Peredur: The Procession

Peredur: A Grail Romance? Part IV

It is said that Chretien de Troyes’ French ‘Perceval, or the Story of the Grail’ is the source for the Welsh text ‘Peredur son of Efrog’; or, conversely, that Peredur is the source of Perceval; or perhaps they both derive from a common source? But it is not as simple as an adaption of one text or the other, as the long versions of Peredur found in the Red Book of Hergest and White Book of Rhydderch roughly mirror its French counterpart at the beginning and the end, but the Welsh text exhibits distinct variations to its continental equivalent such as the central part, featuring Angharad Golden-Hand and the empress of Constantinople, which is unique to the Welsh tale. But one episode that eternally binds the two texts is the mysterious procession at the lame king’s castle.

The Procession
Without doubt the mysterious procession at the castle of the lame nobleman bears the greatest similarity between the Welsh text of ‘Peredur Son of Efrog’ and the French ‘Perceval, or The Story of the Grail’; this brief passage has attracted the attention, but little agreement, of scholars for decades. Although the episode of the procession in the two tales is remarkably similar, in both texts, for example, it is a simple serving dish preceded by a bleeding lance or spear. And yet there are significant differences between them. 

Perceval witnesses the Grail procession at the table of the Fisher King.
From a 1330 manuscript of Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal by Chrétien de Troyes,
(BnF Français 12577, fol. 74v, c.1330)

In Chretien’s version this dish is golden and adorned with rich gemstones, emits a brilliant radiance that makes candles seem dim by comparison, is termed the ‘Grail’ and has captured the Western imagination for nearly a thousand years. Chretien calls this vessel ‘un graal’ from the Old French for a simple shallow dish or large serving tray, derived from the Medieval Latin ‘gradalis, gradale’: “a flat dish or shallow vessel.” We should note that in Chretien’s initial mention of the Grail procession at the castle of the Fisher King, there is no mention of the contents of the Grail and emphasis is clearly focused on the vessel itself.

When Chretien later returns to the Grail it is within the adventures of Gauvain (English = Gawain, Welsh = Gwalchmai) which takes up the final part of his tale and is no more than a brief mention by a hermit who Perceval meets on Good Friday after five years in which he spent in search of strange and daunting adventures, sending sixty knights as prisoners to King Arthur’s court. In that five years he never set foot in a church and had forgotten what day it was. This section is loaded with Christian overtones spending much of the short episode on the meaning of the Eucharist. Perceval takes penance by eating only the same food as the hermit for the next two days. On Easter Day Perceval received communion. The hermit turns out to be his uncle who explains that the vessel he saw at the castle of the lame Fisher King, the Grail, contains a single host (a mass wafer) that miraculously sustains the Fisher King’s wounded father. 

Chretien adds that the story says no more about Perceval for now as he has much to tell of Gauvain before he returns to him. This turns out to be Chretien’s final mention of the Grail, the final part of his poem concentrating on the adventures of Gauvain, and Perceval has by now disappeared from the story. Chretien’s text later breaks off unfinished during Gauvain’s adventures without any explanation of the mystery of the Grail. 

The short episode in the Perceval when the Hermit explains the mystery of the Grail has the feel of a later addition to the text, although in the majority of manuscripts there is no indication of a change in author, the text continues without any break, as it does in one Continuation to another. It is generally argued that Chretien intended to return to the adventures of Perceval to conclude his tale but this is far from certain. There is no evidence to support such a notion and we could just as easily argue that Chretien purposefully left his story unfinished to maintain the enigma of the Grail. If so, it certainly worked.

If the final section of Chretien’s tale, with the focus on Gauvain, has the feel of a later addition to the main story, we could certainly say the same for the final section of Peredur that it centered on the Fortress of Wonders.

The Ugly Maiden
In both the Welsh text ‘Peredur son of Efrog’ and Chretien de Troyes’ French ‘Perceval, or the Story of the Grail’, a hideous old hag on a mule (in Peredur the ‘black, curly-haired maiden’, or the ‘Ugly Damsel’ in Chretien’s Perceval) from the Castle of Pride reprimands the hero because he failed to ask the meaning of the procession that he witnessed at the lame nobleman’s castle (the ‘Fisher King’ in Chretien). As we have seen above Part III Peredur: From Caerllion to Constantinople, in the Welsh text the maiden tells Peredur that he is not worthy of her greeting because:

“When you came to the court of the lame king and when you saw there the young man carrying the sharpened spear, and from the tip of the spear a drop of blood streaming down to the young man’s fist, and you saw other wonders there, too––you did not question their meaning or their cause.”1

In Chretien’s version he provides a quite vivid description of this repulsive looking old hag mounted on a tawny mule, “if my source is to be believed, there was no such utterly hideous creature even in hell” he writes.  Again, in Perceval as in Peredur, she greets the king and his knights but takes Perceval to task for not asking about the bleeding lance or the grail calling him the “wretched one”. 

She leaves for the Castle of Pride where there are 560 knights of worth, each with a noble lady, adding that if anyone aspired to be the finest in the world he could win that title by going to the peak of Montesclaire where a damsel is besieged. Anyone who could free the girl would win the greatest honour and praise. With that she fell silent and rode off. Gauvain leapt up and said he would go to Montesclaire to rescue the girl, while Perceval declared that he would seek the mystery of the grail and the lance that bleeds. The French tale then follows Gauvain’s various adventures, including a tournament at Tintagel and a battle with Guigambresil that is postponed for a year so that Gauvain can go in search of ‘the lance with the ever-bleeding head’ as it is written that the time will come when the whole kingdom of Logres will be destroyed by that lance. The story ends without Gauvain obtaining the bleeding lance.

The Welsh version of this section is remarkably similar, particularly the Castle of Pride and the sixty-six and five hundred knights there and the besieged maiden, however it does not mention the tournament at Tintagel. Instead of following the adventures of Gauvain (Gwalchmai) as in the French text, Peredur then embarks on a series of adventures in which he meets a priest who scorns him for wearing armour on Good Friday, reflecting the short episode in Chretien’s Perceval in which he meets the hermit on Good Friday as noted above. When he eventually arrives at the Fortress of Wonders a yellow-haired lad reveals it was he in the guise black-haired maiden, and it was he who brought the head on the salver and the spear with the blood streaming from its tip to its hilt. The lad explains that the head belonged to Peredur’s cousin, killed by the witches of Caerloyw, and they also made his uncle lame. The lad discloses he is Peredur’s cousin.2

In Chretien’s text the ‘graal’ is revealed, in Peredur the head on the salver is explained, but in neither text is the lance that bleeds explained, indeed no more is said of it until the many Continuations and later Romance adaptions of the ‘Story of the Grail’ conclude Chretien’s unfinished work, when it is explained as the spear of the Roman centurion Longinus that pierced Christ’s side when he hung on the cross

In the final section (Fortress of Wonders) of the Welsh text the head on the salver swimming in blood is revealed as Peredur’s cousin for which the witches of Caerloyw were responsible, it is also revealed that they made the greyhaired man lame. Peredur said he would not sleep in peace until he knew the story and significance of the spear about which the Black-maiden spoke – but the mystery of the bleeding spear is never revealed in either text.

In addition to the differences with the French text, there are internal inconsistencies in the Welsh text; On arrival at Arthur’s court the Black-maiden said, “….. you came to the court of the lame king and when you saw there the young man carrying the sharpened spear, and from the tip of the spear a drop of blood streaming down to the young man’s fist”.

Peredur’s first uncle was lame, but the procession occurred at the court of his second uncle. 

The details of the bleeding spear/lance differ also, whereas in the earlier scene at his second uncle’s castle a huge spear is carried by two lads which had three streams of blood running from its socket to the floor.

In the same account found earlier in the Welsh text two maidens carried the large salver between them with a man’s severed head, but at the Fortress of Wonders the yellow-haired lad reveals it was he who carried the head on the salver and he who carried the spear. Whereas we can accept the Celtic art of shapeshifting for the change in gender, it is difficult to explain how two lads carrying the bleeding spear become one, similarly two maidens carrying the head on a slaver is later explained as one lad.

Peredur is not chastised for failing to ask about the procession until the Black-maiden arrives at Arthur’s court in the final section (the Fortress of Wonders); in the earlier section immediately after he left his second uncle’s castle he meets a girl cradling a dead knight, she is his foster-sister and reveals the dwarfs are the dwarfs of his father and mother and that his mother has died, but she does not tell Peredur he should have asked questions about the procession.

In Chretien’s Perceval, the maiden he meets immediately after he left the castle of the Fisher King, reprimands him for failing to ask about the procession of the spear and the grail.

And in Chretien’s account it is one lad carrying the bleeding lance, which from the head came a drop of blood which ran down to the boy's hand. And a single maiden carried the grail.

During the procession, in between the bleeding lance and the grail, in Perceval two lads come in with two candlesticks each with at least ten burning candles, then finally a girl carries a silver trencher.

In Peredur we have no candlesticks in the procession at all but weeping and wailing following the bleeding spear, and no silver trencher, but the procession ends with loud shrieking and wailing by all following the severed head.

Evidently, these internal inconsistencies between the earlier Welsh text and the final section of ‘Peredur’ at the Fortress of Wonders suggest a final episode was bolted on to the original storyline  at a later date to align the Welsh text with Chretien’s French tale.

To determine the likelihood of this we now need to consider the content of the earlier versions of Peredur Son of Efrog and subsequent manuscript dating.

Notes & References
1. Sioned Davies, editor and translator, The Mabinogion, Oxford University Press, 2007, Peredur Son of Efrog, p.94.
2. Ibid. p.104

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