For 1000 years the land lies waste, till, in the days of King Arthur,
his knights find maidens wandering in the woods, each with her
attendant knight. They joust, and one, Blihos-Bliheris, vanquished by
Gawain, comes to court and tells how these maidens are the descendants
of those ravished by King Amangons and his men, and how, could the
court of the Fisher King, and the Grail, once more be found, the
land would again become fertile. Blihos-Bliheris is, we are told,
so entrancing a story-teller that none at court could ever weary of
listening to his words.
The natural result, which here does not immediately concern us, was
that Arthur's knights undertook the quest, and Gawain achieved it.
Now at first sight this account appears to be nothing but a fantastic
fairy-tale (as such Professor Brown obviously regarded it), and
although the late Dr Sebastian Evans attempted in all seriousness to
find a historical basis for the story in the events which provoked the
pronouncement of the Papal Interdict upon the realm of King John, and
the consequent deprivation of the Sacraments, I am not aware that
anyone took the solution seriously. Yet, on the basis of the theory
now set forth, is it not possible that there may be a real foundation
of historical fact at the root of this wildly picturesque tale? May
it not be simply a poetical version of the disappearance from the land
of Britain of the open performance of an ancient Nature ritual?
A ritual that lingered on in the hills and mountains of Wales as the
Mithra worship did in the Alps and Vosges, celebrated as that cult
habitually was, in natural caverns, and mountain hollows? That it
records the outrage offered by some, probably local, chieftain to a
priestess of the cult, an evil example followed by his men, and the
subsequent cessation of the public celebration of the rites, a
cessation which in the folk-belief would certainly be held sufficient
to account for any subsequent drought that might affect the land?
But the ritual, in its higher, esoteric, form was still secretly
observed, and the tradition, alike of its disappearance as a public
cult, and of its persistence in some carefully hidden strong-hold,
was handed on in the families of those who had been, perhaps still were,
officiants of these rites.
Pages:
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225