on the bier.

In both the Perlesvaus, and the prose Perceval the King has simply
'fallen into languishment,' in the first instance, as noted above, on
account of the failure of the Quester, in the second as the result
of extreme old age.

In Chretien, Manessier, Peredur, and the Parzival, the King is
suffering from a wound the nature of which, euphemistically disguised
in the French texts, is quite clearly explained in the German.[20]

But the whole position is made absolutely clear by a passage preserved
in Sone de Nansai and obviously taken over from an earlier poem. This
romance contains a lengthy section dealing with the history of Joseph
'd'Abarimathie,' who is represented as the patron Saint of the kingdom
of Norway; his bones, with the sacred relics of which he had the
charge, the Grail and the Lance, are preserved in a monastery on an
island in the interior of that country. In this version Joseph
himself is the Fisher King; ensnared by the beauty of the daughter of
the Pagan King of Norway, whom he has slain, he baptizes her, though
she is still an unbeliever at heart, and makes her his wife, thus
drawing the wrath of Heaven upon himself. God punishes him for his
sin:

"Es rains et desous l'afola
De coi grant dolor endura."[21]

Then, in a remarkable passage, we are told of the direful result
entailed by this punishment upon his land: