central _motif_ of the poem, the representation of a Moor as near akin
to the Grail Winner, Sir Perceval, has not been preserved in any known
French text, while it does exist in a famous German version, I for one
find no difficulty in believing that the tradition existed in French,
and that the original version of our poem was a metrical romance in that
tongue.

So far as the story of _Morien_ is concerned, the form is probably later
than the tradition it embodies. In its present shape it is certainly
posterior to the appearance of the Galahad _Queste_, to which it
contains several direct references; such are the hermit's allusion to
the predicted circumstances of his death, which are related in full in
the _Queste_; the prophecy that Perceval shall "aid" in the winning
of the Holy Grail, a quest of which in the earlier version he is sole
achiever; and the explicit statements of the closing lines as to
Galahad's arrival at Court, his filling the Siege Perilous, and
achieving the Adventures of the Round Table. As the romance now stands
it is an introduction to the _Queste_, with which volume iii. (volume
ii. of the extant version) of the Dutch _Lancelot_ opens.

But the opening lines of the present version show clearly that in
one important point, at least, the story has undergone a radical
modification. Was it the Dutch translator or his source who substituted
Agloval, Perceval's brother, for the tradition which made Perceval
himself the father of the hero? M. Gaston Paris takes the former view;
but I am inclined to think that the alteration was already in the
French source. The Grail of Sir Agloval's vision is the Grail of Castle
Corbenic and the _Queste_; unless we are to consider this vision as the
addition of the Dutch compiler (who, when we are in a position to test
his work does not interpolate such additions), we must, I think, admit