Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/234

208 presents the same Early History as the Queste. In Borron's poem, on the other hand, and in that later section of the Grand St. Graal which agrees with it, an explanation is given of the epithet. According to Borron, Brons catches a fish at Joseph's bidding; Joseph, having placed the vessel on the table and covered it with a towel, takes the fish and lays it opposite the vessel; the people are then called together, and it is possible to distinguish the sinners from the righteous (vv. 2,500-2,600). Joseph is afterwards told by an angel, that, as Brons was a good man, it was the Lord's will he should catch the fish (vv. 3,310, et seq.), and he is to be called the Rich Fisher (v. 3,348). In the Grand St. Graal (Vol. II., pp. 248, et seq.) not Brons but his son Alain is bidden by Joseph to fish, and this with a view to providing food for the sinners of the company whom the Holy Vessel leaves unsatisfied. Alain fishes from a boat with a net. He catches but one fish, and there are at first murmurs, but Joseph, by virtue of Alain's prayers, multiplies the fish so that it feeds the host, and thus Alain wins the name of Rich Fisher.

These accounts complete each other. Chrestien dwells upon the continued act of fishing which, for aught to the contrary we learn from him or his continuators, is always fruitless. Borron and the Grand St. Graal dwell upon the one successful haul, and especially upon the miraculous properties of the one fish caught. Reading the two accounts together, we find that the Fisher King passes his life seeking for a fish which, when caught, confers upon him the power of distinguishing good from evil, or enables him to furnish an inexhaustible meal to his men.

The Conte du Graal has been shown to derive more of its substance from the feud quest—the Didot-Perceval from the unspelling quest. Borron's poem, as far as its primitive Celtic elements are concerned, is probably to be ranged with the Didot-Perceval, to which many links unite it. We may, therefore, turn to Celtic stories belonging to either of these formulas for parallel features. The inexhaustible nature of the fish at once recalls the pigs of Manannan Mac Lir (supra, p. 194); they, too, can feed a multitude. But it is in stories formally connected with the feud quest that we find what I venture to suggest is an adequate explanation of the nature of the Fisher King and of the fish. The latter is, I