See T. Sheffield, _The Story of the Settlement ..._ (2nd ed., Graham's Town, 1884); C. T. Campbell, _British South Africa ... with notices of some of the British Settlers of 1820_ (London, 1897).
GRAIL, THE HOLY, the famous talisman of Arthurian romance, the object of quest on the part of the knights of the Round Table. It is mainly, if not wholly, known to English readers through the medium of Malory's translation of the French _Quête du Saint Graal_, where it is the cup or chalice of the Last Supper, in which the blood which flowed from the wounds of the crucified Saviour has been miraculously preserved. Students of the original romances are aware that there is in these texts an extraordinary diversity of statement as to the nature and origin of the Grail, and that it is extremely difficult to determine the precise value of these differing versions.[1] Broadly speaking the Grail romances have been divided into two main classes: (1) those dealing with the search for the Grail, the _Quest_, and (2) those relating to its early history. These latter appear to be dependent on the former, for whereas we may have a _Quest_ romance without any insistence on the previous history of the Grail, that history is never found without some allusion to the hero who is destined to bring the quest to its successful termination. The _Quest_ versions again fall into three distinct classes, differentiated by the personality of the hero who is respectively Gawain, Perceval or Galahad. The most important and interesting group is that connected with Perceval, and he was regarded as the original Grail hero, Gawain being, as it were, his understudy. Recent discoveries, however, point to a different conclusion, and indicate that the _Gawain_ stories represent an early tradition, and that we must seek in them rather than in the _Perceval_ versions for indications as to the ultimate origin of the Grail.
The character of this talisman or relic varies greatly, as will be seen from the following summary.
1. GAWAIN, included in the continuation to Chrétien's _Perceval_ by Wauchier de Denain, and attributed to Bleheris the Welshman, who is probably identical with the Bledhericus of Giraldus Cambrensis, and considerably earlier than Chrétien de Troyes. Here the Grail is a food-providing, self-acting talisman, the precise nature of which is not specified; it is designated as the "rich" Grail, and serves the king and his court _sans serjant et sans seneschal_, the butlers providing the guests with wine. In another version, given at an earlier point of the same continuation, but apparently deriving from a later source, the Grail is borne in procession by a weeping maiden, and is called the "holy" Grail, but no details as to its history or character are given. In a third version, that of _Diu Crône_, a long and confused romance, the origin of which has not been determined, the Grail appears as a reliquary, in which the Host is presented to the king, who once a year partakes alike of it and of the blood which flows from the lance. Another account is given in the prose _Lancelot_, but here Gawain has been deposed from his post as first hero of the court, and, as is to be expected from the treatment meted out to him in this romance, the visit ends in his complete discomfiture. The Grail is here surrounded with the atmosphere of awe and reverence familiar to us through the _Quête_, and is regarded as the chalice of the Last Supper. These are the _Gawain_ versions.