The evidence is of course incomplete, but it does provide us with a personality fulfilling the main conditions of a complex problem.  Thus, we have a man of the required name, and nationality; living at an appropriate date; of the requisite social position; on excellent terms with the French nobles, and so well acquainted with their language as to sign himself officially ‘The Interpreter.’  We have no direct evidence of his literary skill, or knowledge of the traditional history of his country, but a man of his birth could scarcely have failed to possess the latter, while certain peculiarities in that section of the national Chronicle which deals with the aid given by him to the Norman invaders would seem to indicate that Bledri himself may well have been responsible for the record.  Again, we know him to have been closely connected with the locality from which came the writer who refers to the famous story-teller of the same name.  I would submit that we have here quite sufficient evidence to warrant us in accepting Bledri ap Cadivor as, at least, the possible author of the romantic Grail tradition.  In any case, so far, there is no other candidate in the field.[13]

Shortly after the publication of the second volume of my Perceval studies, I received a letter from Professor Singer, in which, after expressing his general acceptance of the theories there advanced, in especial of the suggested date and relation of the different versions, which he characterized as “sehr gelungen, und zu meiner Alffassung der Entwickelung der Altfranzösischen Literatur sehr zu stimmen,” he proceeded to comment upon the probable character of the literary activity of Bleheris.  His remarks are so interesting and suggestive that I venture to submit them for the consideration of my readers.

Professor Singer points out that in Eilhart von Oberge’s Tristan we find the name in the form of Pleherin attached to a knight of Mark’s court.  The same name in a slightly varied form, Pfelerin, occurs in the Tristan of Heinrich von Freiberg; both poems, Professor Singer considers, are derived from a French original.  Under a compound form, Blihos, (or Blio)-Bliheris, he appears, in the Gawain-Grail compilation, as a knight at Arthur’s court.  Now Bréri-Blihis-Bleheris is referred to as authority alike in the Tristan, Grail and Gawain tradition, and Professor Singer makes the interesting suggestion that these references are originally due to Bleheris himself, who not only told the stories in the third person (a common device at that period, v.  Chrétien’s Erec, and Gerbert’s continuation of the Perceval), but also introduced himself as eye-witness of, and actor, in a subordinate rôle, in, the incidents he recorded.  Thus in the Tristan he is a knight of Mark’s, in the Elucidation and the Gawain stories a knight of Arthur’s, court.  Professor Singer instances the case of Dares in the De exidio Trojae, and Bishop Pilgrim of Passau in the lost Nibelungias of his secretary Konrad, as illustrations of the theory.