LOHENGRIN, the hero of the German version of the legend of the knight of the swan. The story is based on two common motives : the metamorphosis of human beings into swans, and the curious wife whose question brings disaster. Lohengrin's guide (the swan) was originally the little brother who, in one version of "the Seven Swans," was compelled through the destruction of his golden chain to remain a swan. The swan played a part in classical mythology as the bird of Apollo, and in Scandinavian lore the swan maidens, who have the gift of prophecy constantly appear. The wife's inquisitiveness is "Cupid and Psyche" again, and bore in mediaeval times a similar mystical interpretation. The incidents of "Lohengrin" are localized on the Lower Rhine. By the Germans the tale was attached loosely to the Grail legend (see GRAIL and PERCEVAL) in France it was adapted to glorify the family of Godfrey de Bouillon.
The German story appears at the end of Wolfram von Eschen bach's Parzival, where Parzival's son, Loherangrin (i.e., Garin le Loherin [q.v.], or Garin of Lorraine) is sent from the castle of the Grail to the help of the young duchess of Brabant. Guided by the swan he reaches Antwerp, and marries the lady on condi tion that she shall not ask his origin. On the breach of this condi tion years afterwards Loherangrin departs, leaving sword, horn and ring behind him. About 1290, a Bavarian disciple of Wolfram's developed the story into an epic of nearly 8,000 lines, incorporat ing episodes of Lohengrin's prowess in tournament, his wars with Henry I. against the heathen, and incidentally providing a pic ture of noble life. The epic of Lohengrin is put by the anonymous writer into the mouth of Wolfram, who is made to relate it during the Contest of the Singers at the Wartburg, and the poem is thus linked to German tradition. Its connection with Parzival implies a mystic application. The consecrated wafer shared by Lohengrin and the swan is the means taken by the poet to give the tale the character of a Christian allegory. The story was followed in its main outlines by Wagner in his opera.
The French legend is attached to the house of Bouillon, and though William of Tyre refers to it about 117o as fable, it was incorporated without question by later annalists. It forms part of the cycle of the chansons de geste dealing with the crusade, and relates how Helyas, knight of the swan, is guided by the swan to help the duchess of Bouillon and marries her daughter Ida or Beatrix in circumstances exactly parallel to the adventures of Lohengrin and Elsa of Brabant. Their daughter marries Eus
tache, count of Boulogne, and has three sons, the eldest of whom, Godfrey, is the future king of Jerusalem. But in French story Helyas is not the son of Parzival, but of the king of Lillefort, and the story of his birth, of himself, his five brothers and one sister is but the fairy-tale of "the Seven Swans" persecuted by the wicked grandmother. The house of Bouillon was not alone in claiming the knight as an ancestor, and the tradition probably originally belonged to the house of Cleves.
See Lohengrin, ed. Ruckert (Quedlinburg and Leipzig, 1858) ; an other version of the tale, Lorengel, is edited in the Zeitschr. fur deutsches Altertum (vol. Is) ; modern German translation of Lohen grin, by H. A. Junghaus (Leipzig, 1878) ; Conrad von Wiirzburg's fragmentary Schwanritter, ed. F. Roth (Frankfurt, 1861). See Elster, Beitriige zur Kritik des Lohengrin (Halle, 1884), and R. Heinrichs, Die Lohengrindichtung and ihre Deutung (Hamm i. West., 1905).
French Versions.—Reiffenberg, Le Chevalier au cygne et Godfrey de Bouillon (1846-48), in Mon. pour servir d l'hist. de la province de Namur; C. Hippeau, La Chanson du chevalier au cygne (1874) ; H. A. Todd, La Naissance du chevalier au cygne, an inedited French poem of the .r2th cent. (Mod. Lang. Assoc., Baltimore, 1889) ; cf. the Latin tale by Jean de Haute Seille (Johannes de Alta Silva) in his Dolo pathos (ed. Oesterley, Strasbourg, 1873).
English Versions.—In England the story first appears in a short poem preserved among the Cotton mss. of the British Museum and entitled Chevelere assigne. This was edited by Utterson in 182o for the Rox burghe club, and again by Gibbs in 1868 for the E.E.T.S., with a set of photographs of a 14th-century ivory casket, on which the story is depicted in 36 compartments. An English prose romance, Helyas Knight of the Swan, translated by Robert Copland, and printed by W. Copland about 155o, is founded on a French romance La Genealogie . . . de Godefiroy de Boulin (pr. 15o4) and is reprinted by Thorns in Early Prose Romances, vol. iii. It was also printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1512. A modern edition was issued in 1901 from the Grolier club, New York.