of Arthur's knights. The folk-tale of perilous quests for articles of magic virtue is one of the most persistent of folk-themes down to the present day, its chief prototype being the story of the Adventures of the Children of Tuireann. The story of the Tain itself was the object of a Quest, for it had been lost, and was carried, men thought, to Armorica, where (or perhaps in Connaught) it was sought and found. To our mind, the ground-work of the Grail story is more native than Miss Weston is disposed to admit. The oriental doctrines were, to our thinking, fitted into a native framework.
On the other hand she is inclined too much to minimize the part taken by ecclesiastical tradition. This has recently been revived in a new form in two very able articles contributed by Miss M. A. Murray to Ancient Egypt (1916, Parts I. and II.), which Miss Weston does not appear to have seen. Miss Murray contends for an Egyptian origin for the Joseph of Arimathea legend, and for a Coptic origin for the Grail or Eucharistic Cup. Her parallels between the ceremonial of the celebration of the Eucharist in the Coptic rite and the description of the procession of the Grail in Wolfram von Eschenbach are very curious and interesting, the most remarkable being the carrying of the decapitated head, in the Coptic ritual the head of St. Mark, the founder of the Egyptian church. Further resemblances are the bowl and towel for washing the hands at Mass, the censering and anointing and the breaking of the bread into three fractions. The Ark in which Joseph carried the holy blood she considers to be a reminiscence of the wooden ark adorned with pictures, in which the cup is placed in the Coptic churches; and she points to the statement of Wolfram that the legend was of eastern origin, written in Arabic, and introduced into Spain by Flegetanis. Its introduction into England she puts down to the Melkin, mentioned in the History of Glastonbury by its compiler, John of Glastonbury.
The story itself and still more the ideas it enshrines, are surely composite; we doubt whether any single line of tradition will account for all.
In America the problems arising out of the Arthurian romance are being attacked from different sides by a number
