wardly, a purely Saxon monastery, until, in the year 1081, William the Conqueror sent there Turstin, the first Norman Abbot. Turstin, as is well known, was removed from office in disgrace, because his enforced alteration in the method of chanting led to a brawl between the Saxon and Norman monks in which one or two were killed. So much for racial feeling! Yet a century later race hatred seems to have died, and the Norman Abbots of Glastonbury were busily propagating a purely Celtic legend, hostile alike to their own people and the Saxons whom they had replaced, and shedding no glory even on the Order of St. Benedict. It was a legend, moreover, which, as everyone knows, was looked upon but coldly by the Church.
Now a study of an ordnance map of Glastonbury shows that although the majority of local names are Saxon words, one or two Celtic names do survive, mostly in the interior and on the western borders of Avalon proper—suggesting that the Saxon invasion came from the East, and did not make quite such a "clean sweep" as some people have supposed. This in its turn implies that although the town became English many of the native inhabitants remained, and we know for certain that British monks continued to live in the "Abbey." Naturally, when the race-hatred grew cool and the two peoples intermarried, the traditions of one became the traditions of the other, and the Glastonbury-born Saxon was proud of the Celtic legends of his home—as, indeed, he still is. Many a man of this mixed breed must have entered the monastery between the days of Hemgisles and Turstin.
It is to these unknown people, this undercurrent gathered from the populace, that we should probably look for the slow growth of the Grail Legend, rather than to the men of high position who wrote and sang, although these certainly brought their own contributions. Henry II., who was interested in all that concerned Glastonbury, who visited the Abbey and superintended its building operations, probably brought there in his train some of the men who wrote Romances and gave the legends to the public. The Romances, particularly the works of Chrestien and his continuators, are often full of
