Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/429

Rh omit the questions at first. Meanwhile the original Grail possessor had become known as the Fisher King, an epithet due entirely to Christian symbolism. But the name being misunderstood, it was assumed that he fished because he was ill. Hence arose the idea of the first Grail possessor, to be cured by the questions put by the last Grail possessor, the hero of the Grail Quest. The idea of illness was further intensified by that of great age, due to the interpolation of a long row of kings between the first and last Grail possessors. To account for the illness the Grail king was supposed to have been wounded. So far the development need not presuppose any foreign element. But Prof. Heinzel admits that at this stage such a foreign element was brought into the legend in the shape of a story telling how the murder of a hero's kinsman brought desolation upon his land, desolation which could only be removed when the hero had wrought vengeance upon his kinsman's slayer. This unnamed hero was identified with the Grail Quester, the wounded kinsman with the Grail king, and the narrative assumed such shape as we find in the present romances.

It is sufficient to note that Prof. Heinzel, who maintains so strongly the essential Christian nature of the Grail legend, is constrained to recognise that an important and obviously archaic incident owes nothing to Christian sources. It seems to me that differ between themselves as do Professors Rhys and Heinzel, and differ as both do from my printed conclusions, yet there is at bottom considerable agreement between us, testifying to the essentially Celtic nature of the most archaic portions of the Grail cycle.

I must briefly notice Prof. Heinzel's explanation of the name of Bron, the first Grail keeper in Robert de Borron. Among the companions of Joseph was the Veronica, the owner of the portrait of Christ. Early Christian legend made of her a Phœnician Mary, in French, Marie la Venissienne, a corrupt form of which, M. l'Anjuicienne, originated the name Enygeus, Eniseus,