by Mike Ashley
1. The origins of the Grail
The first reference to the Grail appears in Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal written in the 1180s. I cover this story in detail below and mention it here in order to get a time fix and to see how Chrétien describes it. He says that the Grail was of “fine pure gold”, and set with “precious stones of many kinds.” He also says that the company are served from the Grail, and the overall impression is that he is describing a platter or tray. Although we have come to think of the Grail as a chalice, that description does not occur in Chrétien’s work but only in Robert de Boron’s. As the Grail story progresses, with its different interpreters, the Grail becomes several things including a container which seems to glow with the spirit of Christ. The word most commonly used to describe the Grail is a “vessel”, clearly a container of some kind, but nothing more specific than that.
Thanks to Robert de Boron, the Grail became associated with the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and with which he performed the sacrament with the wine representing his blood. After Christ’s crucifixion, when Joseph of Arimathea was given custody of Christ’s body, Robert de Boron states that he took a few drops of Christ’s blood into the Grail and thus it became a symbol of rebirth and salvation. Anyone who was pure and free of sin and who could attain the Grail was thus assured of eternal life.
One matter is consistent, though – the Grail is able to feed all who are assembled with whatever they want and however much they want. This is an ancient concept and goes back at least as far as the Greek story of the horn of plenty, the cornucopia, which Zeus gave to Amalthea in gratitude for helping raise him, and which gave its possessor anything he desired. In the Christian story it equates to Christ’s miracle of feeding the five thousand and in Celtic myth to Daghda’s cauldron. The Daghda was one of the mightiest of Irish gods, the chief deity of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a magical race subsequently equated with the fairies. The Daghda had the power over life and death, represented by his club, a blow with one end of which meant death, and with the other meant life. He also had a cauldron which provided an inexhaustible supply of food. Both the club and the cauldron have their equivalents in the Grail story with the Holy Lance of Longinus and the Grail.
The cauldron had many mystical properties to the early Celts. It was seen as a symbol of rebirth, and cauldrons served as funerary urns for burial and rebirth in the Otherworld. In the second branch of the Mabinogion, Branwen, Daughter of Llyr, a cauldron is given to the Irish king Matholwch by Bendigeid Vran, from which the bodies of dead warriors, boiled overnight, arise as new the next day. Bendigeid Vran is better known as Bran the Blessed, and features in Robert de Boron’s first Grail story as the Keeper of the Grail and the first Fisher King. According to the ancient pedigrees Bran was the father of Beli who married Anna, the cousin of the Virgin Mary (see Table 3.2). He was the ancestor of both Cunedda and Coel Hen, and thereby of most of the later British kings. Bran’s grandson was Afallach, or Aballach, a name equated by some with Avalon. He appears in the Quest of the Holy Grail and in later stories as King Evelach, or Evelake.
In the tale of Culhwch and Olwen, Arthur’s men are set many tasks by the giant Ysbaddaden. Amongst the treasures they must obtain is the basket of Gwyddno Garanhir, which could supply meat even if “the whole world should come together.” Likewise the horn of Gwlgawd Gododdin will provide endless drink. They do not need to achieve all the quests in the end, though they do acquire the cauldron of Dwrnach Wyddel, which also seems to be a cauldron of plenty, but they have to fight for it. Bedwyr snatches the cauldron whilst Llenlleawc (regarded by some as the prototype of Lancelot) grabs Arthur’s sword Caledvwlch and smites off Dwrnach’s head.
The Welsh poem Preideu Annwvyn, which dates from around the late ninth century, involves a quest by Arthur and his men to recover the cauldron of the Lord of Annwvyn itself (see Chapter 12). Annwvyn represented the Otherworld. This cauldron is described as being rimmed with jewels, like the Grail. Being a cauldron of the Lord of the Otherworld, it too must have had qualities of rebirth, but in this story it is specifically stated that it will not cook meat as food for cowards, suggesting that it recognizes the hearts of the brave, just as the Grail recognises the pure in heart. Once again, the cauldron is not acquired easily. As in Culhwch and Olwen (this episode appears to have the same origin), Lleminawc/Llenlleawc wields a “sword of lightning” to snatch the cauldron. It is housed in a Glass Fort, also called Caer-Vanäwy (amongst other names), which means “Fort of the Divine Place”, a suitable description for the Grail Castle. In The Quest of the Holy Grail the Grail Castle is called Corbenic. The name is believed to be derived from the Old French Cor Benit, meaning “blessed horn”, another reference to the horn of plenty.
These few examples show that long before Chrétien established the mystery of the Grail there had been a Celtic tradition of an object with properties similar to a horn of plenty and a cauldron of rebirth. These stories also involve a seemingly impossible quest which may only be achieved by the bravest of men. The location of the treasure also has some mystical elements and seems to be situated in the land between our world and the next.
Besides the Grail itself one of the most striking images is that of the Waste Land. It does not appear in the earliest stories and takes different forms in the later ones. As I discussed in Chapter 12, the imagery has much to do with the concept of the Holy Land being laid waste during the Crusades. But it may also mean something closer to home. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records several periods of devastation leading up to and during the Civil War in England at the time of King Stephen. Here are two examples.
1125. On St Lawrence’s Day there was so great a flood that many villages were inundated and men were drowned; bridges were broken down; the corn and meadows were completely laid waste, bringing hunger and death to men and livestock; and there was more unseasonableness in crops of every kind than for many years past.
1137. . . . they [the barons] levied a tax known as tenserie upon the villages. When the wretched people had no more to give they plundered and burned all the villages, so that you could easily go a day’s journey without ever finding a village inhabited or a field cultivated . . . Wherever the ground was tilled the earth bore no corn for the land was ruined by such doings; and men said openly that Christ and His saints slept.
There is no doubt that such scenes were replicated across Europe, and memories of them would have been only too vivid among those reading the Grail stories. In the earliest the Waste Land is not caused by any supernatural means. It is simply that the Grail King, being wounded, is unable to tend his land. The imagery in Robert de Boron’s Perceval, for instance, chillingly echoes that ASC entry for 1137, when Perceval rides through a deserted land.
As the scale of the Grail stories grew, so too did the curse upon the land, until we have an image of the whole of England laid waste, devastated until such time as the Good Knight can restore it. This same image stretches back throughout the history of England so consistently that it must have been indelibly ingrained upon the national consciousness. The harrying of the north had seen much land laid to waste by William the Conqueror and his barons. Before him there had been three centuries of Viking incursions and before them the wars between the Saxons and the Britons. This takes us back to the days of Arthur. We know from Gildas’s description (§24) that Britain was like a wasteland in the years before Ambrosius led the resurgence (see Chapter 5).
This is why the Waste Land imagery is so appropriate to the Arthurian story and why it became associated with Arthur more closely than with any other Dark Age or medieval king. Arthur was the restorer of the Waste Land and would achieve it again through the purest of his knights. This was an image the Anglo-Norman kings were keen to foster during the Crusades – that they, as heirs to Arthur, were the saviours of Christendom.
In the Grail story that challenge is first put to Perceval. In the later Vulgate version it is Galahad who becomes the Grail Knight.
2. Pe
rceval
Through all of the Grail stories Perceval is referred to as le Gallois, the Welshman. What’s more, he is shown as someone ignorant of the world about him, because his mother had not wanted him to suffer the same fate as his father and brothers. It is Perceval’s ignorance – innocence, really – that causes him, through no fault of his own, to fail to ask the right question at the Grail Castle. Perceval is thus symbolic of Everyman in the medieval mystery plays, who must be educated in the ways of the world and of the spirit in order to achieve divine grace. The entirety of the Grail story is based around that very concept of grace, so dear to the heart of the Cistercian order. Perceval, therefore, is seen as the everyday man who once had divine grace but who, through the sins of his forebears, has fallen into ignorance. As such, the Perceval of the story is based not on any one individual, but on everyone.
The name is itself significant. It comes from the old French Perce Val, meaning “pierced valley”. The story deals with a maimed Fisher King who, like Christ on the Cross, bears wounds caused by having been pierced by a sword or lance. By the time of the Post-Vulgate version discussed below, that is exactly what does happen when Balin strikes the Fisher King with the Holy Lance – the Dolorous Blow that lays all Christendom to waste. The “valley” relates to the Vales of Avalon, the land to which the Grail had been brought by Joseph of Arimathea and his brethren. To restore the land, Perceval must “pierce the vale”, that is, enter the Grail Castle and solve the puzzle by asking the right question. That “piercing” would then heal the land, just as Jesus’s final wounds allowed him to pass through death and on to resurrection.
When the Perceval story was adapted into Welsh, the translator chose to rename Perceval Peredur, meaning “hard spear”(from peri “spear” + dur “hard”), singularly appropriate for a lance or sword able to pierce. Whether that was the intention is not clear. Peredur was a well-known British hero from the time of Arthur whom we have already encountered. He was the son of Eliffer of the Great Host, brother of Gwrgi, and the victor of the Battle of Arderydd in 573. Peredur had the epithet Paladr Hir, “long spear”. Another Peredur is mentioned in Y Gododdin, where he is known as Arfau Dur, “of the steel weapons”. These probably refer to the same person. The Peredur of history was clearly a warrior of great renown and in that respect does not and could not equate in any way with Perceval. But what about the Peredur of legend?
What tends to be overlooked is that Peredur’s name was transformed in Welsh legend to another much more famous name, Pryderi. Pryderi was the original hero of the Mabinogion and, as we have seen, under his natal name of Gwri was the original of Gawain. The renaming of Gwri as Pryderi is not properly explained in Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, the first story in the Mabinogion, and indeed seems rather forced. It is more likely that amongst the original storytellers was one who conflated two stories, that of Gwri/Gawain and that of Peredur/Pryderi, and that other storytellers continued to narrate these adventures as relating to Gawain, and not Pryderi. This may account for why Gawain and Perceval are so closely associated in the Grail stories.
If we summarize the Mabinigion story Manawydan, Son of Llyr, mentally substituting the name Perceval for Pryderi, we encounter much that we will see again as we work through the Grail stories. At the start of the story Pryderi’s father has died and Pryderi has become Lord of Dyfed. Manawydan marries Pryderi’s widowed mother Rhiannon. Pryderi is married to Cigfa (who, if the pedigree is correct, is the niece of Vortigern). Pryderi agrees to share his inheritance of Dyfed with Manawydan. One evening, after they have feasted, they travel to Gorsedd Arberth (the Throne of Arberth). There is a peal of thunder, they are surrounded by a thick mist, and the place is filled with light. When they can see again they find that everything has disappeared – “neither house, nor beast, nor smoke, nor fire, nor man, nor dwelling; but the houses of the Court empty, desolate, uninhabited.” It seems the whole of Dyfed has become deserted save for wild beasts. The four of them survive for two years by hunting and fishing but grow tired and go to Logres to seek work. Though they earn a living they have to keep moving on because of hostility from the local craftsmen. They return to Dyfed, which is still devoid of all but wild life, and continue to hunt.
One day, while out hunting with their dogs, they disturb a boar of pure shining white. They follow it to a lofty castle which looks new. The dogs follow the boar into the castle and all goes quiet. Against Manawydan’s advice Pryderi goes into the castle to find his dogs. Inside the castle is empty except for a marble fountain. Beside the fountain is a golden bowl, suspended by four chains that seem to vanish into thin air. Taken by the quality of the bowl, Pryderi touches it, and immediately finds himself unable to move or speak. Manawydan waits till nightfall, then returns home. Rhiannon, annoyed at Manawydan’s lack of action, sets out to the castle and discovers Pryderi, transfixed. The moment she touches the bowl to free him she is also trapped. Whereupon there is a clap of thunder, a mist falls, and the castle vanishes taking Pryderi and Rhiannon with it.
Manawydan and Cigfa try to survive on their own, and Manawydan sows several fields of corn. It grows, but when he inspects the first field he finds the corn devastated overnight. The following day the next field is devastated. The third night he stays up to watch over the last field and discovers a vast flock of mice swarming over it. He catches a mouse and determines to hang it as he would any other thief. While constructing the gibbet he is approached by a clerk, the first man he has seen in seven years. When the clerk learns what Manawydan is doing he offers to buy the mouse for a pound, but Manawydan will not sell. Then along comes a priest who offers Manawydan three pounds, but no luck. Finally, a bishop appears and offers Manawydan seven pounds. Still Manawydan will not budge. He now learns that the bishop is really Llywd ap Cilcoed who had cast an enchantment over the land in revenge for past ills he believed Pwyll had caused. Llywd wants the mouse because it is his pregnant wife, whom he had changed into a mouse along with all the other women of his court in order to devastate Manawydan’s crop. Manawydan agrees, provided Llywd will lift the enchantment off the land and set Pryderi and Rhiannon free.
Several of these elements reappear in the Grail stories, including the Enchanted (Waste) Land, the mysterious (Grail) castle and the golden bowl (the Grail). We may also see a suggestion of the Siege Perilous in the Throne at Arberth (Narberth). One can perhaps read too much into it; the desolation of Dyfed as a punishment for the sins of the fathers may equate to the general sins of mankind for which the success of the Grail quest is the panacea.
Perhaps we can also see in Llywd the basis of the Fisher King. I suggest this not solely on the strength of this story (where I suspect that Llywd is also supposed to be the boar and thus the lure to the Castle, like the Fisher King) but also because Llywd reappears briefly in the story of Culhwch and Olwen. After Arthur and his men have obtained the magic cauldron of Dwrnach and returned to Dyfed, they arrive at the house of Llywd, which the text describes as “Mesur-y-Peir” (“the measure of the cauldron”). Any town by that name is now lost but Charlotte Guest suggests it might have been associated with Pwllcrochan (“the Pool of the Cauldron”) near Pembroke, alas now almost entirely buried under an oil refinery. Llywd’s own town is believed to be Ludchurch, near Narberth. The reference to “Mesur-y-Peir” begs the question as to whether Llywd thereafter became the guardian of the cauldron.
All of this is sufficient to show that there was plenty of material in the Celtic tales to serve as a basis for the Grail story. There may have been some eastern variant of these in the book Philip of Flanders gave to Chrétien. From then on the Grail story became the spiritual parallel of the Crusades. The following sets out all of the Grail romances in their order of appearance.
3. The Grail Romances
CONTE DU GRAAL (The Story of the Grail), Chrétien de Troyes (French, cll82), 9,234 lines
The longest of Chrétien’s romances, and probably the most influential, it is also his most infuriating, as it was left unfinished and
thus unexplained. It is from this that the whole Grail Cycle of stories has grown.
Perceval is a young country boy who has been kept in ignorance of worldly matters by his mother. He does not know his name, and it is not revealed until nearly halfway through the story. He does not know that his father and brothers met their deaths as knights, and knows nothing of knights, lords, ladies or the church. However, one day he sees some knights passing, their armour reflecting the sun so that he thinks them angels. This gives him the desire to be a knight and, much against his mother’s wishes, he sets off for Arthur’s castle. He sees his mother faint from despair but does not return. She has given him some words of advice, but like so much of the advice he receives throughout his adventures he either takes it too literally or misinterprets it, constantly giving the impression that he is a fool. Early in his travels he encounters a maiden asleep in a tent. He steals a kiss, takes her rings and also her food, puzzled that she is so affronted by this. When her lover returns he believes she has been unfaithful and vows to track down the young squire. Meanwhile, Perceval reaches Arthur’s court where he is the subject of much ridicule, mostly as the butt for Kay’s derision.
The queen had just been insulted by the Red Knight, who is leaving the court as Perceval arrives. Perceval desires the knight’s red armour and asks Arthur if he may pursue the knight. A damsel, who had earlier laughed at Perceval, states her belief that he will be the greatest knight of all, but Kay derides and slaps her. Perceval vows revenge. He follows and challenges the Red Knight and kills him, taking his armour. This gratuitous act has repercussions in some of the later stories.
Finding his way to Gornemant’s castle, Perceval receives instruction in chivalry and combat, and is knighted. Gornemant advises Perceval not to ask too many questions at the risk of appearing ignorant. He travels to the castle of Beaurepaire, where Gornemant’s niece Blancheflor lives, and where he defeats Clamadeu of the Isles who is besieging the castle. Perceval vows his love for Blancheflor and says he will return, but says he must first visit his mother.