While having no connection with the main subject of our study, the Grail legend, I should like to draw the attention of students of Medieval literature to the curious parallel between the Rig-Veda poem of the Medicine Man or Kräuter-Lied as it is also called, and Rusteboeuf’s Dist de l’Erberie.  Both are monologues, both presuppose the presence of an audience, in each case the speaker is one who vaunts his skill in the use of herbs, in each case he has in view the ultimate gain to himself.  Here are the opening lines of the Medieval poem:[1]

“Seignor qui ci estes venu
Petit et grant, jone et chenu,
Il vos est trop bien avenu
Sachiez de voir;
Je ne vos vueil pas deçevoir
Bien le porroz aperçevoir
Ainz que m’en voise. 
Asiez vos, ne fetes noise
Si escotez s’il ne vos poise
Je sui uns mires.”

He has been long with the lord of Caire, where he won much gold; in Puille, Calabre, Luserne.

“Ai herbes prises
Qui de granz vertuz sont enprises
Sus quelque mal qu’el soient mises
Le maus s’enfuit.”

There is no reference in the poem to a cure about to be performed in the presence of the audience, which does not however exclude the possibility of such cure being effected.

It would be interesting to know under what circumstances such a poem was recited, whether it formed part of a popular representation.  The audience in view is of a mixed character, young and old, great and small, and one has a vision of the Quack Doctor at some village fair, on the platform before his booth, declaiming the virtues of his nostrums before an audience representative of all ranks and ages.  It is a far cry from such a Medieval scene to the prehistoric days of the Rig-Veda, but the mise-en-scène is the same; the popular ‘seasonal’ feast, the Doctor with his healing herbs, which he vaunts in skilful rhyme, the hearers, drawn from all ranks, some credulous, some amused.  There seems very little doubt that both poems are specimens, and very good specimens, of a genre the popularity and vitality of which are commensurate with the antiquity of its origin.[2]

CHAPTER IX

The Fisher King

The gradual process of our investigation has led us to the conclusion that the elements forming the existing Grail legend—­the setting of the story, the nature of the task which awaits the hero, the symbols and their significance—­one and all, while finding their counterpart in prehistoric record, present remarkable parallels to the extant practice and belief of countries so widely separate as the British Isles, Russia, and Central Africa.

The explanation of so curious a fact, for it is a fact, and not a mere hypothesis, may, it was suggested, most probably be found in the theory that in this fascinating literature we have the, sometimes partially understood, sometimes wholly misinterpreted, record of a ritual, originally presumed to exercise a life-giving potency, which, at one time of universal observance, has, even in its decay, shown itself possessed of elements of the most persistent vitality.