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The Grail Messenger |
Hideous or Beautiful, the Goddess Disguised
By Carbonek
The Grail Messenger, one who declaims the reason and purpose of the Grail and the Quest to attain it, is a figure that appears in the Arthurian romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. She appears suddenly and sometimes mysteriously, delivers her message, and then is usually not heard from again.
In some tales, she appears at the end of the story to announce the successful end of the Grail Quest, and yet in others, she is also the maiden bearing the Grail in the strange procession seen by various Grail Questers in what is known by several names, the Grail Castle. Who is this mysterious woman? Why is she often described as hideous, having a face composed of features taken from several animals?
In Chrétien’s Story of the Grail, the Grail Messenger is known as Cundrie, and her entrance into Arthur’s court is disruptive, colorful, strange, and completely otherworldly:
“On the third day they saw a maiden approaching, riding a tawny mule and holding a whip in her right hand. The maiden’s hair was twisted in two large black braids, and if the book is accurate, there never was a creature so totally foul, even in hell. You have never seen iron as black as her neck and her hands, yet these, compared with her other features, were the least repulsive. Her eyes were two holes small as rats’ eyes; she had the nose of a cat or monkey, and the ears of a donkey or cow. Her teeth were so yellowed that in color they resembled the yolk of an egg. She had a beard like a goat. In the middle of her chest she had a hump, and her spine was like a crook" (Staines 396).
Wolfram von Eschenbach describes his Grail Messenger, Kundry, quite differently than Chrétien, and yet there are also similarities. The animals chosen to describe her facial features are different than Chrétien’s but the effect is the same, a woman of part human, part animal features, which trumpets her otherworldly origin. von Eschenbach also dresses her in the latest fashion and provides here with tusks, rather than merely very yellow teeth:
"A plait of her hair fell down over the hat and dangled on her mule – it was long, black, tough, not altogether lovely, about as soft as boar’s bristles. Her nose was like a dog’s, and to the length of several spans a pair of tusks jutted from her jaws. Both eyebrows pushed past her hair-band and dropped down in tresses. … Cundrie’s ears resembled a bear’s. … This fetching sweetheart had hands the colour of ape-skin. Her finger-nails were none too transparent, for my source tells me that they looked like a lion’s claw" (163-164).
The features of the Grail Messenger as described by Chrétien and von Eschenbach point to a deep connection to nature; her features are given the attributes of different animals and in some ways she is the female counterpart to the Wild Man in Chrétien’s Knight of the Cart. Both Chrétien and von Eschenbach have her arriving at Arthur’s court riding a mule, a sterile offspring of a female horse and a male donkey, and this may be a reference to the Wasteland, a sterile creature in a sterile place (Arthur’s court as well, as Guinevere cannot bear the King an heir). And von Eschenbach clothes Kundry in the latest female fashion which enhances her otherness and her otherworldliness’ the juxtaposition of animal features in fine clothes emphasizes the contrast between the wild and the civilized in human nature. With the exception of describing her nose as like a dog’s, von Eschenbach gives her features of animals commonly hunted for sport by the nobility, whereas Chrétien’s choices of animals evoke a more domestic scene.
There is an inherent racism in these descriptions as well, as “hands the colour of ape-skin”, and neck and hands having skin blacker than iron, reveal a social stigma of dark-skinned people in the storyteller’s world. This also evokes the appearance of Muslim adversaries fought by European Christians in the Crusades of the previous century, something that the courtly listeners of these romances would be familiar. von Eschenbach particularly describes Kundry’s skin as ape-like, a not-quite human designation which can be specifically seen as a racial commentary.
Cundrie/Kundry’s appearance as a beast-woman gives her pronouncement against Perceval a particularly serious cast. A curse issued from such a hideous individual must certainly have a great deal of power, as told by Chrétien:
"It is you, wretch, who saw that it was the time and place to speak, yet remained silent. Unfortunate was your foolish mind! Unfortunate your silence! Had you asked, the wealthy king, so sorely afflicted, would have been cured of his wound and would have held his land in peace, land he will never hold again. Ad do you know what will befall the king if he is not cured of his wounds, and does not hold his land? Ladies will lose their husbands; hapless maidens will be orphans; many knights will die; and lands will be laid waste. All these ills will result because of you" (Staines 396-397).
Wolfram von Eschenbach also describes Kundry cursing Parzival for his failure to ask the Grail Question, but he also gives her a very human emotion and softens her character,
“Kundry abandoned herself to grief. She wrung her hands and wept, with the tears falling fast on each other as great sorrow pressed them from her lids. It was goodness of heart that taught this damsel how to lament her woe” (von Eschenbach 166). In this version, Parzival is described as having a heart “void of feeling” and as a “heartless guest”, while Kundry has a “goodness of heart”. Kundry may be quite ugly on the outside, but Parzival is ugly on the inside for not considering the suffering of the Maimed King, and this distinction is important. In this situation, who has behaved inhumanly? Parzival, of course, and it takes an animalistic character to point this out (von Eschenbach 164-165).
Kundry appearance is further rehabilitated when it is revealed that she brings food to Parzival’s anchoress cousin, “My nourishment is brought to me from the Gral by Cundrie la surziere punctually every Saturday evening, this is how she has arranged it” (von Eschenbach 225). Kundry may be a “surziere” or sorceress, but she clearly acts out of both justice (Parzival) and compassion (anchoress).
Kundry reappears near the end of the romance, when Parzival has returned to the Grail Castle and completed the quest, healing the Maimed King. Her words are celebratory rather than accusatory and she proclaims Parzivals future for him, “O happy you, son of Gahmuret! God is about to manifest His Grace in you!... Now be modest and yet rejoice! O happy man, for your high gains, you coronal of man’s felicity! The Inscription has been read: you are to be Lord of the Gral!” (von Eschenbach 387).
Kundry appears to have two aspects, one of a darkly appearing and darkly cursing messenger and that of a joyful, happy bringer of wonderful news. Some Arthurian scholars see a direct connection between the ugly messenger seen in Arthur’s court and the beautiful bearer of the Grail in the Grail Castle.
Nineteenth century Celticist and folklorist Alfred Nutt also saw the Grail Messenger as being a composite figure having two aspects, “The loathly Grail messenger shows the influence of the two formulas: as coming from the Bespelled Castle, type of the otherworld, she should be radiantly fair; as the kinswoman of the destined avenger,
under spells until the vengeance be accomplished, she is hideous in the last degree” (205-206). However, he also accepted a more Christian (and arguably anti-Semitic) viewpoint describing Kundry as a sort of Wandering Jewess:
"Kundry is Wagner’s great contribution to the legend. She is the Herodias whom Christ for her laughter doomed to wander till He come again. Subject to the powers of evil, she must tempt and lure to their destruction the Grail warriors. And yet she would find release and salvation could a man resist her love spell (254). Nutt’s commentary hints at the Genesis 3 story of Eve’s temptation of Adam, a story that has justified millennia of misogyny in the West.
The Arthurian scholar R.S. Loomis goes much further, identifying the Grail Messenger in Chrétien’s poem with two Irish goddesses, Eriu (Ireland herself) and Laban, a goddess with a sharp tongue (Loomis Arthurian 417). He is also convinced that the Arthurian and Grail cycles of stories have an Irish origin with a development phase in Wales (Loomis Wales 19). For Loomis, understanding the connection between Irish mythology and Arthurian romance reveals the true symbology of the motifs in the tales.
Loomis bases theory on a comparison of key sections of the Arthurian romances with older Irish myths and ballads. There are many correspondences between the two streams of storytelling and Loomis sees this as convincing, “… no other theory explains so much of the Grail legend as that of Irish origin … no other theory accords so well with antecedent probability regarding the Arthurian cycle of romance” (Loomis Wales 19). A key story motif in the Arthurian romances given some focus by Loomis is the Grail Messenger, or the Loathly Damsel, as Loomis and other Arthurian scholars describe her.
He finds a direct correlation between the description of Cundrie in Chrétien and the disguised Irish Goddess of Sovereignty in the story of Eochaid Mugmedon, “Every joint and limb of her, from the top of her head to the earth, was as black as coal…. The green branch of an oak in bearing would be severed by the sickle of green teeth that lay in her head and reached to her ears. Dark smoky eyes she had…. Her ankles were thick, her shoulder-blades were broad, her knees were big” (Loomis Wales 28).
Loomis also theorizes that the Grail Messenger is a derivation of the bride of Lugh, Ireland’s solar deity. He laments their degradation over time from divinity to humanity:
"When gods and their stories were no longer tolerated as such, Lug was obliged, as in The Prophetic Ecstasy, to declare himself a son of Adam, a mere mortal, and his divine bride was allegorized into an abstraction, the Kingship of Ireland. … she remained for centuries a very living abstraction, and Yeats immortalized her as Cathleen ni Houlihan. In Arthurian romance, though Eriu emerges as the Grail Bearer, the Loathly Damsel, and the Transformed Hag, there is no hint of the earth-goddess" (Arthurian 379).
And Loomis completely disagrees with Alfred Nutt’s evil Jewess temptress description, “The Loathly Damsel, Wagner’s Kundry, is no other than the Sovereignty of Erin" (Loomis Wales 28).
While Loomis feels that there is no ‘hint of the earth-goddess’ in Chrétien’s poem, there is an indication that the Grail Messenger is more than a little interested in the outcome of the Grail Quest; she curses Perceval and declares that because of his failure to ask the Question, the land will be wasted and many knights will lose their lives, creating new widows (Arthurian 375). And Loomis also identifies the Grail Messenger as the maiden carrying the Grail dish or platter in the Grail castle:
"…this damsel of the two forms explains what Chrétien failed to explain: who the hideous damsel was who so fiercely upbraided Perceval for his silence at the Grail castle and why she was so concerned. She was the Grail Bearer in another form. Both Perlesvaus and Peredur support this explanation by identifying the bearer of the platter with the more or less repulsive female who denounced Perceval for his silence” (Loomis Development 64).
Professor Lansing Smith makes the comment that whenever a witch or hag appears in the romances, a denigrated form of the Goddess is present (Lansing Smith unpublished class lecture). John Matthews also make the argument that the Grail Messenger is a form of Sovereignty, the spirit of the land which must be joined with that of the king in order to validate his rule:
"This spirit also took the form of a hideous woman with whom the would-be king must mate. At the crucial moment the woman was transformed and revealed herself to the king as the spirit of the land, Sovereignty. This relationship sealed the bond between rule and land and as long as he upheld it the country remained in harmony" (Matthews Sources 27).
Caitlin Matthews goes further, describing what is clear a degradation of the Goddess’ identity and role from the earlier stories to the later versions, in almost a stepwise fashion. Later writers build upon the earliest misrepresentations of the deity, “While Sovereignty’s ability to shapeshift from hag to maiden in a twinkling was a totally voluntary function in earliest traditions, later story-tellers failed to understand the subtleties of this transformation and rationalized it by making Sovereignty’s ugliness the effect of a magical enchantment” (Matthews Arthur 70).
Not just medieval storytellers confused the Goddess’ shape-shifting ability, but Arthurian scholars as well, who sometimes saw the restriction of a magical curse on Kundry as a necessary story motif, but removing her attachment to the Grail or the quest for it, “There is nothing in Wolfram or in the French romances to show that the fortunes of the loathly damsel (Wagner’s Kundry) are in any way bound up with the success of the Quest. But we have seen that the Celtic folk-tales represent the loathly damsel as the real protagonist of the story. She cannot be freed unless the hero do his task” (Nutt 254n).
But Loomis sees a clear survival of an earlier, non-Christian tradition in the Arthurian romances, originating in Ireland and making their way into the stories in a disguised form:
"All this converging evidence points to the existence in pagan times of a nature myth which interpreted the miracle of spring by the mating of the sun-god with the land of Ireland. It was probably too clear a survival of heathenism to be preserved in its pristine form, but it can be detected still in fragmentary references and euhemeristic tales of the metamorphosis of the Sovranty of Ireland by union with the successors of Lug to the crown – successors who were presumed to have inherited some of his solar powers” (Loomis Grail 52).
Alfred Nutt also sees the earlier origins of the romances story motifs, but sees it as the inevitable (and preferable) evolution of the stories over time and space; the stories themselves shapeshifting into increasingly Christianized versions, “The cauldron of increase and renovation, the glaive of light, the magic fish, the visit to the otherworld, all are gradually metamorphosed until at last the talisman of the Irish gods becomes the symbol of the risen Lord, its seeker a type of Christ in His divinest attributes” (Nutt 255).
In Robert de Boron’s Perceval, curses by a woman are given a completely Christian dressing, even exhorting Perceval for failing to become the guardian of Christ’s blood and missing out of being part of a special cohort in Paradise after his own death. His failure at the Grail Castle is put into much more serious terms than in failing to heal the Waste Land; Perceval put his own soul in eternal peril when he did not ask the Grail
Question and according to this Grail Messenger, was in danger of being stuck down by a vengeful and angry God (the Father). Perceval is so dull he has to ask the woman for a more explicit description of what he had seen in the Grail Castle the night before:
“And she said: ‘Didn’t you lie last night at the house of your grandfather Bron, that man of such high lineage? And didn’t you see the Grail and the other relics pass before you? Know then that if you’d asked what the Grail was for, your grandfather the king would have been healed of his infirmity and restored to health, and the prophecy that Our Lord made to Joseph would have been fulfilled. And you would have had your grandfather’s blessing and your heart’s deepest desire – and the blood of Christ in your keeping. After your death you would have joined the company of Christ’s chosen ones, and the enchantments and evils which now beset the land of Britain would have been cast out" (Bryant 143).
This woman also identifies the Waste Land specifically as Britain, anchoring the story to a specific geographical terrain.
The Christianization of the story of Kundry begins almost as soon as the romances are written down. In one of the oldest German illuminated manuscripts of von Eschenbach’s Parzival, produced in Strasbourg around 1240, shows Kundry (easily identifiable by her boar fangs jutting up from her mouth) in the two panels in which she appears. In one illustration, Kundry kisses the foot of Parzival in a feast scene, reminiscent of the medieval conflation of the New Testament Mary Magdalene story of anointing Jesus’ feet (the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet is not actually identified in the Gospels that record this incident); this may have been an attempt by the illuminator to add Christian iconography to the story (Loomis Medieval Art 132, f357, f358).
Whether the Grail Messenger serves non-Christian or Christian values in the Arthurian romances is important depending on your point of view of the romances themselves. Some readers identify and appreciate the aspects of the Goddess of Sovereignty, the spirit of the land itself that joins with the rightful King to insure a fertile land; while others focus on a more Christian viewpoint, seeing the Grail as the vessel used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper and used to catch his blood at his crucifixion. In either case, the Grail Messenger completes a circuit of ideas within the Grail stories that is so vital that she does not completely disappear in any of the versions. The divine female is central to the story of the Grail, in whatever guise she may choose.
Works Cited
Eschenbach, Wolfram von. Parzival. Trans. A.T. Hatto. NY: Penguin Books, 1980.
Loomis, Roger Sherman. Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art. London: O.U.P., 1938.
--- Arthurian Tradition & Chrétien de Troyes. New York: Columbia UP, 1949.
--- The Development of Arthurian Romance. London: Hutchinson and Co., 1963
--- The Grail: from Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1991.
--- Wales and the Arthurian Legend. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 1956.
Merlin and the Grail: The Trilogy of Arthurian Romances attributed to Robert de Boron. Trans. Nigel Bryant. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003.
Matthews, Caitlin. Arthur and the Sovereignty of Britain: King and Goddess in the Mabinogion. London: Arkana/Penguin, 1989.
Matthews, John. Sources of the Grail. Edinburgh, Scotland: Floris Books, 1996.
Nutt, Alfred. Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail. London: David Nutt, 1888.
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