Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/233

207 CHAPTER VIII.

Conte du Graal, as we have seen, offers no satisfactory explanation of the Fisher King. By Chrestien he is represented on Perceval's first meeting with him as angling from a boat steered by his companion (v. 4,187); he directs Perceval to his castle. Perceval is afterwards informed that, being wounded and consequently unable to mount on horseback, fishing is his only solace, whence the name applied to him (vv. 4,681, et seq.). This is practically all the Conte du Graal has to say about him, as the continuators, whilst repeating the epithet, add no fresh details. Indeed in none of the after-visits of Perceval is the King represented as fishing, or is there the slightest reference to, let alone insistence upon, this favourite occupation of his. It is another proof of the inadequacy of Birch-Hirschfeld's theory of the development of the legend, that it represents Chrestien, who, ex hypothesi, divested Borron's poem of its religious character, as retaining this feature due wholly to religious symbolism, whilst the continuators with their obvious fondness for such symbolism entirely neglected it. The Queste, which in so far as the quest portion is concerned is formally connected with the Conte du Graal, says nothing about the Fisher, nor does that section of the Grand St. Graal which