Let us now turn to the Legend itself. The story which ends in Avalon begins in Jerusalem. For though the Graal-legends are undoubtedly later additions to whatever may have been the original Arthurian saga--seeing that we find nothing of them in the early Welsh traditions, nothing in Nennius, nothing in Geoffrey, nothing even in Wace or Layamon--yet such is the skill with which the unknown or uncertain authors have worked them into the legend that the whole makes one indivisible romance. Yet (as the untaught genius of Malory instinctively perceived) when the Graal-story on the one hand, and the loves of Lancelot and Guinevere with which it is connected on the other, came in, they made comparatively otiose and uninteresting the wars with Saxons and Romans, which in the earlier Legend had occupied almost the whole room. And accordingly these wars, which still hold a very large part of the field in the _Merlin_, drop out to some extent later. The whole cycle consists practically of five parts, each of which in almost all cases exists in divers forms, and more than one of which overlaps and is overlapped by one or more of the others. These five are _Merlin_, the _Saint-Graal_, _Lancelot_, the _Quest of the Saint-Graal_, and the _Death of Arthur_. Each of the first two pairs intertwines with the other: the last, _Mort Artus_, completes them all, and thus its title was not improperly used in later times to designate the whole Legend. [Sidenote: _The story of Joseph of Arimathea._]