Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/72

 64 the river, who directs Perceval to the castle. In the legend it is not a fisher, but a fish, which is quickened to life by being dipped into the water of the river, which attracts the attention of Alexander and arouses his curiosity. He follows up the river, and is thus led to Paradise. Out of that fish there grew the fisher-king. I need not further insist upon the almost identical legend of the dove sitting on the ball (or jewel) and prophesying to the king in a human voice—i.e., to the man lying on the couch—and the dove which lays a holy wafer upon the stone in Wolfram’s, and the bread by which the sick king is kept alive in Heinrich’s poem. Perceval is led by lights to the magic castle, which are almost identical with the lights that go before Alexander in the version of Valerius.

We shall see presently how deeply these elements taken from the legend of Alexander, have been modified through the agency of Christian ideas and Christian conceptions. This episode with the lights, and especially that of the tree full of lights whereupon one child (two children) sits, will find its explanation later on.

(To be continued.)