The significance of Mr Cornford’s work lies in the fact that, while he accepts Sir Gilbert Murray’s deeply interesting and suggestive theory that the origins of Greek Tragedy are to be sought in “the Agon of the Fertility Spirit, his Pathos, and Theophany,” he contends that a similar origin may be postulated for Attic Comedy—­that the stock Masks (characters) agree with a theory of derivation of such Comedy from a ritual performance celebrating the renewal of the seasons.[5] “They were at first serious, and even awful, figures in a Religious Mystery, the God who every year is born, and dies, and rises again; his Mother and his Bride; the Antagonist who kills him; the Medicine Man who restores him to life."[6]

I would submit that the presence of such a character in the original ritual drama of Revival which, on my theory, underlies the romantic form of the Grail legend, may, in view of the above evidence, and of that brought forward in the previous chapters, be accepted as at least a probable hypothesis.

But, it may be objected, granting that the Doctor in these Fertility processions and dramas represents a genuine survival of a feature of immemorial antiquity, a survival to be traced alike in Aryan remains, in Greek literature, and in Medieval ceremony, what is the precise bearing upon the special subject of our investigations?  There is no Doctor in the Grail legend, although there is certainly abundant scope for his activities!

There may be no Doctor in the Grail legend to-day, but was there never such a character?  How if this be the key to explain the curious and persistent attribution of healing skill to so apparently unsuitable a personage as Sir Gawain?  I would draw the attention of my readers to a passage in the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes, where Gawain, finding a wounded knight by the roadside, proceeds to treat him: 

“Et Mesire Gauvain savoit
Plus que nuls homs de garir plaie;
Une herbe voit en une haie
Trop bonne pour douleur tolir
De plaie, et il la va cueillir."[7]

Other MSS. are rather fuller: 

“Et Messires Gauvain savoit
Plus que nus hons vivant de plaies,
Unes herbe voit les une haies
Qu’il connoissoit lonc temps avoit
Que son mestre apris li avoit
Enseigniee et bien moustree,
Et il l’avoit bien esgardee
Si l’a molt bien reconneue."[8]

We find reference to Gawain’s possession of medical knowledge elsewhere.  In the poem entitled Lancelot et le cerf au pied blanc, Gawain, finding his friend desperately wounded, carries him to a physician whom he instructs as to the proper treatment.[9]

“Ende Walewein wiesde den Ersatere mere
Ene const, die daertoe halp wel sere."[10]

In the parallel adventure related in Morien Gawain heals Lancelot without the aid of any physician:[11]

“Doe was Walewein harde blide
Ende bant hem sine wonden ten tide
Met selken crude die daer dochten
Dat si niet bloden mochten."[12]