COLLECTANEA.
Glastonbury and the Grail Legend.
The publication of Miss Weston's new volume of Arthurian research From Ritual to Romance, and the summing up of her conclusions represented therein, seem to proclaim the time ripe for a consideration of the Grail Legend in its special connection with the Glastonbury neighbourhood. Miss Weston's theory that the curious details of the Grail pageant arise from actual incidents of long-forgotten ritual—or more properly, ritual forgotten only by the general public—has forced on us the question: is it possible now to point to any place in England as having been at one time an important centre of these rites, and, if so, have we any reason to conclude that Glastonbury might have been, in remote ages, such a centre?
It has so long been the fashion to treat the Glastonbury element in the story as spurious, as a piece of flagrant dishonesty on the part of monks who had adopted a particular legend to serve their own ends, that some little courage is required to suggest a new theory; but there are certain curious and interesting details which it might be profitable to discuss, and it seems to me strange that local legends and evidence of all kinds have been systematically overlooked.
The question is such a vast one that it cannot be fully discussed, and it is hard to know where to begin; but one must, I think, leave out the Christian or pseudo-Christian aspects of the legend altogether—at any rate for the present. It might be convenient to start with the fact that local tradition and old writers give the place three names:—Ynyswytrin, the Glassy Island; Avalon, the Island of Apples; and Glaestingaburgh, or Glastonbury, the last being the Saxon designation, said
