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THE 'LANZELET' OF ULRICH VON ZATZIKHOVEN

The origin of the name Lancelot has been a subject of considerable debate among scholars, and has given rise to the most widely differing explanations. M. de la Villemarqué, who was a warm advocate of the Welsh origin of the Arthurian stories, derived the name from the French l'ancelot, a youth or servant, which he held to be a translation of the Welsh Melwas, or Maelwas. This solution was rejected by M. Gaston Paris, in his study on the Lancelot poems,[10] in which he showed that ancelot was not a French common name, and that Maelwas did not bear the signification attributed to it. Professor Rhys,[11] adopting the theory of the Welsh origin of the name, which in its present form he admitted only exists in Welsh literature as borrowed from French or English sources, decided that it represented a Welsh variant of Peredur, the root of this latter name being Pâr=a spear or lance. 'The characters,' says Professor Rhys, 'were originally the same, though their respective developments eventually differed very widely.' I doubt if this solution ever found any adherents except its author: it is sufficient to remark that the derivation of Peredur, on which it rests, is by no means universally accepted, and that Lancelot is in no special way connected with a spear or lance.[12] It is certainly true that the Lancelot story shows signs of having been affected by the Perceval legend, but as we shall see the borrowings are restricted to one special and purely continental form of the story.

M. Gaston Paris, in the study referred to above, suggested that Lancelot might be either a Celtic name altered, or, more probably, the substitution, by French poets, of a name of Germanic origin for one of Breton form strange to the ears of their French audiences, e.g. it might be a diminutive form of Lanzo. This is also the conclusion of Professor Zimmer.[13] The prefix Lant is often found in names of Frankish origin transferred to Breton ground: such names are Lando, Landolin; Lanzo, Lanzolin, etc.

In the introduction to his edition of the Charrette, recently published,[14] Professor Foerster announces his complete adhesion to this view.

It certainly seems that the evidence points strongly to this conclusion. The fact that Lancelot's name does not appear in the earliest obtainable Arthurian documents shows that he did not belong to the original 'stoff' of the cycle; the entire silence of Welsh literature, and the practical silence of English vernacular romances,[15] seem to show that he formed no part of the insular Arthurian tradition. For my own part I unhesitatingly accept Professor Foerster's dictum, 'Lancelot ist den Kymren gänzlich unbekannt, und ist unter allen Umständen Kontinentaler[16] Herkunft.'[17]

A weak point in the proposed Celtic solutions appears to me to be that both entirely ignore the qualifying title du Lac, by which Lancelot is invariably known. Neither M. de la Villemarqué nor Professor Rhys appear to consider it of any special importance, yet if I mistake not this is just the significant point of the Lancelot story, and that which from the very outset differentiates it from the legends connected with Peredur or Maelwas. From the moment of his appearance in Chrétien's list of Arthur's knights to that in which the prose Lancelot records his death in the odour of sanctity, Lancelot is Lancelot du Lac, and the earliest version of his story which we possess amply justifies his claim to the title.

The poem of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven[18] is certainly later than either the Erec or the Charrette of Chrétien, but the tradition it embodies is anterior to the poem itself. Written in the opening years of the thirteenth century, it is, as explicitly stated in the text, the translation of 'daz welsche buoch von Lanzelete,' brought to Germany by Hugo de Morville, one of the hostages who in 1194 replaced Richard of England in the prison of Leopold of Austria.[19] The date of the original French version cannot, of course, be fixed. In any case it must have preceded its introduction into Germany; judging from internal evidence it represented an early and immature version of the Lancelot legend. The story as related in the Lanzelet is as follows: Lanzelet was son to King Pant of Genewîs and his wife Clarine. By a revolt of his people Pant was driven from his kingdom with his wife and child. In his flight he came to a stream, and there, overcome by his wounds, sank down and died. The queen had laid her child under a tree while she tended her husband, and before she could reach it again a water-fairy (mer-feine) came in a cloud of mist and carried off the infant. The fairy was a queen, ruling over ten thousand maidens, who knew no man. Her kingdom was called Meide-lant; there it was ever May-tide, and her palace had such virtue that whoso abode one day within it might never know sorrow till the day of his death. There the little Lanzelet was brought up, in ignorance of his name and rank, till he reached the age of fifteen, knowing nothing of knighthood, nor even how to bestride a horse. Then eager to try his lot in the world outside he demanded leave to ride forth. This the fairy granted, but refused to tell him his name and parentage; he must first conquer the strongest knight in the world, Iweret, of the fair wood Beforet.

She gave him rich armour, white as a swan, the best that might be, a surcoat (wafen-roc) decked with golden bells; sword and shield, and a goodly horse. But the lad did not know how to ride, so let the bridle hang loose and held on by the saddle-bow. In this fashion he rode till he met a knight, Johfrit de Liez, who rebuked him for his childish bearing, and took him to his castle, where he was kindly welcomed by the host's mother and her maidens, and instructed in riding and the use of knightly weapons.

His next adventure is to ride with two knights to the castle of one Galagandreiz. In the night the daughter of the host, condemned by her father to perpetual virginity, offers her love to the three knights in turn; is accepted by Lanzelet, who fights a duel with her father, slays him, and weds the maiden. One day he rode forth seeking adventures, and found a road which led him to the castle of Limors. The folk attacked, and would have slain him, but for the intervention of Ade, niece to the lord of the castle. Lanzelet is thrown into prison, and only escapes by fighting single-handed, first with a giant, then with two lions, and finally with the lord of the castle himself. Having slain this last, he becomes the 'ami' of the maiden Ade. (Whether he marries her or not is not clearly stated. In any case we hear no more of his first wife, the daughter of Galagandreiz.)

Meanwhile the fame of Lanzelet's exploits has penetrated to Arthur's ears, and Gawain is sent to find the unnamed hero, and bring him to Arthur's Court. They meet, and fight an undecided combat, terminated by the arrival of a messenger with tidings of a tournament between King Lot of Johenîs and Gurnemanz, den fürsten wîs. Lanzelet betakes himself hither, wearing each day a different suit of armour, green, red and white, overthrows many knights, including King Lot, whom he set free out of friendship for Gawain, and without revealing himself, rides away with Ade and her brother.

They come to a castle, Schâtel le Mort, the master of which, Mâbûz, is a magician, and son to the fairy who had brought Lanzelet up. Lanzelet rides to the castle, which has this property, that whoever crosses its drawbridge at once loses all courage and hardihood. Lanzelet falls under the spell, and is taken prisoner in the most ignominious manner, much to the dismay of Ade, who rides off with her brother and disappears from the story. The land of Mâbûz adjoins that of Iweret of Beforet, who is in the habit of raiding his neighbour's territory. Mâbûz, who is by nature a coward, determines that Lanzelet, whose fame is well known to him, shall be his champion. He has him carried by his men without the walls of the castle, when his natural courage at once returns. He rides to a fountain, beside which hangs a brazen cymbal on which he must strike three times with a hammer to summon his foe. In the meantime Iblîs, the fair daughter of Iweret, has had a dream of an unknown knight whom she meets beside the fountain; she rises early to seek the scene of her dream, and finds the original of her vision in Lanzelet. She beseeches him to carry her off without waiting for the conflict, but Lanzelet refuses. Iweret arrives and a fierce fight ensues, in which he is slain. Lanzelet weds Iblîs and becomes master of Beforet.

A messenger now arrives from the Fairy of the Lake, revealing Lanzelet's name and parentage (his mother, Clarine, was sister to Arthur). The object of her theft of the child is now accomplished: she desired to secure a champion who would free her son Mâbûz from his too powerful enemy. Lanzelet decides to seek Gawain, whom he now knows to be his kinsman. On their way they meet a squire who informs them that the King Valerîn (or Falerîn, the spelling varies), has appeared at Arthur's court and laid claim to Guinevere, on the ground that she had been betrothed to him previous to her marriage with Arthur. If Valerîn cannot find a champion to oppose him he will carry off the queen. Lanzelet undertakes the combat, and defeats Valerîn.

(We must note here that Lanzelet's service to the queen is of a preventive character, i.e. he saves her from the possibility of abduction, he does not rescue her after the abduction has taken place.)

Lanzelet then leaves his wife at court, and goes forth to seek the castle of Plurîs, which he had passed on his journey from Meide-land and the adventure of which he desires to test. There he is challenged by one hundred knights, whom he successively overthrows, and weds the queen (Ulrich says quaintly, 'ich enweiz ob erz ungerne tet, wan diu königîn was ein schœne maget, 5530-1). Iblîs remains at Arthur's court, grieving for the disappearance of her husband, during whose absence she successfully withstands the Mantle test, an incident of not infrequent occurrence in Arthurian romance.

Hearing that Lanzelet is a prisoner at Plurîs, Gawain, Karjet (Gaheriet?), Erec, and Tristan go in search of him, and, by means of a ruse, succeed in freeing him. The queen of Plurîs disappears from the story.

On their way to court they learn that, while engaged in hunting the white stag, Guinevere has been carried off by Valerîn, and imprisoned in a magic castle, surrounded by a dense thicket peopled with all kinds of serpents. Tristan, 'der listige Tristan'[20] suggests that they should seek the aid of Malduz[21] or Malduc, the magician, the Lord of the Misty Lake (Genibeleten Se), who will enable them to penetrate Valerîn's stronghold. Erec announces that neither he nor Gawain should take part in the expedition as they have respectively slain Malduc's father and brother. Arthur therefore sets forth accompanied by Karjet (Gaheriet), Tristan and Lanzelet (this is the order), and are later joined by Dodine le Sauvage. By the good offices of the enchanter's daughter, to whom Arthur appeals, Malduc consents to aid them on condition that Erec and Gawain are delivered up to him, to which these heroes willingly consent. Malduc then, by means of spells, disperses the serpents guarding Valerîn's castle, slays him and his men, and wakens Guinevere from the magic slumber into which Valerîn has cast her.

I have italicised this passage as extremely important for the criticism of the story. It will be seen that so far from Lanzelet being the means of Guinevere's escape, he plays practically no part in the story, all he does is to accompany the king. The rescuer is Malduc; recourse to him is suggested by Tristan and made possible by the self-sacrifice of Gawain and Erec; but saving in the discussion as to whether Malduc's terms shall or shall not be accepted, Lanzelet's name is not even mentioned.[22]

Erec and Gawain are cast into prison by Malduc and nearly starved to death, but are rescued by one hundred of Arthur's knights, headed by Lanzelet and aided by a giant, Esealt der lange. They all return to Arthur's court, where great feasts are held.

Iblîs tells her husband of a curious adventure which had befallen one of the knights: how he had met in a forest a terrible dragon which, speaking with a human voice, besought a kiss from the knight; he refused and the dragon flew away lamenting. Lanzelet resolves to test the adventure, rides to the forest, finds the dragon, and gives the desired kiss. The monster bathes in a stream at hand, and becomes a fair maiden, Elidiâ, daughter to the king of Thile; she has been transformed into a dragon for transgressing the rules of Minne, and condemned to remain in that form till kissed by the best knight on earth. She remains at Arthur's court, where she is made judge of all disputed questions relating to Minne.

Here the story of Lanzelet practically ends. He wins back his lands of Genewîs without difficulty, promising to treat his subjects better than his father did. He and Iblîs betake themselves to the heritage of the latter, Beforet, where they receive Arthur and Guinevere with great pomp. The poem concludes by telling us that they have four children, three sons and one daughter, that they live to see their children's children, and die both on the same day.

The poem of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven has scarcely received the attention which, as a factor in the criticism of the legend, it undoubtedly demands. The questions arising out of it are not only interesting, but, as I shall presently show, in one instance at least, of the very highest importance. The questions may be grouped as (a) those relating to the structure and sources of the poem itself; (b) those which affect its relation to the other Lancelot romances. For the first it is obvious that we are dealing with a poem of very loose construction; the various parts do not harmonise with each other, and no attempt has been made to make them do so. Thus we have no fewer than four love affairs attributed to Lanzelet, and in three out of the four he weds the lady; yet these amours, one of which is subsequent to his marriage with Iblîs, are dropped as of no account. Professor Foerster[23] considers that this looseness of construction points to a late date, and that the source of the Lanzelet was a biographical romance of the weakest order. According to Professor Foerster the clearer the composition, the better knit the incidents, the older the romance.

Now it seems to me that there are two orders of ill-constructed romances, and that we shall do well to differentiate between them. In one case we have a number of incidents of secondary character, obviously borrowed or imitated from those occurring elsewhere, strung together more or less cleverly on the thread of a hero's individuality. The incidents are all to be found in other romances, and as a rule none of them have any suggestion of Celtic or mythic origin. The literary style is superior to the matter. Such romances are e.g. Rigomer, Torec, Le Chevalier à la Manche. A very favourable example is Méraugis de Portlesguez. These are all certainly late romances.

In the other case we have a romance even more ill-constructed, but consisting not of incidents but of whole short tales, manifestly independent of each other, and some of them of distinctly antique and mythic character: the literary style is poor and the whole is less a romance, properly speaking, than the material out of which a romance can be evolved. This, I believe, marks an early stage of development, and of this we have naturally but few specimens. The Lanzelet is, I believe, one.

If I mistake not, the groundwork is a series of lais, each complete in itself, and having no connection with what precedes or what follows it. It is in no real sense a biographical romance, though perhaps it might be called a tentative effort in that direction. The Mantle episode certainly formed a single lai; the Fier Baiser, now found with other adventures, probably originally did so.[24] Certain of the episodes, too, possess a distinctly archaic character, e.g. the description of the fairy's kingdom as a isle of women where no man penetrates, a conception much older than the Fata Morgana of the prose Lancelot; and the description of Guinevere's prison, the magic slumber in a fair dwelling, ein wünneclichez haus, surrounded by a dense thicket infested with serpents, is the sleeping beauty story in its oldest 'other world' form.[25] The position of Gawain in the story is that held by him in the earlier, pre-Lancelot romances.

I cannot accept the suggestion of a biographical Lancelot from which both the Lanzelet and the Charrette were drawn. If we remember that the first mention of Lancelot in Arthurian romance can only be traced to the second half of the twelfth century, it does not seem probable that by 1164 (when, or about when, Chrétien wrote his poem) he could have become the hero of a fixed biographical romance. Nor, the motif of his liaison with Guinevere once introduced into the story, is the compilation of such a version as the Lanzelet subsequently probable. Professor Foerster feels this difficulty, and suggests a solution, which a little more consideration would have shown him to be untenable. On page xlvi. of his introduction to the Karrenritter, he says, 'wenn wirklich Kristian zuerst den Ehebruch eingeführt hat, so ist doch die Annahme zulässig dass Verehrer Arturs und seiner Frau diese neue ehrenrührische Erfindung zwar gekannt, aber mit Entrüstung abgewiesen haben, um ja nicht des idealen Königs Ehrenschild zu beschmutzen.' But a few pages further on the writer himself refers to the story of Guinevere and Mordred as told by Geoffrey[26] and Wace. He must therefore be well aware that there can be no possible question of Chrétien's having introduced the motif of Guinevere's faithlessness; that is one of the oldest and most original features of the Arthurian story. The question is not, 'Did the queen have a lover?'—that was answered in the affirmative long before Chrétien's day—but, 'When did Lancelot become her lover? Was it through the version of the Charrette?' a very different matter.[27]

Taking into consideration the construction of the poem, and the character of the contents, I think we are justified in considering the composition of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven as a collection of lais which have not yet been worked over or taken final literary shape. When the scattered Lancelot stories did this, it was under the influence of a motif foreign to the original legend, his love for Guinevere. How that came to be introduced into the legend is a matter for separate consideration, but I do not think there is room for doubt that it was this introduction which determined the final and literary form of the Lancelot story. All conflicting elements, such as the various love affairs, were rejected and only the original germ retained.

And what was this germ? Authorities will no doubt differ. Some perhaps will say it was the story of Guinevere's imprisonment and rescue, but they must remember that in the Lanzelet this is not the work of the hero. I think myself that the root of the Lancelot tale was simply a Breton lai, relating the theft of a king's son by a water fairy: this seems to be the one abiding and persistent element in the tale, all else is uncertain and shifting. Here the hero is Arthur's nephew; elsewhere he is but the son of an old ally; at one time his father is a tyrant, 'chassé' by his own people; again he is a noble king, the victim of treachery and a foreign foe. Sometimes Lancelot's mother lives to see him restored to his kingdom; sometimes she dies while he is yet in the care of the fairy, and never sees her son again. He has two cousins on the father's side, Bohort and Lionel, and a bastard half-brother Hector; he has no relations on his father's side, but is cousin to Gawain through his mother. He is Guinevere's lover; he is not Guinevere's lover. He is unmarried; he is very much married—three times at least! He has four children born in wedlock; he has but one son, the offspring of a liaison. He is the most valiant knight of Arthur's court; he is scarce worthy of mention. Among all this shifting tangle and contradiction, there is but one thing, and one only, fixed and certain, he is Lancelot du Lac. I do not see how we can avoid the conclusion that in this record of his youth we have the one fixed point of departure for all the subsequent unfoldings of romance.

Not that this story was always unvarying in its details, on the contrary we find in it marked divergences. Thus in the Lanzelet the motive of the theft is clear, the fairy desires a champion and protector for her cowardly son; the motive in the prose Lancelot is not apparent; probably it was a mere capricious fancy for a beautiful child.

And if the motive was not always clearly understood, still less so was the character of the fairy. In fact she seems to have considerably puzzled the mediæval romancers. In the first instance the story would be excessively simple, she would probably be such a water-fairy as we find in Tidorel, and Ulrich seems to have retained this idea when he calls her a Merfeine or Merminne, but as the lai gained popularity, and it became necessary to supply details as to her kingdom, etc., it would be supplemented from other legendary sources. Ulrich's own description, the land of ten thousand maidens where no man penetrates, is manifestly the Meide-land which in Diu Krône Gawain visits, and which is universally admitted to be a remembrance of the 'Isle of Women' of old Celtic tradition. It may have touched the Lancelot lai through the medium of the Gawain's story, but as a 'property' of old Celtic belief it may well have been known independently. I think it probable that this identification may explain a very curious passage in Diu Krône, where Kei reproaches Lancelot who has failed in the glove test in the following terms: