The problem of the Grail has been attempted to be solved by the hypothesis of a misunderstanding of Chrêtien de Troyes, this solution is of course _possible_, but it must be admitted that it has the appearance rather of an ingenious evasion than an explanation of a difficulty, and it holds good for nothing beyond the bare presentment of the Grail as a _stone_. The Angevin problem, on the other hand, has so far never been solved at all, and only its removal hinted at by the suggestion that Walter Mapes was the author of Wolfram's source, which of course admits that Wolfram _had_ a source other than Chrêtien, and therefore by implication throws doubt on the above suggested explanation of the Grail which is based on the supposition that Chrêtien, and Chrêtien alone, was the source of Wolfram's information. In fact, so long as we refuse to admit the truth of Wolfram's own explicit statements, so long shall we find the interpretation of the _Parzival_ beset with innumerable difficulties, the attempted explanation of one part of the problem only rendering the remaining portion more obscure; but if we will accept it as possible that Wolfram gave a correct account of the source of his poem, and, divesting our minds of all preconceived ideas in favour of this or that theory, carefully examine the indications afforded by the poem itself, we may find that there _is_ a solution which will meet, more or less fully, all the difficulties which beset the question. Now, as remarked above, when Wolfram wrote his poem the power of the Angevin House was beginning to decline, the date assigned to the _Parzival_, with which date all the internal evidences agree, is within the first fifteen years of the thirteenth century, a period exactly corresponding to the reign of John, and it may be the first two or three years of that of his successor Henry III., and it was during the fatuous misgovernment of these princes that the edifice so carefully built up by the early Angevin counts fell to pieces. Works in glorification of any special house or kingdom are not, as a rule, written during that house or kingdom's period of decadence, rather during its time of growth and aggrandisement, and we find as a fact that the events which led to the accession of an Angevin count to the throne of England 'stirred up, during the early years of Henry Fitz-Empress' reign, a spirit of patriotic loyalty which led more than one of his subjects to collect the floating popular traditions of his race, and weave them into a narrative which passed for a history of the Angevin counts.' (Cf. _England under the Angevin Kings_, vol. ii. p. 195.) It is therefore to this period rather than to a later date, _i.e._ to Wolfram's source rather than to Wolfram himself, that historical testimony would bid us assign the Angevin allusions. History also forbids us to assume that _Chrêtien_ could have been the source of Wolfram's information; Chrêtien was of Troyes, in Champagne, therefore an adherent of the