Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/101

Rh accordance with them. The Grail is to serve him as a touchstone to distinguish the sinners of his company—

whereas to those who have not defiled themselves with sin it brings

so that according to them—

This testing power of the Grail is especially brought into play when the vessel is placed on the table in connection with the fish which Brons caught, and which won him the name of the Rich Fisher.

C, Didot-Perceval, has only one reference, "ne il ne covient mie en sa compagnie pechier" (I, 483), agreeing with B and with Gautier's lines 28,079-80.

In D, Queste, we revert to the physical gifts of the Grail. "And as soon as it entered the door of the hall the whole court was filled with perfumes and it proceeded to every place in the hall. And as it came before the tables it filled them with every kind of meat that a man would wish to have." When it comes in, "Every one looked at each other, and there was not one that could say a single word;" when it goes out, "Every one recovered his speech" (D II, pp. 442-43). There is no allusion to a gathering at which the Grail is used to test the state of grace of its devotees. E, Grand St. Graal, shows a curious mixture of the two ideas; the Grail feeds its worshippers, but only those who are "de sainte vie," to them it bring "toutes le boines viandes ke cuers d'omme pourroit penser," but "li pecheour n'auoient ke mangier." This version shows itself here, as in so many other passages, one of the latest in date, embodying and reconciling as it does the conceptions of the older versions—conceptions which it is difficult to derive, either from a common source or from one another. If it were not for the solitary phrase of Gautier's, lines 28,079, etc. (a passage which