But there is another claimant in the field, and one whose right to be considered the original hero of the adventure it would, according to Professor Foerster’s opinion, be sheer impiety to doubt!—the CligÉs of ChrÉtien de Troyes. In the poem of that name the hero makes his first appearance at Arthur’s court at a tournament lasting for four successive days: he wears successively black, green, red, and white armour; and overthrows, on the three first days, Segramor, Lancelot, and Perceval; fighting on the fourth day an undecided combat with Gawain.[24] Professor Foerster, commenting on the Lanzelet,[25] remarks of the tournament episode ‘das Wechseln der RÜstung stammt aus CligÉs; and further on[26] affirms that ChrÉtien ‘sich—im CligÉs sicher als ganz selbstÄndig gezeigt hat,’ a statement he repeats on p. cxxviii, and in another place[27] with even more emphasis, ‘Dieser selbe Kristian ist in einem Roman wie Niemand ableugnen kann GANZ SELBSTÄNDIG vorgegangen, im CligÉs.’ That is, Professor Foerster asserts, and as emphatically as print will allow him, that ChrÉtien was entirely independent in CligÉs; that the episode of the change of armour is the same in the two poems, and was borrowed by the author of the Lanzelet from ChrÉtien, and therefore, if words mean anything, that ChrÉtien invented the story, and that CligÉs is the real and original hero of the tale.

Well, if assertion were argument, and a liberal display of large type could settle intricate questions of literary criticism, we might hold the dependence of Lanzelet upon CligÉs to be—not proven, no—but determined. But there are some few heretics who suspect that Professor Foerster’s ipse dixit, though imposed with all the weight of a Papal imprimatur, is not really more competent to decide a problem of sources than is that notoriously fallacious engine for the suppression of free investigation, and therefore, more heretico, we will be presumptuous enough to examine the question for ourselves.

So far as the dates of the existing versions are concerned, be it said at once that the CligÉs is the older; i.e. it is older than the Ipomedon, the Lanzelet, or the Prose Lancelot; but how it stands with regard to the lost French source of the Lanzelet is not so easily determined. The exact date of the CligÉs is not known. It was written after Erec, the translations from Ovid, and the lost Tristan; but before the Charrette and the Yvain, which fall between the years 1164-73. Professor Foerster, in his Introduction to the Charrette,[28] has expressed himself in favour of as late a date as possible for that poem—towards 1170; and since the Perceval, ChrÉtien’s last work, was written about 1182, we can scarcely place the beginning of his literary career earlier than 1150. If we place the CligÉs before 1160, we shall, I think, be ascribing too great an activity to the decade 1150-60, in comparison with 1160-70. It seems more suitable to place the CligÉs about 1160; but, as we shall see, the argument is not affected by a few years one way or the other.

The most important factor in the problem, the French source of the Lanzelet, no longer exists,[29] yet it appears certain that the whole question hinges upon the possibility of this, or an analogous French Lancelot story, having been in existence previous to the work of ChrÉtien de Troyes. It therefore becomes necessary, not only to carefully compare the two versions, that of the CligÉs and that of the Lanzelet, but also to inquire as to the source from which the story was originally derived. As we shall see, these two parts of our investigation mutually supplement each other, and in the sum-total present us with a compact and striking body of evidence.

As a first step in the inquiry we will take the CligÉs, the Lanzelet, and the Ipomedon (as being anterior to the Lanzelet in its present form), and see if we can discover any traces of a knowledge of ChrÉtien’s work on the part of the two later writers. The answer will be unhesitatingly in the negative. In neither work is there any reminiscence (with the exception of the episode in question) either in name or incident of the CligÉs. As a matter of fact, allusions to this poem are exceptionally rare. Professor Foerster states that there were two German translations, one by Ulrich von TÜrheim and another by Konrad Fleck, but of these only fragments remain. The Parzival once mentions a ClÎas, a knight of the Round Table, and in another place refers to the story of Alexander and Soredamors, but in each case it is doubtful whether the allusion is to ChrÉtien’s poem.[30] The English ‘Sir Cleges’[31] has no connection whatever with the earlier hero, and Malory’s allusions to a Sir Clegis do not go beyond the mere name, and cannot be identified with either. In my Lancelot studies I have commented upon the indifference with which CligÉs appears to have been received as being somewhat curious considering the undoubted literary value of the poem.[32]

On the other hand, the CligÉs knows Lancelot as one of Arthur’s most valiant knights, the third in order of merit, a position he certainly could not have held before his story had reached a fairly advanced stage of development. Indeed, ChrÉtien’s references to this hero deserve particular attention.[33] He is first mentioned in Erec as a knight of the Round Table, third in rank, the two first being Gawain and Erec, but is only a name, taking no part in the action of the poem. In CligÉs he occupies the same position, but here Perceval, and not Erec, ranks second. Lancelot appears upon the scene once, and once only, when he is overthrown by CligÉs at the tournament in question. In the Charrette he is the hero of the poem, the first of Arthur’s knights, the lover of the queen, and her rescuer from the prison of Meleagant. In the Chevalier au Lion which followed, his name is mentioned but once, and that in connection with an allusion to the Charrette. In the Perceval his name never appears at all. It seems extraordinary that the significance of these allusions, taken as a group, should so long have escaped detection. As a matter of fact I failed to grasp their importance myself when commenting upon them in my Lancelot studies. Thus, the tournament episode in CligÉs is so close a parallel to that of the Lanzelet that, as we have seen, Professor Foerster declares the one to be the source of the other. The rescue of Guinevere from Meleagant, the theme of the Charrette, parallels her rescue from FalerÎn, also in the Lanzelet. In both the queen is abducted against her will; in both the prison is of an otherworld character: in the one Lancelot is of the party of rescuers, but takes no prominent share in the enterprise; in the other he is the sole agent of her deliverance. In commenting upon the poem in my Lancelot studies,[34] I pointed out that the story was, in its essence, of so primitive a character, that it must certainly be, in its origin, of an earlier date than any extant literary version; and that, of the two before us, the Lanzelet, by its unlocalised character, the details it gives of FalerÎn’s stronghold, and the comparatively unimportant position assigned to Lancelot, must be considered the older.

Further, in the roll of knights named in Erec, following such well-known names as Gawain, Erec, Lancelot, Gornemanz, le Biaus Coarz (Bel Couart), Le lez Hardis (le Laid Hardi), and Melianz de Liz, we have Mauduiz li Sages, who, as I have elsewhere pointed out (Lancelot, p. 80), can hardly be other than the enchanter of the Lanzelet, Malduz der WÎse. Taking all these facts into consideration, the position ChrÉtien assigns to Lancelot, and the two adventures (they are really only two, the incidents of the Charrette are all subsidiary to the freeing of Guinevere) he records, is it not perfectly clear that ChrÉtien knew, and followed, an early version of the Lancelot story, akin to, if not identical with, the lost French source of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven? Is it not far more probable that in the CligÉs he borrowed from the Lancelot than that an adventure so persistently, and so early, attributed to that well-known hero should have been borrowed from the obscure CligÉs?

If it be objected, as of course those who hold Professor Foerster’s views will object, that ChrÉtien’s position in the literary world of the day was such that it is infinitely more likely that he should be the lender rather than the borrower, I would ask, but how if the story from which he borrowed was held, rightly or wrongly, to be the work of Walter Map? Map was a much more important personage than ChrÉtien. ChrÉtien was a poet, and a good poet, but at the best to the world in general he would be no more than the favoured servant and dependant of a minor French princess. Map was a man of political importance, the trusted companion and emissary of the most prominent monarch of the day. What was the position held by Map in the eyes of that same public to whom ChrÉtien appealed may be gathered by the anxiety which the romance-writers showed to shelter themselves under his name. We have one or two Arthurian poems, such as e.g., Diu KrÔne, which purport to be by ChrÉtien; we have a whole mass of prose romance, practically the main body of Arthurian legend in its later form, which professes to be the work of Walter Map. Could testimony as to the relative status of the two men in the eyes of their contemporaries be more eloquent? Is it likely that ChrÉtien, even if he had held as exalted an idea of his own work as his latter-day admirers would credit him with—and he did not—would have thought it derogatory to his dignity to borrow from Map? I think not; and if we had not a jot or a tittle of further evidence on the subject, I should contend that, on the evidence of the poems alone, we have strong grounds for maintaining the priority over CligÉs of a lost Lancelot version.

But as it happens, our case does not rest upon this evidence alone. We have at hand an important witness; a witness to whose evidence Professor Foerster and his followers shut their eyes and stop their ears, but who nevertheless is slowly, but surely, winning recognition as an important factor in the determination of such problems as those we are discussing. Let us turn to folk-lore, and find if from the lips of popular tradition we can gather evidence that may help to decide the question. We shall find an answer startling in its point and clearness.