Julia Mattison
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majority of versions, after his father’s death, Percival is raised in the wilderness by his mother. He then travels to Arthur’s court, journeys throughout the kingdom, meets a wounded or lame king, and then witnesses a strange procession that includes a spear dripping blood. Peredur shares more detailed elements as well, for many of the hero’s actions have precedent in other renderings, such as repairing a broken sword, visiting an ugly woman, encountering a priest on Good Friday, discovering a magical game board, and hunting a magical creature before being scolded by an other-worldly woman.2 The vast number of narrative correlations, which appear in at least one other earlier French work, indicates a continental influence on the Welsh material. Based on the close textual parallels in dialogue and prose, Peredur seems at the very least to share a common source with Chrétien de Troyes (Goetinck 69–78). The analogous natures of the French stories and Peredur become the basis for the interpretation of the Welsh narrative as yet another story about the quest for the Holy Grail. In spite of the prominent narrative similarities, Peredur lacks the central feature of the French legends: the Grail. In other Percival stories, the Grail is a magical object that sustains the life of the Fisher King or is simply a special drinking horn that is always full of wine or food (Loomis, “The Irish Origin” 416).3 The Grail need not necessarily be a cup—Chrétien de Troyes’s Grail is a jewelled platter and Wolfram van Eschenbach’s is a stone—but these objects are otherwise connected to the continuation of the lame king’s life (Wood 174– 76). At the very least, in its Celtic origins, the Grail is “a symbol of sovereignty” (Goetinck 275). The presence of the Grail in the Fisher King’s castle establishes him as a legitimate ruler. In most Percival stories, the Grail is first seen in the procession in the Fisher King’s castle; in Perceval and the Second Continuation, the Grail procession includes “the spear…used by Longinus to pierce Christ’s side…the cup [of ] Joseph of Arimathea; the trencher [used to cover] the cup to protect the blood; and the sword [that] wounded both the Fisher King and his brother” (Wood 171). In Peredur, however, the procession is abbreviated: Suddenly he could see two lads entering the hall, and from the hall they proceeded to a chamber, carrying a spear of huge proportions, with three streams of blood running from its socket to the floor…The man did not explain to Peredur what that was, nor did Peredur ask him about it…Two maidens entered with a large salver between them, and a man’s head on 2. See Lovecy 172–80 and Wood 169–77. 3. Only later versions of the story Christianize the Grail to become the cup that caught Christ’s blood at his crucifixion, a telling that has been made more familiar in modern retellings of Arthurian legend, such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code.