BOOK VI

TRADITIONAL EVENTS

Blood drops on the snow and Chrêtien: Peredur. love-trance of hero.

Overthrows Kay and Segramor. (Perceval Li Gallois relates a similar incident of Gawain.)

Hero is cursed by Grail messenger Chrêtien: Peredur. (In Perceval for his failure to ask the there is a cursing by Merlin.) question.

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