THE NOBLE TALE OF THE SANGRAIL
Malory’s tale of the Sangrail (‘saint graal’, holy grail) is based on the French Queste del Saint Graal, one of the sections of the great thirteenth-century Vulgate Cycle. Malory’s adaptation is generally fairly close, though his own version, as usual, is considerably abbreviated from the original: he generally concentrates on the narratives of the questing knights and greatly cuts down the generous quantities of exegetical material and religious allegory found in the French. More notable is his change of emphasis from the French. There, the object of this section of the cycle is to show the limitations of earthly chivalry by comparison with the requirements of God, and by so doing to prepare for the fall of the Round Table through the revelation of Lancelot’s sexual sin. Galahad is accordingly the hero of the French, and Lancelot’s failure is the central moral lesson. In Malory’s version, Lancelot and Galahad share the central place, and the emphasis falls much more on how close Lancelot comes to achieving the quest than on his failure.
At the vigil of Pentecost … heard their service: the ‘vigil of Pentecost’ is Whit Saturday, the day before Pentecost itself. Although the hearing of Mass receives emphasis throughout Malory’s work as one of the duties of every Christian, the opening of the Grail Quest with religious observance is particularly appropriate. Pentecost was the most important feast day of the Christian year after Easter and Christmas, and here brings with it its full religious charge as the day when the Holy Ghost came down among the apostles (Acts 2); the knights are similarly ‘lighted of the grace of the Holy Ghost’ when the Holy Grail makes its first appearance.
not … sit at your meat or that ye have seen some adventure: Arthur’s refusal to eat until he had seen some adventure is the starting-point for a number of Arthurian romances, most famously Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, though the feast on that occasion is Christmas rather than Pentecost.
King Pecheur: the name is derived from ‘le roi pecheur’, the Fisher King who appears in the earliest version of the Grail legend by Chrétien de Troyes, in which Percival, not Galahad, is the chosen knight. The Queste del Saint Graal identifies the fisher king as the father of King Pelles, therefore Galahad’s great-grandfather.
such meats and drinks as he best loved in this world: the Grail may have its origins in Celtic legends of a magic horn of plenty; the identification of it with the cup of the Last Supper was a late innovation, in the French prose version that Malory is translating.
Of Sir Galahad: this and the following text divisions are marked in the manuscript by large capitals. The headings are taken from the narrative transitions that announce the next subject at the close the preceding section, or, as in this instance, sign off the action at its end.
a white abbey: an abbey of white-habited Cistercian monks. The Queste del Saint Graal may have been written under Cistercian influence.
Mordrains: in the French, Mordrains is not a separate character but the name taken by Evelake after baptism.
… many marvellous deeds: the history of Galahad’s shield (here abbreviated to about half its length in Malory’s original) is part of the pre-Arthurian history of the Grail that had expanded to become a complete romance in itself, in the Estoire del Saint Graal of Robert de Boron. The Estoire had already been translated into English before Malory, by the Londoner Henry Lovelich, as The History of the Holy Grail (c. 1425); he converts the French prose into loose couplet form. Three much-abbreviated versions of the legend of Joseph of Arimathea were printed early in the sixteenth century. That he was believed to have been the apostle to the British had some propaganda value in the Middle Ages, as giving England a Christian history earlier than Scotland or most other European countries. For the role of the Biblical Joseph, see John 19: 38–42.
the white knight vanished away: the adventures of a would-be Grail knight are omitted.
I will … show you my life if it please you: i.e. make a full confession. The emphasis on individual private confession in the Queste del Saint Graal, which is carried over into Malory’s version, may be due to the fact that it had been made a universal requirement for all believers only in 1215, shortly before the composition of the Queste.
in prison before the Incarnation of Our Lordjesu Christ: the ‘prison’ is Hell: the reference is to the doctrine that all the souls of mankind were taken by the devil before the Redemption, but that Christ ‘harrowed Hell’ between His Crucifixion and Resurrection and led the good souls out to Heaven.
King Pecheur’s house: that is, in the house of King Pelles, King Pecheur’s son: for the incident referred to here, see XI.2.
he had loved a queen: Lancelot’s avoidance of naming Guenivere accords with the requirements of confession: the penitent must confess his own sins, not implicate others.
the fig tree … that had leaves and no fruit: the reference is to Mark 11:13–14.
after your departing … she died: Percival’s leaving of his mother at the point of death is of major significance in Chrétien’s version of the Grail story, but has become very much attenuated by this stage of its history. There is a Middle English stanzaic version in which the mother is brought back to health after being dosed with medicine from a spoon.
no earthly man’s hand: the recluse’s explanation of the symbolism of the Round Table is omitted. Malory himself cuts out a lengthy passage in the French in which she recounts the derivation of the Round Table from the table of the Last Supper (see in particular Luke 22: 13–20) by way of Joseph of Arimathea’s table of the Holy Grail: Malory insistently regards Arthur’s fellowship as having earthly value in its own right.
he heard a clock smite: in the French Percival hears a chapel bell tolling: mechanical clocks were invented between the time of the writing of the French Queste and Malory’s version. Early clocks struck the hour but had no dial or hands.
on foot, crying: Percival’s first attempt to get a horse is omitted.
he made a sign of the cross in his forehead: making the sign of the cross becomes, in the Grail quest, a way of opening a direct channel for God’s power into the world. Here, it frees Percival from the horse, and later from the fiend in the guise of a woman; and Lancelot is enabled to pass the lions (XVII. 14). Balin’s crossing of himself, by contrast, conveys no active power whatsoever (II. 17).
And she that rode on the serpent … put away his power: the devil is symbolized by both the serpent and the horse, both of which Percival has killed: the serpent in what appeared to be a non-allegorical battle, the horse when he made the sign of the cross. The woman riding the serpent symbolizes the Old (Jewish) Law; she is represented as being in confederation with the devil (the serpent) because it was held that the devil had hardened the hearts of the Jews against the New Law of Christ.
He hideth Him not unto his words: Percival is citing Christ’s promise from Matthew 7: 7–8.
he made me so fair and clear … I ought to have had: the story identifies the lady as Lucifer, created by God as the fairest of all the angels, but who rebelled through pride and was cast out to Hell.
rove himself through the thigh that the blood started about him: a wound in the thigh was a common euphemism for castration. Whether or not one reads Percival’s wounding of himself in this way, his action clearly seems intended to recall the idea of Matthew 19: 12, widely cited in the Middle Ages as a text in favour of clerical celibacy, ‘There be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.’ The text was customarily read as moral rather than literal: the early Greek theologian Origen received fame, or notoriety, for actually putting it into practice. The Maimed King’s wound in the thigh has been read by comparative mythologists as a metonym for the infertility of the Waste Land. The version Malory follows in fact separates the two motifs: on the Maimed King’s wounding, see XVII.7 below; on the desolating of the Waste Land, Malory offers two accounts, in one of which it is the result of Balin’s ‘dolorous stroke’ of King Pellam in II.
16, and in the other the result of an unconnected ‘dolorous stroke’ in a tangential story omitted in this edition, XVII.3.
God save you: an encounter between the hermit and a loquacious fiend is omitted.
a window that she might see up to the altar: it was common for women recluses to be enclosed in a cell adjoining a church, so that they could see the celebration of Mass. Her interpretation of Lancelot’s encounter that follows is slightly abbreviated.
that hight Mortaise: Vinaver’s emendation, confirmed both by the French source and by the naming of the river when Lancelot’s adventures are resumed later. The manuscript reads ‘and an high mortays’, Caxton ‘and an high mountain’.
if one thing were not … the more pain upon him: the ‘one thing’ is Lancelot’s affair with the Queen: without that, Gawain suggests, he would be supreme in the Grail quest. As it is, he will do no better than the rest of the knights unless he goes to extraordinary efforts—which of course he does.
viand: the manuscript and Caxton read ‘wind’: P. J. C. Field’s emendation.
set him upon an ass: some details of Ector’s vision and its later exposition (XVI-5) are omitted.
God would not ride … an ass betokeneth meekness: the reference is to Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, Matthew 21: 2–7; the moral interpretation is given in verse 5: ‘Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass.’
a scarlet coat … the quest of the Sangrail: the French stipulates that Bors must put on another garment under the scarlet one—presumably a hair shirt or similar garment to mortify the flesh, though that is not stated. The unpenitential-sounding scarlet coat therefore conceals Bors’ humility from the world, so that he cannot be given credit for it or take pride in it.
the one would have benome … touched not one another: Caxton’s reading (largely adopted by Vinaver) suggests that one flower threatens to corrupt the other, in accordance with the episode of the intended rape that follows. The manuscript reading opposes the rescue of Lionel (the tree) to the prevention of the corruption of both lovers (the flowers), an interpretation supported by the fact that in the French Queste the ‘good man’ occupies the chair between the tree and the flowers.
I shall succour this maid: Sir Bors’ choice now seems odd, since life too once lost cannot be got again. In the Middle Ages, however, virginity was commonly regarded as carrying spiritual as well as physical qualities: virgin saints could suffer horrendous tortures, but God always saved them from rape. Canon law acknowledged the avoidance of rape as the only justification for suicide, despite the arguments of theologians of the status of St Augustine on the primacy of an unspotted will over the pollution of the body; rape could be regarded literally as a fate worse than death.
the love of the vainglory of the world: the argument is that Sir Bors’ profession of chastity is a kind of pride, which must be resisted.
he had liever they all had lost their souls than he his soul: suicide, other than to avoid rape, was regarded as incurring damnation: see note to p. 362 above.
the blood that the great fowl bled raised the chicks from death to life: the symbolism is familiar in iconography, where the bird representing Christ is specified as a pelican. The image of its piercing its breast to revive its chicks with its blood is known as ‘a pelican in its piety’; it is found, for instance, as the emblem of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. (If the chicks are regarded as the central characters, the same image can betoken filial ingratitude—hence John of Gaunt’s lines in Shakespeare’s Richard II, on Richard’s killing of his uncle: ‘That blood already, like the pelican, | Hast thou tapped out and drunkenly caroused.’)
I am black: ‘I am black but comely’: Song of Songs 1: 5. That the text refers to the Church was the standard interpretation. On the Old Law, see note to p. 341 above.
save only to you: Percival’s sister tells two stories from the history of the ship that are omitted here, one at this point, one after the end of the next paragraph.
the Maimed King: the Maimed King is in fact the father of Pelles, therefore the great-grandfather of Galahad, and is elsewhere given the name King Pellam or Pecheur. Since the account of his maiming given here is different from that of the maiming of Pellam given in The Tale of Balin, I have not corrected the name or the detail of family relationships. The confusion occurs in part because Malory is trying to reduce the number of characters found in the French Queste: there, the king who is wounded is a new character who is at war with the father of the Maimed King.
bade him know his wife fleshly as nature required: there was some debate in the Middle Ages as to whether Adam and Eve had sex before the Fall: the injunction to ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ was given them in Paradise, but their first recorded act of sex (in which Cain was begotten, not, as is implied here, Abel) took place after their expulsion (Genesis 1: 28, 4: 1). It is in keeping with the whole ethos of the Grail quest that there should have been no sexual activity in Paradise; the French gives a disquisition on the supreme virtue of virginity at this point, which Malory, typically, cuts. God’s ensuing command to Adam to make love to his wife is in keeping with the doctrine of Christian marriage, but that was regarded by the celibacy lobby very much as second best.
he despised them in his books: Solomon’s denial that there was such a thing as a good woman (Ecclesiastes 7: 27–9) was notorious in the Middle Ages, and was frequently quoted and (as here) challenged. Many of the defences are put into the mouths of women: other examples are Chaucer’s Proserpina, in The Merchant’s Tale, and Prudence, the wife of The Tale of Melibee.
if heaviness come to a man by a woman … that woman shall be born of thy lineage: the references are to Eve and to the Virgin Mary.
a man which shall be a maid … Duke Joshua, thy brother-in-law: the choice of words suggests that this is a prophecy of Christ, of whom Joshua was taken to be a foreshadowing; in fact, as the next chapter shows, it refers to Galahad. The overlap between Galahad and Christ is not, of course, accidental.
Now here is a wonderful tale of King Solomon and of his wife: the line is set off as a heading in the manuscript: whether as part of the apparatus of presentation, or as part of the speech, is unclear—quite possibly both at once.
vengeance is not ours, but to Him which hath power thereof: ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord’ (Romans 12: 19).
Long have I abided … as ye be: the moment echoes Simeon’s Nunc dimittis (Luke 2: 29), when he prays for death after beholding the infant Christ; Mordrains makes a somewhat similar speech just before his own death, chapter 18 below. Both episodes are part of the chain associating Galahad with Christ.
as he ought to be: an emblematic episode follows concerning the Evangelists and the Resurrection.
let me go as adventure will lead me: a number of saints’ legends similarly record the placing of the saint’s corpse in an unsteered boat, to be taken by God to the place where it is to lie in accordance with divine will; hence Percival’s sister’s conviction as to where its destination is to be.
He that fed … so was he fed: Exodus 16. Stories of rudderless boats frequently note biblical parallels for God’s feeding of the passenger: compare, for instance, Chaucer’s story of Custance in The Man of Law’s Tale.
marvellous strange: the bottom quarter of the leaf is torn away in the manuscript; the missing portions of the lines are supplied from Caxton.
it seemed to Sir Lancelot … to the people: what is being described here is the priest’s elevation of the Host to show to the congregation at the Mass, only with its theological meaning rendered visible: the figure placed between the priest’s hands is Christ Himself, Who is embodied in the Mass wafer. The two figures who place the third between the priest’s hands are the Father and the Holy Ghost.
King Mordrains: Mordrains and Evelake are two different names for the same person in the French (see note to p. 323 above); this is therefore the same blind king that Percival has encountered in XIV.3, who is awaiting Galahad’s appearance
for his healing and death.
Galahad’s well: holy wells were often associated with virginity: St Winifred’s Well at the pilgrimage site of Holy well in Clwyd sprang up where Winifred was martyred by a would-be rapist. A further adventure with an associate of Joseph of Arimathea’s is omitted.
they had fulfilled the Sangrail: Sir Galahad proceeds to mend a sword that was broken when Joseph of Arimathea was wounded.
Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript (Oxford World's Classics) Page 71
