In any case there is
food for reflection in the fact that the possibility of such an
origin once admitted, the most apparently incongruous, and
inharmonious, elements of the story show themselves capable of a
natural and unforced explanation.
In face of the evidence above set forth it seems impossible to deny
that the Doctor, or Medicine Man, did, from the very earliest ages,
play an important part in Dramatic Fertility Ritual, that he still
survives in the modern Folk-play, the rude representative of the early
ritual form, and it is at least possible that the attribution of
healing skill to so romantic and chivalrous a character as Sir Gawain
may depend upon the fact that, at an early, and pre-literary stage of
his story, he played the role traditionally assigned to the Doctor,
that of restoring to life and health the dead, or wounded,
representative of the Spirit of Vegetation.
If I am right in my reading of this complicated problem the
mise-en-scene of the Grail story was originally a loan from a ritual
actually performed, and familiar to those who first told the tale.
This ritual, in its earlier stages comparatively simple and
objective in form, under the process of an insistence upon the inner
and spiritual significance, took upon itself a more complex and
esoteric character, the rite became a Mystery, and with this change
the role of the principal actors became of heightened
significance.
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