The Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest.  Everyman’s Library.  Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Histories, translated by Sebastian Evans.

Chapter VII HOW THE STORY OF ARTHUR WAS WRITTEN IN ENGLISH

Geoffrey of Monmouth had written his stories so well, that although he warned people not to write about the British kings, they paid no heed to his warning.  Soon many more people began to write about them, and especially about Arthur.

In 1155 Geoffrey died, and that year a Frenchman, or Jerseyman rather, named Robert Wace, finished a long poem which he called Li Romans de Brut or the Romances of Brutus.  This poem was founded upon Geoffrey’s history and tells much the same story, to which Wace has added something of his own.  Besides Wace, many writers told the tale in French.  For French, you must remember, was still the language of the rulers of our land.  It is to these French writers, and chiefly to Walter Map, perhaps, that we owe something new which was now added to the Arthur story.

Walter Map, like so many of the writers of this early time, was a priest.  He was chaplain to Henry ii., and was still alive when John, the bad king, sat upon the throne.

The first writers of the Arthur story had made a great deal of manly strength:  it was often little more than a tale of hard knocks given and taken.  Later it became softened by the thought of courtesy, with the idea that knights might give and take these hard knocks for the sake of a lady they loved, and in the cause of all women.

Now something full of mystery was added to the tale.  This was the Quest of the Holy Grail.

The Holy Grail was said to be a dish used by Christ at the Last Supper.  It was also said to have been used to hold the sacred blood which, when Christ hung upon the cross, flowed from his wounds.  The Holy Grail came into the possession of Joseph of Arimathea, and by him was brought to Britain.  But after a time the vessel was lost, and the story of it even forgotten, or only remembered in some dim way.

And this is the story which the poet-priest, Walter Map, used to give new life and new glory to the tales of Arthur.  He makes the knights of the round table set forth to search for the Grail.  They ride far away over hill and dale, through dim forests and dark waters.  They fight with men and fiends, alone and in tournaments.  They help fair ladies in distress, they are tempted to sin, they struggle and repent, for only the pure in heart may find the holy vessel.

It is a wonderful and beautiful story, and these old story-tellers meant it to be something more than a fairy tale.  They saw around them many wicked things.  They saw men fighting for the mere love of fighting.  They saw men following pleasure for the mere love of pleasure.  They saw men who were strong oppress the weak and grind down the poor, and so they told the story of the Quest of the Holy Grail to try to make them a little better.