There may be no Doctor in the Grail legend to-day, but was there never such a character? How if this be the key to explain the curious and persistent attribution of healing skill to so apparently unsuitable a personage as Sir Gawain? I would draw the attention of my readers to a passage in the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes, where Gawain, finding a wounded knight by the roadside, proceeds to treat him:
"Et Mesire Gauvain savoit Plus que nuls homs de garir plaie; Une herbe voit en une haie Trop bonne pour douleur tolir De plaie, et il la va cueillir."[7]
"Et Messires Gauvain savoit Plus que nus hons vivant de plaies, Unes herbe voit les une haies Qu'il connoissoit lonc temps avoit Que son mestre apris li avoit Enseigniee et bien moustree, Et il l'avoit bien esgardee Si l'a molt bien reconneue."[8]
We find reference to Gawain's possession of medical knowledge elsewhere. In the poem entitled Lancelot et le cerf au pied blanc, Gawain, finding his friend desperately wounded, carries him to a physician whom he instructs as to the proper treatment.[9]
"Ende Walewein wiesde den Ersatere mere Ene const, die daertoe halp wel sere."[10]
In the parallel adventure related in Morien Gawain heals Lancelot without the aid of any physician:[11]
"Doe was Walewein harde blide Ende bant hem sine wonden ten tide Met selken crude die daer dochten Dat si niet bloden mochten."[12]
"Si waren doe in dire gedochten Mochten sie daer comen tier stont Datten Walewein soude maken gesont."[13]
The Dutch Lancelot has numerous references to Gawain's skill in healing. Of course the advocates of the originality of Chrétien de Troyes will object that these references, though found in poems which have no connection with Chrétien, and which are translations from lost French originals of an undetermined date, are one and all loans from the more famous poem. This, however, can hardly be contended of the Welsh Triads; there we find Gwalchmai, the Welsh Gawain, cited as one of the three men "To whom the nature of every object was known,"[14] an accomplishment exceedingly necessary for a 'Medicine Man,' but not at first sight especially needful for the equipment of a knight.[15] This persistent attribution of healing skill is not, so far as my acquaintance with medieval Romance goes, paralleled in the case of any other knight; even Tristan, who is probably the most accomplished of heroes of romance, the most thoroughly trained in all branches of knightly education, is not credited with any such knowledge. No other knight, save Gawain, has the reputation of a Healer, yet Gawain, the Maidens' Knight, the 'fair Father of Nurture' is, at first sight, hardly the personage one might expect to possess such skill. Why he should be so persistently connected with healing was for long a problem to me; recently, however, I have begun to suspect that we have in this apparently motiveless attribution the survival of an early stage of tradition in which not only did Gawain cure the Grail King, but he did so, not by means of a question, or by the welding of a broken sword, but by more obvious and natural means, the administration of a healing herb. Gawain's character of Healer belongs to him in his rôle of Grail Winner.