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Janna Britton
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The composer Richard Wagner's personal association with Grail lore and, of course, his own famous Ring Cycle are well known. It is therefore very appropriate that one of the present hopeful contenders for The Lord of the Rings film score is Richard Wagner's own descendant, Adrian Wagner, who is now in touch with the film company in this regard.
When Bloodline of the Holy Grail was released, I was heartened to learn that the Wagner Grail tradition of Lohengrin and Parsifal was still very much to the fore. At that time, in parallel with my book, Adrian Wagner released an album called The Holy Spirit and the Holy Grail. Now, as a companion to my latest work, he has composed the compelling musical suite, Genesis of the Grail Kings. [See Audio Reviews, this issue. Ed.]
One apparent fact about Tolkien's elven folk is that, unlike the cute little elves of many children's tales, these characters are actually larger and more powerful than average mortals. They are also endowed with greater powers of wisdom, they ride magical horses and closely resemble the ancient Irish king-tribe of the Tuatha Dé Danann. In this regard, Tolkien was quite accurate with his assessment of the original Ring Lords of the Albi-gens who, in the far distant years BC, were called the Lords of the Sidhé (pronounced "shee").
The Sidhé was a transcendent intellect, known to the Druids as the Web of the Wise, while "druid" (druidhe) was itself a Celtic word for "witch" - an English form of the Saxon verb wicca, meaning "to bend" or "to yield" (as indeed do willow and wicker).
The Tuatha Dé Danann (or Dragon Lords of Anu) were masters of the transcendent Sidhé, and were duly classified as "fates" or "fairies". Before settling in Ireland (from about 800 BC), they were the world's most noble race, alongside the early Kings of Egypt, being the Black Sea Princes of Scythia (now Ukraine). Like the original dynastic Pharaohs, they traced their descent from the great Pendragons of Mesopotamia; and from them sprang the kingly lines of the Irish Bruithnigh and the Picts of Scotland's Caledonia. In Wales they founded the Royal House of Gwynedd, while in Cornwall in the southwest of England, they were the sacred gentry known as the Pict-sidhé - from which derives the term "pixie".
So, from a single caste of the original Blood Royal - whether known as the Sangréal, the Albi-gens or the Ring Lords - we discover many of the descriptive terms which sit at the very heart of popular folklore. For here, in this one noble race, we have the "elves", "fairies" and "pixies" - not beguiling little folk, but distinguished Kings and Queens of the Dragon succession.
One of the most important Scythian words was uper, which meant "over" or "above" - a word that we still use in today's English in such definitions as "superintendent" or "supervisor". In titular form, a Scythian Uper was an Overseer or, more importantly, an Overlord - the equivalent of a Pendragon. Later, in the Hungarian and Romanian regions, the word gained the variant form, Oupire.
Until the mediaeval fabrications of the Christian Church, there was nothing remotely sinister or supernatural about the definition of Oupire, but this was eventually destined to change when the witch-hunts began, for the priestly/kingly Oupires were, in the eyes of Rome, the equivalent of Magian Druids. They were therefore witches, and the Sidhé definition (Web of the Wise) became newly dubbed as "the Web of the Weird".
In the main, outside the Celtic regions of Britain, the traditional Oupires had been apparent in the Balkan and Carpathian regions of Europe, having prevailed from Transylvania to the Black Sea in ancient times. They were therefore not only associated with witches but with Gypsies. The Church bishops and Inquisitional friars suspected them of being the ultimate rulers of the Land of Elphane - the twilight realm of fairy gold, magic springs and the abiding lore of the Greenwood, all of which were anathema to the Church. They were said to be wandering people of the night, who consorted with evil spirits. At that stage, a new word was born into the language of Christian Europe. The word, a straightforward corruption of Oupire, was "vampire".
In addition to vampires, another classification was soon to enter the Inquisitional vocabulary as the Dominican Black Friars and the Franciscan Grey Friars compiled their lists of undesirables. They had now moved beyond the realm of ordinary heretics and pagans, for alongside their fabricated vampire myth they conjured another form of shapeshifting phenomenon: the werewolf.
Quite suddenly, there appeared to be no end to the fantastic creatures that were reckoned to stalk the streets and forests in search of unsuspecting victims. But the beauty of all this was that it had the effect of making people lean more heavily upon the Church - the only perceived route to salvation. These vampires and werewolves, it was said, could not be killed by conventional means. Even God was out of the picture, for only the power of Jesus Christ (the Saviour of humankind) could defeat these diabolical beings. They were portrayed as devils, demons and emissaries of Satan, who had to be exorcised and destroyed by the monks and clerics. And so the Church was in business with a whole new genre of scary folklore to counter the Grail Quest legends and esoteric artwork of the "underground stream".
On the one hand, there were the Albigensian tales of Swan Princes, Dragon Queens and Elf Maidens, comprising the lore of the forgotten Bloodline and the Lost Bride, wherein knights and chivalric champions battled against all odds to preserve the sacred heritage of the Holy Grail. In these stories, there were wizards of the Druidic school and wise hermits to guide the knights upon their journeys and missions. But nowhere in these tales of enchantment did a gallant priest or bishop ever ride to the aid of a damsel in distress, for the Church was, in practice, the adversary.
What the bishops did, however, at the 1545 Council of Trento in northern Italy, was they formally blacklisted and outlawed the prophecies of Merlin, withdrawing all related material from the public domain. Eventually, in order to weigh the literary balance in the Church's favour, a new breed of writing was born, and it came into its own as Gothic Romance.
The premise behind these tales was not so much about saving victims, but rather more about destroying the enemies of contrived "churchianity" - with crucifixes galore and gallons of holy water being the essential weapons in the dreaded undertaking against the sinister "evil ones".
Then, in time, the Christian movement had a wonderful idea for its own Merlin competitor: not a wizard as such, but an early Church bishop with canonised status. But, what a very strange choice they made!
Back in AD 325, one of the characters at Emperor Constantine's Council of Nicaea was a certain Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. At this Church conference the bishops were debating the nature of the Holy Trinity and of how Jesus was not simply the Son of God but was also God incarnate. The ageing Libyan priest, Arius of Alexandria, was not at all happy about this new concept and decided to make his feelings known. But when he rose to speak, Nicholas of Myra immediately punched him in the face!
This, of course, brought the debate firmly back onto the required track - subsequent to which, the violent protagonist was rewarded for his effort and duly became Saint Nicholas. This titular name was later corrupted in parts of Europe to become Sinterklaas or Sintniklaus, and then, in the English-speaking countries, to Santa Claus. Now, by virtue of a good deal of strategic propaganda, he is lovingly revered by children as the jolly, gift-bearing Father Christmas - a far cry from the original vindictive bishop of historical record.
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