Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 90

93; 3000-03)34 are telescoped in the saga into a single description of the
object. A maiden enters the hall ok bar l hondum sér pvi Ukast sem textus
væri; en peir i volsku måli kalla braull; en vér megum kalia ganganda
greida (30:16-18). The translator purports to give a definition, yet the
explication does not satisfy. The object in question has some relation to a
textus - a loan word that must have been familiar, at least to some, from
the liturgy - is called braull in French, and apparently recognizable by a
Northern audience under the unique phrase gangandi greidi. Presumably
braull - as the word is written in the oldest manuscript, the vellum Stock-
holm 6 - is a scribal corruption of an original graal. Since the word would
have meant nothing to his audience, the translator offered an equivalent
Norse term, gangandi greidi. Whether the translator understood the
passage in Chrétien any better than modern scholars, and whether the
Norwegian audience understood the translation better than we do today
is debatable. Various interpretations of textus and gangandi greidi have
been advanced, but the evidence is inconclusive.35 Recently Peter G.
Foote reviewed the problem passage and came to the conclusion:
The name graal, apparently associated by the translator with grad(u)ale, and the
description of its treatment led him to the comparison with a textus [i.e., an
Evangelistary]; and the name, coupled with the description of its function, also
34 See, for example, Wendelin Foerster, Kristian von Troyes. Wdrterbuch zu seinen
såmtlichen Werken. Romanische Bibliothek, 21 (Halle/Saale: Niemeyer, 1914), pp. 174*-
177*; William A. Nitze, “Concerning the word Graal, Greal,” Modern Philology, XIII
(1916), 681-84; Leo Spitzer, “The Name of the Holy Grail,” American Journal of Philology,
LXV (1944), 354-63; William A. Nitze, “Spitzer’s Grail Etymology,” American Journal of
Philology, LXVI (1945), 279-81; Jean Frappier, “Sur l’interpretation du vers 3301 du Conte
du Graal: ‘Le graal trestot descovert’,” Romania, 71 (1950), 240-45; Jean Marx, La légende
arthurienne et le Graal. Bibliothéque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes: Section des Sciences
religieuses, LXIV (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952), pp. 241-43; R. S.
Loomis, “The Origin of the Grail Legends,” in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. 275-78; Mario Roques, Le graal de Chrétien et la
demoiselle au graal. Société de publications romanes et fran^aises (Geneva: Librairie Droz,
1955), pp. 1-3; R. S. Loomis, “The Grail Story of Chrétien de Troyes as Ritual and
Symbolism,” PM LA, LXX1 (1956), pp. 845-49.
35 Richard Heinzel, “Ueber die franzosischen Gralromane,” Denkschriften der kaiserli-
chen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Classe, vol. 40, Nr. 3, Vienna, 1892, pp. 6-7;
J. Fourquet, Wolfram d'Eschenbach et le conte del Graal. Publications de la Faculté des
lettres de Strasbourg, 1938, pp. 63-64; P. M. Mitchell, “The Grail in the Parcevals Saga,"
Modern Language Notes, LXXII1 (1958), pp. 591-94; R. S. Loomis, “The Grail in the
Parcevals Saga," The Germanic Review, 39 (1964), p. 98; Henry Kratz, "Textus, braull and
gangandi greidi," Saga-Book, XIX, (1977), pp. 371-82.
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