the country is that of a prolonged drought, which has destroyed
vegetation, and left the land Waste; the effect of the hero's question
is to restore the waters to their channel, and render the land once more
fertile.

(e) In three cases the misfortunes and wasting of the land are the
result of war, and directly caused by the hero's failure to ask the
question; we are not dealing with an antecedent condition. This, in
my opinion, constitutes a marked difference between the two groups,
which has not hitherto received the attention it deserves. One aim of
our present investigation will be to determine which of these two
forms should be considered the elder.

But this much seems certain, the aim of the Grail Quest is two-fold;
it is to benefit (a) the King, (b) the land. The first of these two
is the more important, as it is the infirmity of the King which
entails misfortune on his land, the condition of the one reacts, for
good or ill, upon the other; how, or why, we are left to discover for
ourselves.

Before proceeding further in our investigation it may be well to
determine the precise nature of the King's illness, and see whether
any light upon the problem can be thus obtained.

In both the Gawain forms the person upon whom the fertility of the
land depends is dead, though, in the version of Diu Crone he is,
to all appearance, still in life. It should be noted that in the
Bleheris form the king of the castle, who is not referred to as the
Fisher King, is himself hale and sound; the wasting of the land was
brought about by the blow which slew the knight whose body Gawain sees