The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac. Weston Jessie Laidlay
presently see, must have existed at a very early date, may have led to her being confused with the queen of that kingdom, and to the transfer of Lancelot's affections from the one to the other.
The prose Lancelot version is entirely different, and far less archaic: there is no real lake, the appearance is but a mirage; men are admitted; Lancelot has not only his cousins for companions, but other knights as well. The lady herself is conceived of more as a mortal versed in enchantment than as a fairy proper. In the Suite de Merlin she is identified with the Demoiselle Chaceresse, daughter of the King of Northumberland;28 and in both these romances, the Lancelot and the Merlin Suite, she is the lover and the betrayer of Merlin. It may not be out of place to remark here that the tendency of later romances, as exhibited in the Suite and notably in Malory, is to connect the Lady of the Lake rather with Arthur than with Lancelot.
It may be asked, how did so simple a lai as we here postulate attain so great a popularity? The incidents would be few, and the characters at first probably anonymous.29 Here, I think, we may take into account a factor hitherto practically ignored, the music of the lais. As we know they were intended to be sung, and each was connected with its own melody. It would be a truism nowadays to say that the success of a song depends less upon the words than upon the music to which the words are set, and though less true of an age in which the songs of the people were also its folk-tales, yet the influence of music upon the development of popular legends is a point we do ill to ignore. It may help us to solve certain puzzles. Certain heroes of course represent what we may call the general stock-in-trade of Aryan tradition: their names vary with the lands in which their tales are told, but whether Cuchullain or Gawain, Siegfried or Perceval, the hero represents a traditional tale which antedates any special form of recital; such a tale would be assured of welcome, and practically independent of musical aid. But in the case of Lancelot we have no such prehistoric tradition, no striking parallels in early legends. Previously unknown, he leaps into popularity, as it were, at a bound. Even the most ardent adherent of Chrétien de Troyes cannot appeal to the popularity of that writer to help us with a solution, for his Lancelot poem, the Charrette, is but seldom referred to in contemporary literature. Much of Lancelot's later popularity is doubtless due to his rôle as the queen's lover; but how account for the initial popularity which caused him to be chosen for that rôle? I can only explain the phenomenon of a knight, whose very name is unknown before the middle of the twelfth century, becoming before the end of that century the leading hero of a cycle to which he was originally a stranger, by supposing that there was some special charm in the lai originally connected with him, by means of which his story took hold of the public fancy. Had that charm been in the lai itself, in word or form, then I think it would have been preserved to us. We possess more than one beautiful lai, the hero of which, originally independent of the Arthurian cycle, became by virtue of his story admitted within the magic precincts. Failing that, I think the charm must have lain in the air to which it was wedded, and which so pleased the ears of the hearers that they demanded its repetition, and lengthening, by the addition of episodes foreign to the original tale. Thus other lais, whose fate had been less happy, might for a time at least win a spurious popularity, till the 'survival of the fittest,' which operates in literature as elsewhere, discarded the weaker portions, and fixed the outline of the story in the form we know. This theory may or may not be correct, but I can suggest none other that will meet the problems of the case; and at least it has the advantage of offering an hypothesis which may be of use in other stories besides the one under discussion.
But there is another point in the discussion of Ulrich's poem which urgently demands attention. What is the connection between the Lanzelet and the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach? A connection of some sort there is, and that a fairly close one. Take for instance the passage describing the hero's departure from his magic home for the world of men, a passage extending over two hundred lines (ll. 400-666). He does not know how to sit his horse, how to hold the bridle,30 or use his weapons; is ignorant of his name and birth; is called der kindische man (l. 598), der namenlôse tumbe (l. 2045), all features which irresistibly recall Perceval to our mind, but are in no way characteristic of Lancelot.31
The tourney at which Lancelot makes his first appearance at Arthur's court has been undertaken between King Lot von Johenis and Gurnemanz den fürsten wîs (l. 2630). It commences with a vesper play:
'engegen der vespereide
riten über jene heide,
dort zwêne, dâ her drî.'—ll. 2855-7.
In the Parzival, Book II., we read of the tourney before Kanvoleis that it began with a vesper play:
'von Póytóuwe Schyolarz
und Gurnemanz de Grâhárz,
die tjostierten ûf dem plân.
Sich huop diu vesperîe sân,
hie riten sehse, dort wol drî.'—ll. 295-9.
In connection with which we may note that both Chrétien and Hartmann von Aue spell the name of Gurnemanz with o, not with u, as does Wolfram. Other names, some of them peculiar to Wolfram's version, occur in the Lanzelet, such as Galagandreiss (Galogandres), also found in Hartmann's Erec though not in Chrétien; Iwân de Nonel, l. 2935 (Parzival, v. 312); Iblîs, l. 4060 (Parzival, xiii. 895). Ulrich's Iblîs is connected with the cloister jaemerlichen urbor, Wolfram's with Terra de Lâbur; Kailet, l. 6032 (Parzival, ii. 737); Maurîn, whose name in each case is similarly qualified, mit den lichten schenkeln her Maurîn, l. 3052, Mit den schœnen schenkeln Maurîn (Parzival, xiii. 1069).32 In the description of Iweret we read, einen wâfen roc fuort er und guldîn schellen dran er schein ein engel niht ein man, ll. 4428-30, which should be compared with the description of Karnachkarnanz.
'den dûhte er als ein got getân:
er'n het ê 'so lichtes niht erkant.
úfem tówe, der wâpenroc erwant.
mit guldîn schellen kleine.'—Parzival, iii. 175 et seq.
Now how are all these points of contact to be explained? Scholars are agreed in placing the date of Ulrich's poem in the opening years of the thirteenth century, therefore anterior to the Parzival. Did Wolfram borrow from Ulrich? If it were a mere question of a name here and there we might think so, but the points of contact amount to more than this. We have the characteristics of Perceval postulated of Lancelot; we have correspondence in details, even verbal identity; further, the prose Lancelot, as we shall see, presents other points of contact with Wolfram's poem in details where he differs notably from Chrétien. It is not probable that Wolfram, who never alludes to any adventures related in the Lanzelet, and to all appearance knows nothing of the hero save the Charrette adventure, should have borrowed from two such widely different versions of his story. The fact that where Lancelot appears to have borrowed from the Perceval legend, the borrowed matter is marked by characteristics special to one version of the story is, to say the least, curious. If the Lanzelet really preceded the Parzival—a philological question upon which I am not qualified to pronounce an opinion—and Ulrich, as is generally supposed, closely followed his source, only one conclusion seems possible, i.e. that that source knew, and quoted, the poem of Kiot. It is significant that in the mention of Gurnemanz he is spoken of as den fürsten wîs, which shows that to the writer he was not a mere name, but a well-known character, distinguished by the qualities which mark him in the Parzival
My own impression is, however, that Ulrich knew Wolfram's poem, or at least part of it (between the Lanzelet and the last three books of the Parzival there do not appear to be any points of contact). There are numberless small coincidences in language and phrase, trifling in themselves, but which as a whole seem to argue a familiarity with the
In the prose
This feature is, I think, peculiar to Wolfram; Chrétien does not mention it.
Professor Hertz, in his edition of the
Layamon '