  If identity of central character be admitted to his relation to Waste Land becomes fundamental factor in criticizing versions.  Another African survival.  pp. 52-64

CHAPTER VI  The Symbols

Summary of results of previous enquiry.  The Mediaeval Stage.  Grail romances probably contain record of secret ritual of Fertility cult. The Symbols of the cult--Cup, Lance, Sword, Stone, or Dish.  Plea for treating Symbols as a related group not as isolated units.  Failure to do so probably cause of unsatisfactory result of long research. Essential to recognize Grail story as an original whole and to treat it in its ensemble aspect.  We must differentiate between origin and accretion.  Instances.  The Legend of Longinus.  Lance and Cup not associated in Christian Art.  Evidence.  The Spear of Eastern Liturgies only a Knife.  The Bleeding Lance.  Treasures of the Tuatha de Danann.  Correspond as a group with Grail Symbols.  Difficulty of equating Cauldron-Grail.  Probably belong to a different line of tradition.  Instances given.  Real significance of Lance and Cup. Well known as Life Symbols.  The Samurai.  Four Symbols also preserved as Suits of the Tarot.  Origin of Tarot discussed.  Probably reached Europe from the East.  Use of the Symbols in Magic.  Probable explanation of these various appearances to be found in fact that associated group were at one time symbols of a Fertility cult. Further evidence to be examined.  pp.  65-80

CHAPTER VII  The Sword Dance

Relation of Sword Dance, Morris Dance, and Mumming Play.  Their Ceremonial origin now admitted by scholars.  Connected with seasonal Festivals and Fertility Ritual.  Earliest Sword Dancers, the Maruts. Von Schroeder, Mysterium and Mimus.  Discussion of their nature and functions.  The Kouretes.  Character of their dance.  Miss J. E. Harrison, Themis.  The Korybantes.  Dance probably sacrificial in origin.  The Salii.  Dramatic element in their dance.  Mars, as Fertility god.  Mamurius Veturius.  Anna Perenna.  Character of dance seasonal.  Modern British survivals.  The Sword Dance.  Mostly preserved in the North.  Variants.  Mr E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage.  The Mumming Plays.  Description.  Characters.  Recognized as representing Death and Revival of Vegetation Deity.  Dr Jevons, Masks and the Origin of the Greek Drama.  Morris Dances.  No Dramatic element.  Costume of character significant.  Possible survival of theriomorphic origin.  Elaborate character of figures in each group. Symbols employed.  The Pentangle.  The Chalice.  Present form shows dislocation.  Probability that three groups were once a combined whole and Symbols united.  Evidence strengthens view advanced in last Chapter.  Symbols originally a group connected with lost form of Fertility Ritual.  Possible origin of Grail Knights to be found in Sword Dancers.  pp. 81-100

CHAPTER VIII  The Medicine Man

The role of the Medicine Man, or Doctor in Fertility Ritual.  Its importance and antiquity.  The Rig-Veda poem.  Classical evidence, Mr F. Cornford.  Traces of Medicine Man in the Grail romances.  Gawain as Healer.  Persistent tradition.  Possible survival from pre-literary form.  Evidence of the Triads.  Peredur as Healer.  Evolution of theme.  Le Dist de l'Erberie.  pp. 101-112

CHAPTER IX  The Fisher King

Summary of evidence presented.  Need of a 'test' element.  To be found in central figure.  Mystery of its title.  Analysis of variants. Gawain version.  Perceval version.  Borron alone attempts explanation of title.  Parzival.  Perlesvaus.  Queste.  Grand Saint Graal. Comparison with surviving ritual variants.  Original form King dead, and restored to life.  Old Age and Wounding themes.  Legitimate variants.  Doubling of character a literary device.  Title.  Why Fisher King?  Examination of Fish Symbolism.  Fish a Life symbol. Examples.  Indian--Manu, Vishnu, Buddha.  Fish in Buddhism.  Evidence from China.  Orpheus.  Babylonian evidence.  Tammuz Lord of the Net. Jewish Symbolism.  The Messianic Fish-meal.  Adopted by Christianity. Evidence of the catacombs.  Source of Borron's Fish-meals.  Mystery tradition not Celtic Folk-tale.  Comparison of version with Finn story.  With Messianic tradition.  Epitaph of Bishop Aberkios.  Voyage of Saint Brandan.  Connection of Fish and goddess Astarte.  Cumont. Connection of Fish and Dove.  Fish as Fertility Symbol.  Its use in Marriage ceremonies.  Summing up of evidence.  Fisher King inexplicable from Christian point of view.  Folk-lore solution unsatisfactory.  As a Ritual survival completely in place.  Centre of action, and proof of soundness of theory.  pp. 113-136

CHAPTER X  The Secret of the Grail (1) The Mysteries

The Grail regarded as an object of awe.  Danger of speaking of Grail or revealing Its secrets.  Passages in illustration.  Why, if survival of Nature cults, popular, and openly performed?  A two-fold element in these cults, Exoteric, Esoteric.  The Mysteries.  Their influence on Christianity to be sought in the Hellenized rather than the Hellenic cults.  Cumont.  Rohde.  Radical difference between Greek and Oriental conceptions.  Lack of evidence as regards Mysteries on the whole. Best attested form that connected with Nature cults.  Attis-Adonis. Popularity of the Phrygian cult in Rome.  Evidence as to Attis Mysteries.  Utilized by Neo-Platonists as vehicle for teaching.  Close connection with Mithraism.  The Taurobolium.  Details of Attis Mysteries.  Parallels with the Grail romances.  pp.  137-148

CHAPTER XI  The Secret of the Grail (2) The Naassene Document

Relations between early Christianity, and pre-Christian cults.  Early Heresies.  Hippolytus, and the Refutation of All Heresies.  Character of the work.  The Naassene Document.  Mr. Mead's analysis of the text.  A synthesis of Mysteries.  Identification of Life Principle with the Logos.  Connection between Drama and Mysteries of Attis. Importance of the Phrygian Mysteries.  Naassene claim to be sole Christian.  Significance of the evidence.  Vegetation cults as vehicle of high spiritual teaching.  Exoteric and Esoteric parallels with the Grail tradition.  Process of evolution sketched.  Bleheris. Perlesvaus.  Borron and the Mystery tradition.  Christian Legendary, and Folk-tale, secondary, not primary, features.  pp. 149-163

 CHAPTER XII  Mithra and Attis

Problem of close connection of the cults.  Their apparent divergence. Nature of deities examined.  Attis.  Mithra.  The Messianic Feast. Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie.  Difference between the two initiations.  Link between Phrygian, Mithraic, and Christian. Mysteries to be found in their higher, esoteric, teaching.  Women not admitted to Mithraic initiation.  Possible survival in Grail text. Joint diffusion through the Roman empire.  Cumont's evidence.  Traces of cult in British Isles.  Possible explanation of unorthodox character of Grail legend.  Evidence of suvival cult in fifth century.  The Elucidation a possible record of historic facts.  Reason for connecting Grail with Arthurian tradition.  pp. 164-174

CHAPTER XIII   The Perilous Chapel

The adventure of the Perilous Chapel in Grail romances.  Gawain form. Perceval versions.  Queste.  Perlesvaus.  Lancelot.  Chevalier d Deux Espees.  Perilous Cemetery.  Earliest reference in Chastel Orguellous.  Atre Perilleus.  Prose Lancelot.  Adventur part of 'Secret of the Grail.'  The Chapel of Saint Austin.  Histoire de Fulk Fitz-Warin.  Genuine record of an initiation.  Probably locality of North Britain.  Site of remains of Mithra-Attis cults.  Traces of Mystery tradition in Medieval romance.  Owain Miles.  Bousset, Himmelfahrt der Seele.  Parallels with romance.  Appeal to Celtic scholars.  Otherworld journeys a possible survival of Mystery tradition.  The Templars, were they Naassenes?  pp. 175-188

CHAPTER XIV  The Author

Provenance and authorship of Grail romantic tradition.  Evidence points to Wales, probably.  Pembrokeshire.  Earliest form contained in group of Gawain poems assigned to Bleheris.  Of Welshe origin.  Master Blihis, Blihos, Bliheris, Breri, Bledhericus.  Probably all references to same person.  Conditions of identity.  Mr E. Owen, and Bledri ap Cadivor.  Evidence not complete but fulfils conditions of problem Professor Singer and possible character of Bleheris' text.  Mr Alfred Nutt.  Irish and Welsh parallels.  Recapitulation of evolutionary process.  Summary and conclusion.  pp. 189-209

Preface

 In the introductory Chapter the reader will find the aim and object of these studies set forth at length.  In view of the importance and complexity of the problems involved it seemed better to incorporate such a statement in the book itself, rather than relegate it to a Preface which all might not trouble to read.  Yet I feel that such a general statement does not adequately express my full debt of obligation.

Among the many whose labour has been laid under contribution in the following pages there are certain scholars whose published work, or personal advice, has been specially illuminating, and to whom specific acknowledgement is therefore due.  Like many others I owe to Sir J.G. Frazer the initial inspiration which set me, as I may truly say, on the road to the Grail castle.  Without the guidance of The Golden Bough I should probably, as the late M. Gaston Paris happily expressed it, still be wandering in the forest of Broceliande!

During the Bayreuth Festival of 1911 I had frequent opportunities of meeting, and discussion with, Professor von Schroeder.  I owe to him not only the introduction to his own work, which I found most helpful, but references which have been of the greatest assistance; e.g., my knowledge of Cumont's Les Religions Orientales, and Scheftelowitz's valuable study on Fish Symbolism, both of which have furnished important links in the chain of evidence, is due to Professor von Schroeder.

The perusal of Miss J. E. Harrison's Themis opened my eyes to the extended importance of these Vegetation rites.  In view of the evidence there adduced I asked myself whether beliefs which had found expression not only as social institution, and popular custom, but, as set forth in Sir G. Murray's study on Greek Dramatic Origins, attached to the work, also in Drama and Literature, might not have reasonably--even inevitably--be expected to have left their mark on Romance?  The one seemed to me a necessary corollary of the other, and I felt that I had gained, as the result of Miss Harrison's work, a wider, and more assured basis for my own researches.  I was no longer engaged merely in enquiring into the sources of a fascinating legend, but on the identification of another field of activity for forces whose potency as agents of evolution we were only now beginning rightly to appreciate.

Finally, a casual reference, in Anrich's work on the Mysteries, to the Naassene Document, caused me to apply to Mr G. R. S. Mead, of whose knowledge of the mysterious border-land between Christianity and Paganism, and willingness to place that knowledge at the disposal of others, I had, for some years past, had pleasant experience.  Mr Mead referred me to his own translation and analysis of the text in question, and there, to my satisfaction, I found, not only the final link that completed the chain of evolution from Pagan Mystery to Christian Ceremonial, but also proof of that wider significance I was beginning to apprehend.  The problem involved was not one of Folk-lore, not even one of Literature, but of Comparative Religion in its widest sense.

Thus, while I trust that my co-workers in the field of Arthurian research will accept these studies as a permanent contribution to the elucidation of the Grail problem, I would fain hope that those scholars who labour in a wider field, and to whose works I owe so much, may find in the results here set forth elements that may prove of real value in the study of the evolution of religious belief.

J. L. W.

Paris, October, 1919.

CHAPTER I  Introductory

In view of the extensive literature to which the Grail legend has already been given birth it seems 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 those 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 ouside 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