BOOK VI
TRADITIONAL EVENTS
Blood drops on the snow and Chrêtien: Peredur. love-trance of hero.
Overthrows Kay and Segramor. (Perceval Li Gallois relates a similar incident of Gawain.)
Hero is cursed by Grail messenger Chrêtien: Peredur. (In Perceval for his failure to ask the there is a cursing by Merlin.) question.
Page 159, line 2--'_From Karidöl and his kingdom_.' Karidöl=Carduel or Cardoile, the Anglo-Norman form of Carlisle. This is undoubtedly Arthur's original capital, but throughout this poem Nantes seems to be regarded as the royal city. Curiously enough we find the two names combined in Gautier de Doulens, one of the continuators of _Li Conte del Graal_, who introduces, as one of his _dramatis personæ_, Carduel of Nantes.
Page 160, line 29--'_Whitsuntide_.' An examination of the Romances will show this statement to be correct; Pentecost and Christmas seem to have been the two feasts held in especial honour at King Arthur's court.
Page 160, line 49--'_Blood-drops on the snow_.' Both Wolfram and Chrêtien insist only on the _two_ colours, red and white, and the fact that they are puzzled by, and think it necessary to explain, the presence of snow at Whitsuntide shows that they are taking over the incident from an older source. As a matter of fact it is to be found in tales unconnected with the Arthurian cycle, and of varying nationality. In Peredur (Welsh) a raven has settled upon the body of a wild goose killed by a falcon, and the hero thinks of _three_ colours (black, for hair; white, for skin; red, for cheeks); in the _Fate of the Sons of Usnech_, an Irish tale written down before the middle of the twelfth century, and probably centuries older, these three colours are likewise present, but it is a calf instead of a wild goose that is slain, and it is the heroine, not the hero, who is fascinated by the colours. The incident has always been a favourite one with Celtic story-tellers (cf. _Argyll Tales_, M'Innes and Nutt, pp. 431-34), and curiously it is the slain-_bird_, instead of the slain-_calf_ version which predominates, although the _Fate of the Sons of Usnech_ is probably the most famous of all Irish stories, and no traceable literary influence of the Welsh tale upon Irish romance is known. Those familiar with Grimm's fairy tales will remember a similar incident in the story of _Snowdrop_, where the queen pricks her finger, and wishes for a daughter with hair as black as the ebony window-frame, skin as white as the snow, and cheeks as red as the blood; but here, of course, the 'fascination' element is absent. I have attempted to show ('the _lai_ of Eliduc and the mürchen of Schneewittchen,'_Folk Lore_. iii. I), that the Gaelic version of the Schneewittchen type of story represents the earliest attainable form of the story.--[A. N.]
Page 162, line 87--'_Segramor_,' or Saigremors. This knight is a familiar figure in the Arthurian Romances, and the episode is quite in accordance with his general character. Chrêtien calls him 'Le Desreè' (uncurbed, impetuous). In Malory he is 'Le Desirous.' Cf. also