Connected with the longer period of the feast were the so-called ‘Gardens of Adonis,’ baskets, or pans, planted with quick growing seeds, which speedily come to fruition, and as speedily wither.  In the modern survivals of the cult three days form the general term for the flowering of these gardens.[21]

The most noticeable feature of the ritual was the prominence assigned to women; “ce sont les femmes qui le pleurent, et qui l’accompagnent à sa tombe.  Elles sanglotent éperdument pendant les nuits,—­c’est leur dieu plus que tout autre, et seules elles veulent pleurer sa mort, et chanter sa résurrection."[22]

Thus in the tenth century the festival received the Arabic name of El-Bûgat, or ’The Festival of the Weeping Women.’[23]

One very curious practice during these celebrations was that of cutting off the hair in honour of the god; women who hesitated to make this sacrifice must offer themselves to strangers, either in the temple, or on the market-place, the gold received as the price of their favours being offered to the goddess.  This obligation only lasted for one day.[24] It was also customary for the priests of Adonis to mutilate themselves in imitation of the god, a distinct proof, if one were needed, of the traditional cause of his death.[25]

Turning from a consideration of the Adonis ritual, its details, and significance, to an examination of the Grail romances, we find that their mise-en-scène provides a striking series of parallels with the Classical celebrations, parallels, which instead of vanishing, as parallels have occasionally an awkward habit of doing, before closer investigation, rather gain in force the more closely they are studied.

Thus the central figure is either a dead knight on a bier (as in the Gawain versions), or a wounded king on a litter; when wounded the injury corresponds with that suffered by Adonis and Attis.[26]

Closely connected with the wounding of the king is the destruction which has fallen on the land, which will be removed when the king is healed.  The version of Sone de Nansai is here of extreme interest; the position is stated with so much clearness and precision that the conclusion cannot be evaded—­we are face to face with the dreaded calamity which it was the aim of the Adonis ritual to avert, the temporary suspension of all the reproductive energies of Nature.[27]

While the condition of the king is the cause of general and vociferous lamentation, a special feature, never satisfactorily accounted for, is the presence of a weeping woman, or several weeping women.  Thus in the interpolated visit of Gawain to the Grail castle, found in the C group of Perceval MSS., the Grail-bearer weeps piteously, as she does also in Diû Crône.[28]