Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/224

198 and immediate popularity of the Arthurian legend. It also shows with what rapidity a tradition, however remote in its origin from a particular spot, may associate itself with that. Of more immediate interest to us is the question whether this tradition has any direct connection with the Grail romances, whether it has shaped or been shaped by them. Martin refers the Maimed King of the romances to the same myth-root as the wounded Arthur waiting in Etna or in Avalon till his wound be healed and he come forth. It seems to me more likely that in so far as the wound is concerned there is a coincidence merely between the two stories, and that the Wounded King belongs properly to the feud quest. I do not, however, deny that the fact of the Lord of the Bespelled Castle, of the otherworld, being sometimes pictured as suffering from an incurable wound, may have aided that fusion of the two strains of legend which we find in the romances.

It is not my purpose to examine here in detail the innumerable versions of this widely-spread tradition, the more so as I have been able to trace no exact parallel to that presentment of the story found in Heinrich von dem Türlin and in the Didot-Perceval. No other version of this form of the legend, to my knowledge, pictures the Bespelled King as awaiting the deliverance of death at the hands of his visitor. Before endeavouring to find a reason for the singularity of Heinrich's account, I will first quote one variant of the common form of the legend which has not been printed before save by myself in the Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. I., p. 193. King Arthur sleeps bespelled in the ruins of (Richmond) Castle. Many have tried to find him but failed. One man only, Potter Thompson by name, wandering one night among the ruins chanced upon the hall wherein sat the King and his men around a table upon which lay a horn and a sword. Terrified, he turned and fled, and as he did so a voice sounded in his ears—