Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/327

 Rh is explained that, being desperately wounded, and only to be healed when the quest is achieved, he is as good as dead, and his wife may be reckoned a widow. These two instances will suffice to shew that the transformation of the Body on the bier into the Maimed King on the litter, is neither impossible nor unnatural. The two are really one and the same.

Students of the Grail cycle will hardly need to be reminded that the identity of the Maimed King is a hopeless puzzle. He may be the Fisher King, or the Fisher King's father, or have no connection with either, as in the Evalach-Mordrains story. He may have been wounded in battle, or accidentally, or wilfully, or by supernatural means, as the punishment of too close an approach to spiritual mysteries. A proof of the confusion which ultimately resulted from these conflicting versions is to be found in the Merlin MS. above referred to, where not only Perceval's father but two others are Maimed Kings, and all three sit at the Table of the Grail. If such confusion existed in the mind of the writers, no wonder that we, the readers, find the path of Grail criticism a rough and intricate one! Probably the characters of the Maimed King and the Fisher King were originally distinct, the Maimed King representing, as we have suggested, the god, in whose honour the rites were performed; the Fisher King, who, whether maimed or not, invariably acts as host, representing the Priest. It would be his office to preside at the ritual feast, and at the initiation of the neophyte, offices which would well fit in with the character of Host. Here, the name of Fisher King is not given to him, but in certain texts which interpolate the history of Joseph of Arimathea he is identified with that Monarch. It will readily be understood that when the idea that the god was alive gained possession of the minds of those who told the story, there would be two lords of the castle, and