He has had many of the adventure tales from the epics during the earlier period. Now he is ready for those tinged with romance, those pervaded by a spirit of fiery idealism in which knights risk limb and life in loyalty to principle, for fealty to king, or in defense of some fair lady. Percival seeking the Grail is a finer hero to him than Percival battling with the Red Knight, and the vow of the men of the Round Table means something because he can understand it. In a vague, indefinite way romance is touching his own life, and his noblest emotions are awakened by the noble words:
To reverence the king, as if he were Their conscience, and their conscience as their king, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To honor his own word as if his God’s, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds.
Boys and girls in the heroic period enjoyed only the Arthurian stories that glorify physical bravery, those of jousting and conflict into which women do not enter. But now they delight in such tales as those of Geraint and Enid, of Launcelot and Elaine, and some of the adventures of Tristram.
Here a word of caution is necessary. Like the Old Testament stories, these romantic tales will arouse the noblest emotions and highest ideals if given with wisdom, but if told thoughtlessly may create an almost morbid desire for the vulgar. Therefore the non-professional narrator should use for his work some retold version of the King Arthur tales instead of adapting from _Le Morte d’Arthur_, because there is much in the original that should be eliminated in presenting it to those in the adolescent period. The Pyle or Radford editions are excellent, likewise _The Boy’s King Arthur_, by Sidney Lanier, each of which keeps the spirit of the poem, but omits everything objectionable.
The story of King Arthur, embracing as it does the Grail legend, should be followed by the German tale of “Parsifal,”—not the Wagner opera version, but the original medieval legend, “The Knightly Song of Songs” of Wolfram von Eschenbach. This has been retold beautifully by Anna Alice Chapin in _The Story of Parsifal_, a book with which every child in the romantic period should be familiar. Miss Guerber, in her _Legends of the Middle Ages_, relates the tale of Titurel and the Holy Grail, which will be helpful to the narrator because of the light it throws on the origin of the legend. But for a telling version there is none equal to that of Miss Chapin, none in which the lofty chivalric spirit of the medieval poem is portrayed so faithfully.