"Many literary critics seem to think that an hypothesis about
obscure and remote questions of history can be refuted by a simple
demand for the production of more evidence than in fact exists.--But
the true test of an hypothesis, if it cannot be shewn to conflict with
known truths, is the number of facts that it correlaates, and explains."
(Cornford, Origins of Attic Comedy.)



CHAPTER I

Introductory

In view of the extensive literature to which the Grail legend has
already given birth it may seem that the addition of another volume
to the already existing corpus calls for some words of apology and
explanation. When the student of the subject contemplates the
countless essays and brochures, the volumes of studies and criticism,
which have been devoted to this fascinating subject, the conflicting
character of their aims, their hopelessly contradictory results, he,
or she, may well hesitate before adding another element to such a
veritable witches' cauldron of apparently profitless study. And
indeed, were I not convinced that the theory advocated in the
following pages contains in itself the element that will resolve these
conflicting ingredients into one harmonious compound I should hardly
feel justified in offering a further contribution to the subject.

But it is precisely because upwards of thirty years' steady and
persevering study of the Grail texts has brought me gradually and
inevitably to certain very definite conclusions, has placed me in