Siege Perilous
InArthurian legend,theSiege Perilous(Welsh:Gwarchae Peryglus,also known asThe Perilous Seat,Welsh:Sedd Peryglus) is a vacant seat at theRound Tablereserved byMerlinfor the knight who would one day be successful in the quest for theHoly Grail.[1]
History
[edit]The English word "siege" originally meant "seat" or "throne" coming from theOld Frenchsege(modern Frenchsiège); the modern military sense of aprolonged assaultcomes from the conception of an army "sitting down" before a fortress.[2]
InThomas Malory's 1485 bookLe Morte d'Arthur,in an account taken from the Vulgate CycleQueste del Saint Graal,[3]the newlyknightedSirGalahadtakes the seat inCamelotonWhitsunday,454 years after the death ofJesus.The Siege Perilous is strictly reserved and therefore is fatal to anyone unworthy who sits in it. Another version of this story is related inAlfred Tennyson'sIdylls of the King.[4]
Originally, this motif about the seat and the grail belonged toPerceval,but theLancelot-GrailCycle transferred it to the newCistercian-based heroGalahad.It appears, for example, in the earlierPerceval de Didotattributed toRobert de Boron,in whichPercevaloccupies the seat at Arthur's court at Carduel.[5][self-published source]According to many scholars, the motif of the dangerous seat can be further traced to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton mythology, from which the bulk of the Arthurian legend was derived. According to this theory, the Siege Perilous was a half-remembered version of a Celtic kingship ritual that has parallels in the IrishLia Fáil.[6]
References
[edit]- ^Malory, Thomas (1868).Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table.Vol. XI. Macmillan and Company. p. 326.
...he shall be born that shall sit there in that siege perilous, and he shall win the Sangreal.
- ^Harper, Douglas."siege (n.)".Online Etymology Dictionary.Retrieved1 July2018.
- ^Norris, Ralph C.Malory's Library: The Sources of the Morte Darthur(D. S. Brewer, 2008), p. 114.
- ^Alfred Lord Tennyson(1856).Idylls of the King.
And Merlin called it 'The Siege perilous'
- ^"Didot Perceval I".Mary Jones.Retrieved2019-02-22.
- ^R. S. Loomis.Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance(Academy Chicago; revised ed. 1997).
