The German story makes its appearance in the last stanzas of Wolfram von Eschenbach's _Parzival_, where it is related how Parzival's son, Loherangrîn,[1] was sent from the castle of the Grail to the help of the young duchess of Brabant. Guided by the swan he reached Antwerp, and married the lady on condition that she should not ask his origin. On the breach of this condition years afterwards Loherangrîn departed, leaving sword, horn and ring behind him. Between 1283 and 1290, a Bavarian disciple of Wolfram's[2] adopted the story and developed it into an epic poem of nearly 8000 lines, incorporating episodes of Lohengrin's prowess in tournament, his wars with Henry I. against the heathen Hungarians and the Saracens,[3] and incidentally providing a detailed picture of the everyday life of people of high condition. The epic of Lohengrin is put by the anonymous writer into the mouth of Wolfram, who is made to relate it during the Contest of the Singers at the Wartburg in proof of his superiority in knowledge of sacred things over Klingsor the magician, and the poem is thus linked on to German tradition. Its connexion with Parzival implies a mystic application. The consecrated wafer shared by Lohengrin and the swan on their voyage is one of the more obvious means taken by the poet to give the tale the character of an allegory of the relations between Christ, the Church and the human soul. The story was followed closely in its main outlines by Richard Wagner in his opera _Lohengrin_. The French legend of the knight of the swan is attached to the house of Bouillon, and although William of Tyre refers to it about 1170 as fable, it was incorporated without question by later annalists. It forms part of the cycle of the _chansons de geste_ dealing with the Crusade, and relates how Helyas, knight of the swan, is guided by the swan to the help of the duchess of Bouillon and marries her daughter Ida or Beatrix in circumstances exactly parallel to the adventures of Lohengrin and Elsa of Brabant, and with the like result. Their daughter marries Eustache, count of Boulogne, and had three sons, the eldest of whom, Godefroid (Godfrey), is the future king of Jerusalem. But in French story Helyas is not the son of Parzival, but of the king and queen of Lillefort, and the story of his birth, of himself, his five brothers and one sister is, with variations, that of "the seven swans" persecuted by the wicked grandmother, which figures in the pages of Grimm and Hans Andersen. The house of Bouillon was not alone in claiming the knight of the swan as an ancestor, and the tradition probably originally belonged to the house of Cleves.