BOOK I.
Arthur's
Knights.
brought upon Glauke and on Herakles. The Lady of the Lake warns him not to put on this vesture until he has first seen the bringer wear it. This accordingly he makes the maiden do, "and forthwith she fell down, and was brent to coals." ^
The story now ceases practically to be the romance of Arthur, until it once more exhibits him in all the majesty of Christian long- suffering and holiness ; but, as we might expect, those portions of the romance which less immediately relate to Arthur are founded on old Teutonic or Hellenic myths. In the three sisters which meet Sir Marhaus, Sir Gawain, and Sir Ewain by the fountain, we can scarcely fail to recognise the three weird sisters, whose office, as belonging to the past, the present, and the future, seems to be betokened by their age and the garb which distinguishes them from each other. The eldest has a garland of gold about her hair, which is white with the snows of threescore winters ; the second, thirty years of age, with more brilliant ornaments, marks the middle stage in which the main action of life lies ; while in the younger sister of fifteen summers, crowned with luxuriant flowers, we have the Norn whose business is only with the time to come.^ In the good knight Tristram we have another of those fatal children whose mother's eyes may not be long gladdened with the sight of their babes. Like Asklepios and Diony- sos, like Macduff and Sigurd, Tristram is the son of sorrow ; ^ nor did he fail to justify the popular conviction that all such children are born to do great things.* In the madness which comes upon Lance- lot when Guinevere rebukes him for the love of Elaine we see the frenzy of Herakles and other heroes, a frenzy which is naturally healed by the San Greal.^ In the story of the Perilous Seat we have simply another form of a myth already twice given in this romance. " Then the king went forth and all the knights unto the river, and there they found a stone floating, as if it had been of red marble, and therein stuck a fair and a rich sword, and in the pommel thereof were precious stones wrought with subtle letters of gold, which said,
- Never shall man take me hence but he by whom I ought to hang ;
and he shall be the best knight of the world ' " — bravery and good- ness being thus made the prize instead of an earthly kingdom as in the case of Arthur. The king tells Lancelot that this sword ought to
- La Morfe d'A7-thure,,ed. Coney-
beare, book iii. ch. v. ' Ibid., book iv. ch. iii.
- In the Arthur cycle there arc two
forms of the Tristram story, the one occurring in the body of the Arthur legend, the other g'ven separately, l-'or the differences between the two, see Appendix HI. to the Introduction to Comparative jIythology.
- See p. 103.
- Coneybeare, La Morie d'Arthure,
book X.
