Wagner has rooted his story in the old legends and history of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chrétien de Troies. The latter wrote his poem in 1175, Perceval the Gaul; or, the Story of the Grail; the former was composed between 1201 and 1210. But the story was centuries old before Chrétien handled it, its origin probably being Provençal. And before that it may have sprung from the Moorish, from the Egyptian, from the Indian, from the very beginnings of literature, for it is but the old story of might warring against right, evil attempting to seduce good. It crops out in a modified form in the Arthurian cycle, for the Round Table and the Grail are united in one. Whether Perceval, Parzival, or Parsifal, we find the guileless young hero fighting against wrong and resisting evil. There is even a Romance of Peredur to be found in the Mabinogion or Red Book, a collection of Welsh romances. Some believe this Peredur to be the prototype of the French Perceval. In all these poems there is a Kundry, or Kondrie, or Orgeleuse, a sorceress; and a King who has sinned—Le Roi Pécheur. The Knighthood of the Grail is a consecrated community that worships the sang-real, the precious blood of Jesus Christ, which some say was caught up in a goblet after the soldier Longinus pierced the side of the Saviour on Calvary. This lance also plays an important part in the poems, and in Wagner’s music-drama. Montsalvat is a beautiful temple in a far-away land—presumably Spain—where the knights of the Grail, or Graal, meet to receive spiritual nourishment from the holy chalice containing God’s blood. Every year a white dove descends from heaven to lend new powers and strength to the miraculous vase inclosing the blood. These knights are vowed to chastity, and it was a sin against chastity committed by Amfortas that caused the monarch all his suffering. Kundry it was who tempted the King. Klingsor, the enchanter, a eunuch by his own act, prompts Kundry to all this evil. Gurnemanz, the aged servitor of the Grail, and Titurel, the dead King, though miraculously alive, father of Amfortas, make up the rest of the characters in this strange drama of pity and renunciation.