[19] _Op. cit_. p. 115. Much of the uncertainty as to date is doubtless due to the reflective influence of other forms of the cult; the Tammuz celebrations were held from June 20th, to July 20th, when the Dog-star Sirius was in the ascendant, and vegetation failed beneath the heat of the summer sun. In other, and more temperate, climates the date would fall later. Where, however, the cult was an off-shoot of a Tammuz original (as might be the case through emigration) the tendency would be to retain the original date. [20] Cf. Vellay, _op. cit_. p. 55; Mannhardt, Vol. II. pp. 277-78, for a description of the feast. With regard to the order and sequence of the celebration cf. Miss Harrison’s remark, _Themis_, p. 415: “In the cyclic monotony of the _Eniautos Daimon_ it matters little whether Death follows Resurrection, or Resurrection, Death.” [21] Cf. Mannhardt, _supra_, p. —-. [22] Cf. Vellay, _op. cit_. p. 103. This seems also to have been the case with Tammuz, cf. Ezekiel, Chap. viii. v. 14. [23] Cf. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, under heading _Adonis_. [24] Vellay, p. 130, Mannahrdt, Vol. II. p. 287; note the writer’s suggestion that the women here represent the goddess, the stranger, the risen Adonis. [25] Cf. Vellay, p. 93. [26] _Vide supra_, pp. —-. —-. [27] _Supra_, p. 21. [28] Cf. Potvin, appendix to Vol. III.; _Sir Gawain and the Grail Castle_, pp. 41, 44, and note. [29] My use of this parallel has been objected to on the ground that the prose _Lancelot_ is a late text, and therefore cannot be appealed to as evidence for original incidents. But the _Lancelot_ in its original form was held by so competent an authority as the late M. Gaston Paris to have been one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of French prose texts. (Cf. M. Paris’s review of Suchier and Birch-Hirschfield’s _Geschichte der Franz. Litt_.) The adventure in question is a ‘Gawain’ adventure; we do not know whence it was derived, and it may well have been included in an early version of the romance. Apart from the purely literary question, from the strictly critical point of view the adventure is here obviously out of place, and entirely devoid of _raison d’être_. If the origins of the Grail legend is really to be found in these cults, which are not a dead but a living tradition (how truly living, the exclusively literary critic has little idea), we are surely entitled to draw attention to the obvious parallels, no matter in which text they appear. I am not engaged in reconstructing the original _form_ of the Grail story, but in endeavoring to ascertain the ultimate _source_, and it is surely justifiable to point out that, in effect, no matter what version we take, we find in that version points of contact with one special group of popular belief and practice. If I be wrong in my conclusions my critics have only to suggest another origin for this particular feature of the romance—as a matter of fact, they have failed to do so.