Follow the Gleam

DESCRIPTION: "To the knights in the days of old, Keeping watch on the mountain height. Came a vision of Holy Grail, And a voice through... singing Follow, follow the gleam, banners unfurled o’er all the world." We should also follow the gleam of The King
AUTHOR: Helen Hill Miller and/or Sallie Hume Douglas (see NOTES)
EARLIEST DATE: 1923 (copyright, according to Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs; music copyright 1915)
KEYWORDS: religious campsong
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 365, 457, "Follow the Gleam" (notes only)
Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs, p. 74, "Follow the Gleam" (1 text, 1 tune)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsNThings, p. 107, "Follow the Gleam" (1 text, 1 tune)
National-4HClubSongBook, p. 55, "Follow the Gleam" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES [1055 words]: Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs lists this as as having music by Sallie Hume Douglas, with no source for the words, but it is listed as copyright by the YWCA of the U. S. A., and it is called a "Silver Bay Prize Song/Bryn Mawr College." National-4HClubSongBook also lists only Sallie Hume Douglas as author -- but has a note that the "music [is] adapted from the Song, Garden of Paradise," copyrighted 1915. Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs says it's by Helen Hill Miller. Presumably Miller wrote the words and Douglas the tune, but no one says that explicitly.
There are a number of problems with this song (even if you ignore the fact that the Holy Grail is a surely-false legend). First off, there was no reason to hunt the Grail outside Britain -- "There are no old folk traditions about the Holy Grail, though it is prominent in the French Arthurian literature from the late 12th century onwards, where it is usually, but not invariably, linked to the Last Supper and Crucifixion, the Eucharist, and Joseph of Arimathea. In English Arthurian romances it lies hidden in a mysterious castle somewhere in Britain.... Although the story suited medieval piety, Church writers never adopted it" (Simpson/Roud, p. 151).
"Mythologically [the Grail] is said to be the vessel from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and, occasionally, the cup used by the centurion Longinus to catch the blood of Christ on the cross" (Moorman/Moorman, p .62. This event is non-Biblical; so is Longinus, though of course there would have been Roman guards by the cross. John 19:34 says that one of these guards drove a spear into Jesus's side to be sure he was dead, but "The name of the soldier is not given in the text and arises only in the late sixth century (ca. 586) when it appears in a miniature or illumination in a Syriac manuscript." He was said in the "Gospel of Nicodemus" to be blind, and the blood of Christ cured his blindness, a story which also occurs in several mystery plays; the lance itself came to be part of the grail legend; Jeffrey, p. 461). Moorman/Moorman, pp. 62-63, says that the Grail was first mentioned in the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes.
Chrétien claimed to have a source, a book given to him by Count Philip of Flanders (probably Philip I, Count of Flanders, 1143-1191), but nothing like this book has ever been found (Loomis, p. 60). To be sure, Chrétien might have used this source for only part of his story, and we can't guess which part -- the clumsy young Percival becoming a knight, the grail story, and a mostly-unrelated section about Gawain. The first or the last might be the parts Chrétien found elsewhere; they have closer analogs outside the French Arthurian tradition.
Interestingly, according to Loomis, p. 67, in the genuine part of Chétien's work (as opposed to the continuators) there was no stated connection between the Grail procession and the Passion; there is no indication, e.g., that the Grail was used to catch Jesus's blood.
According to Chrétien, the Grail procession looked like this: first came a youth carrying a lance by the middle, the lance dripping blood. Then two handsome young men carrying gold candelabras with many lighted candlesticks. "A damsel, who came with the youths and was fair and attractive and beautifully adorned, held in both hands a grail. Once that she had entered with this grail that she held, so great a radiance appeared that the candles lost their brilliance just as the stars do at the rising of the sun or moon." Another young woman followed with a carving dish. "The grail, which preceded ahead, was of pure refined gold. [One wonders how Jesus or Longinus could afford such a thing!] And this grail was set with many precious stones, the richest and most costly in sea or earth; those stones in the grail certainly surpassed all others" (Chrétien/Owen, pp. 416-417; the description starts with line 3190 of the French text).
In Malory's Le Morte Darthur, the final major Arthurian source and the best known to English speakers, the Grail story is in Book XIII, The Sangreal; a knight comes to Arthur's court and tells that, 32 years after the Passion, Joseph of Arimathea left Jerusalem and started the Grail on its adventures (for the text, see e.g. Malory/Shepherd, pp. 507-509).
The Welsh version of this, in the romance of "Peredur son of Efrawg/Efrawg/Evrawg," is dramatically different. Mabinogion/Gantz, p. 217, believes that the name "Peredur" is more primitive than Chrétien's "Percival," but the romance itself appears to be derivative, and not particularly close to Chrétien's version. The Grail itself does not exist -- the Grail procession is shockingly different:
"Suddenly [Peredur] could see two lads entering the hall, and from the hall they proceeded to a chamber, carrying a spear of huge proportions, with three streams of blood running from its socket to the floor. When everyone saw the lads coming in this way, they all began weeping and wailing so that it was not easy for anyone to endure it.... After a short silence, suddenly two maidens entered with a large salver between them, and a man's head on the salver, and much blood around the head" (Mabinogion/Davies, p. 73). The spear may be the Holy Lance, but the head on a salver replaces the Grail itself. This might be an instance of a mis-hearing (the Welsh word for "salver" is "dysgl"), but Loomis suggested (p. 63) that the severed head comes from the legend of Brän the Blessed (who, in another part of the Mabinogion, was wounded in a battle in Ireland and told the survivors of the raid to cut off his head and carry it back to Britain). In a strange way, then, this makes the grail into the head of the Fisher King! Confused as this may be, it is evidence that Wales did not know the Grail legend at this time, even though the earliest Arthurian tales are Welsh and even though there is every reason to think Chrétien preceded "Peredur."
Thus the grail is a source of light in the earliest tradition, but it is seen in a procession, not by itself, and the light does not reach tremendous distances (Lupack, p. 215); it's a cup, not a lighthouse! If the "gleam" had been so obvious, the Grail Quest would not have had knights searching all over Britain. In fact only a few knights ever saw it. So following the gleam was not likely to be an effective tactic. - RBW
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