Book XV
. was an animal greatly feared by snakes, perhaps the Ichneumon. The reference to Æneas and the Sibyl is from the _Æneid_ of Heinrich von Veldeck.
The legend of the pelican is well known, and the first part of the passage referring to the unicorn, its love for a spotless maiden, was a widespread fiction of the Mediæval times, but the assertion that the carbuncle is found under the unicorn's horn seems peculiar to Wolfram, and illustrates what has been said above as to his employment of precious stones.
On p. 281 we find a full account of the influence of the planets upon the wound.
Page 278, line 867--'_A knight should come to the castle_.' This promised healing of the king by means of a question put by the hero is a marked 'folklore' feature of the tale. Mr. Nutt points out in his _Studies_ that in the Grail legend we have a version of the well-known visit to a magic castle influenced by two distinct formulas familiar to folklore students, (_a_) where the object of the hero is to avenge the death, or wounding, of a relative--the Feud-quest; (_b_) to release the inhabitants of the castle from an enchantment--the un-spelling quest. The bleeding lance seems to be connected with the first (perhaps also the sword, but its employment both in Wolfram and Chrêtien is so enigmatic that it is difficult to know what import to attach to it), the question with the second. The form of the question differs here; in all the other versions it is connected with the Grail: 'Whom serve they with the Grail?' Here, directly with the wounded king, 'What aileth thee, mine uncle?' Birch Hirschfeld maintains, first, that the question was a 'harmless invention' of a predecessor of Chrêtien's (thus ignoring the archaic character of the incident); secondly, that Wolfram, having misunderstood Chrêtien's account of the Grail, was naturally compelled to invent a fresh question. Of the two, Wolfram's question seems distinctly the more natural, and the more likely to occur to the mind of a simple youth like Parzival; and he has also made much better use of the incident. It is Parzival's failure in the spirit of charity, in the love due 'as a man to men,' that constitutes the sin of the omitted question. Mr. Nutt well remarks that 'It is the insistence upon charity as the herald and token of spiritual perfection that makes the grandeur of Wolfram's poem.'
Page 283, line 1038--'_If a land be without a ruler_.' Here we have the germ of the well-known story of Lohengrin, related in