THE TRUE GRAIL LEGEND [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—In your notice of the John Rylands Library Bulletin on September 10th, your reviewer writes :—" Dr. Harris makes an interesting philological point when he states that Sangreal ' has been wrongly divided, and ' should read, not as San Graal, but as Sang Real, or Royal Blood, which suggests that the legend has come across from France, and that there was never anything of the nature of a Grail. "
May I point out that this philological point has long been known to, and discussed by, modern commentators on what your reviewer rightly calls the " vast Grail literature " Students are, I think, agreed that the presentment of the Grail legend given by Tennyson, which accepts the mysterious cup as the chalice used in the Last Supper, is a comparatively modern rendering.
The sources from which the true Grail legend springs are deep and obscure, but I think that Miss Jessie Weston, the greatest authority on the subject that I know of, has solved the problem in her most wonderful book, From Ritual to Romance ; which book will, I think; be in future the starting- point for all scholars who make this fascinating subject 'a matter for study and research.L-I am, Sir, &c., BLANCHE WINDER. Graythwaite Manor, Grange-over-Sands.
[There is, as our correspondent acknowledges, a vast Grail literature, and there are many experts. Among the chief of these is Miss Weston, but she cannot be said to have finally " solved the question." Tennyson's rendering used to be rather lightly regarded, but recently it has come to be recognized that he clung remarkably close to Malory, so that his idea that the Grail was the Cup of the Last Supper is really not modern at all. A very high authority, Professor Gollancz,
holds that it was the Cup of the Last Supper, and that the Legend has a Jewish origin. On the other hand, Dean Armi- tage Robinson, in his recent book, says that the Grail con- sisted in two cruets, supposed to contain the sweat, blood and water from the side of Christ, and to have been transported to Glastonbury by Joseph of Arimathaea.—En. Spectator.]
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