Siege Perilous

I’m sitting in The Angel public house today in Sun Street, Waltham Abbey, with Dave, my husband, and the conversation moves to the Grail. I was speaking about this creative and inspired story, the item being a grail or platter. Beginning with Chretien de Troyes, whose name means Christian (though I was reading about Bernadette of Lourdes last week who was thought to be a cagot and some believe that Chretien was also one of this despised and Untouchable community. 

Well, we can learn from fiction as much as fact, and this story is a strange fantasy. Where does it begin? It is circular and the end returns to the place where it begins many times, but we began by talking about Arthur’s Round Table, and how the knights of old, after many battles and tournaments, were despondent, exhausted and infirm. Their lands were devastated and the people struggled to survive. Around the great table, these knights solemnly erected a seat at their table. They placed a sign above the seat. This was the Siege Perilous, a seat named by Merlin for only the noblest and the holiest, upon which all their hopes depended. 

One day when all the old knights had gathered, a very elderly man walked into the majestic hall. With him came a young boy who was guided at the table to sit on the one remaining empty chair. His name, Percival, appeared in gold lights when he sat on the chair reserved for the chosen one, the one who would save them all by finding the castle and speaking with the bewitched keeper king of the ‘grail’. You can imagine the response of the great knights to this young and innocent boy who was sufficiently naive to take on this great task that they all had failed at. This youth faced many challenges, and met many strange people, and he made many difficult (and some wrong) decisions, but by uncanny coincidences, he arrived at the castle which was surrounded by grieving women, and while he was there, he was introduced to the king who had a serious injury and could only sit by the lake and fish.

While the young knight was at the castle, an extraordinary pageant took place led by a squire with a bleeding lance, and followed by squires with 10 branched candelabra, and with beautiful maidens filing past bearing dishes, one of which was described as a ‘grail’, maybe a relic of ancient times, of Jesus’s last supper, or a gift of Joseph of Arimathea, though we only know that it was a receptacle, and one of a very healing substance, maybe bread or wine, such as is received during the Christian mass and represents the body and blood of Our Lord. 

Percival was a young and insecure boy, and though he met the keeper king of the grail castle, he was unable to speak and ask some very necessary questions. As very few people had ever met the king, and the king was a recluse, this was a very important meeting! 

What could have been this vital question/s? The only person who could restore the country was the king himself, and he needed great help. Could the boy devise a question? Could he know in his young years that everything depended upon him breaking the curse that the king and the land were under. 

When he met the king, did the boy not think to ask him what was wrong? And what was the meaning of the pageant? The boy had suffered huge hardships on his journey, and knew that his fellow Round Table knights had great responsibilities and had never come this close to the king. 

A great wisdom was handed down 1000 years ago by the great troubadours, who were so knowledgeable and so intelligent  They gave us the story that we would never be in need and that we would never fail in our tasks. The questions: What ails thee? and Who, or what is all this about? These are still the most important questions of our time.