Taking into consideration the construction of the poem, and the character of the contents, I think we are justified in considering the composition of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven as a collection of _lais_ which have not yet been worked over or taken final literary shape. When the scattered Lancelot stories did this, it was under the influence of a _motif_ foreign to the original legend, his love for Guinevere. How that came to be introduced into the legend is a matter for separate consideration, but I do not think there is room for doubt that it was this introduction which determined the final and literary form of the Lancelot story. All conflicting elements, such as the various love affairs, were rejected and only the original germ retained. And what was this germ? Authorities will no doubt differ. Some perhaps will say it was the story of Guinevere's imprisonment and rescue, but they must remember that in the _Lanzelet_ this is _not_ the work of the hero. I think myself that the root of the Lancelot tale was simply a Breton _lai_, relating the theft of a king's son by a water fairy: this seems to be the one abiding and persistent element in the tale, all else is uncertain and shifting. Here the hero is Arthur's nephew; elsewhere he is but the son of an old ally; at one time his father is a tyrant, '_chassé_' by his own people; again he is a noble king, the victim of treachery and a foreign foe. Sometimes Lancelot's mother lives to see him restored to his kingdom; sometimes she dies while he is yet in the care of the fairy, and never sees her son again. He has two cousins on the father's side, Bohort and Lionel, and a bastard half-brother Hector; he has no relations on his father's side, but is cousin to Gawain through his mother. He is Guinevere's lover; he is not Guinevere's lover. He is unmarried; he is very much married--three times at least! He has four children born in wedlock; he has but one son, the offspring of a _liaison_. He is the most valiant knight of Arthur's court; he is scarce worthy of mention. Among all this shifting tangle and contradiction, there is but one thing, and one only, fixed and certain, he is Lancelot _du Lac_. I do not see how we can avoid the conclusion that in this record of his youth we have the one fixed point of departure for all the subsequent unfoldings of romance. Not that this story was always unvarying in its details, on the contrary we find in it marked divergences. Thus in the _Lanzelet_ the motive of the theft is clear, the fairy desires a champion and protector for her cowardly son; the motive in the prose _Lancelot_ is not apparent; probably it was a mere capricious fancy for a beautiful child.