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Fisher King
The Fisher King, or the Wounded King,
figures in Arthurian Legend as the latest in a line charged with
keeping the Holy Grail. Versions of his story vary widely, but he is
always wounded in the legs or groin, and incapable of moving on his
own. When he is injured, his kingdom suffers as he does, his
impotence affecting the fertility of the land and reducing it to a
barren Wasteland. Little is left for him to do but fish in the river
near his castle Corbenic. Knights travel from many lands to heal the
Fisher King, but only the chosen can accomplish the feat. This is
Percival in the earlier stories; in the later versions, he is joined
by Galahad and Bors.
Confusingly, many works have two wounded Grail Kings who live in the
same castle, a father (or grandfather) and son. The more seriously
wounded father stays in the castle, sustained by the Grail alone,
while the more active son can meet with guests and go fishing. For
clarity, the father will be called the Wounded King, the son the
Fisher King where both appear in the remainder of this article.
Celtic Mythology
The Fisher King appears first in Perceval, but the character's roots
lie in Celtic mythology. He may be derived more or less directly
from the figure of Bran the Blessed in the Mabinogion; in the Second
Branch, Bran had a cauldron that could resurrect the dead (albeit
imperfectly; those thus revived could not speak after they were
resurrected), which he gave to the king of Ireland as a wedding gift
for him and his sister Branwen.
Later, he wages war on the Irish and
is wounded in the foot or leg, and the cauldron is destroyed. He
asks his followers to sever his head and take it back to Britain,
and his head continues talking and keeps them company on their trip.
The group lands in Grassholm, where they spend 80 years in a castle
of joy and abundance, but finally they leave and bury Bran's head in
London. This story has analogues in two other important Welsh texts:
the Mabinogion tale Culhwch and Olwen, in which King Arthur's men
must travel to Ireland to retrieve a magical cauldron, and the
obscure poem The Spoils of Annwn, which speaks of a similar mystical
cauldron sought by Arthur in the otherworldly land of Annwn.
In the Welsh Romance Peredur son of Efrawg, based on Chrétien (or
derived from a common original) but containing several prominent
deviations, the Grail has been removed. The character of the Fisher
King appears (though he is not called such) and presents Peredur
with a severed head on a platter. Peredur later learns he was
related to that king, and that the severed head was that of his
cousin, whose death he must avenge.
Later Medieval Works
The Fisher King's next development occurs in Robert de Boron's
Joseph d'Arimathie about the end of the 12th century, the first work
to connect the Grail with Jesus. Here, the "Rich Fisher" is called
Bron, a name similar enough to Bran to suggest a relationship, and
he is said to be the brother-in-law of Joseph of Arimathea, who had
used the Grail to catch Christ's blood before laying him in the
tomb. Joseph founds a religious community that travels eventually to
Britain, and he entrusts the Grail to Bron. Bron, called the "Rich
Fisher" because he catches a fish eaten at the Grail table, founds
the line of Grail keepers that eventually includes Perceval.
In the Didot-Perceval, thought to be a prosification of a lost work
by Robert de Boron, Bron is called the "Fisher King", and his story
is told when Percival returns to his castle and asks the healing
question.
Wolfram von Eschenbach takes up Chrétien's story and expands it
greatly in his epic Parzival. He reworks the nature of the Grail and
the community that surrounds it, and gives names to characters
Chrétien left nameless (the Wounded King is Titurel and the Fisher
King is Anfortas).
Pelles
The Lancelot-Grail cycle includes a more elaborate backstory for the
Fisher King. Many in his line are wounded for their failings, and
the only two that survive to Arthur's day are the Wounded King,
called Pellam or Pellehan, and the Fisher King, Pelles. Pelles
engineers the birth of Galahad by tricking Lancelot into bed with
his daughter Elaine, and it is prophesied that Galahad will achieve
the Grail and heal the Wasteland. In the Post-Vulgate Cycle and
Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the Fisher King's wound was given to him
by Sir Balin in the "Dolorous Stroke". To defend himself from an
enraged Pellam, Balin grabs a spear and stabs him. The spear is the
Spear of Longinus, however, and Pellam and his land must suffer for
its misuse until the coming of Galahad.
In Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, there are four characters (some of
whom can probably be identified with each other) filling the role of
Fisher King or Wounded King: King Pellam, wounded by Balin, as in
the Post-Vulgate.
King Pelles, grandfather of Galahad, described as "the maimed king".
In one passage he is explicitly identified with Pellam; in another,
however, he is said to have suffered his wound in quite different
circumstances.
King Pescheour or Petchere, lord of the Grail Castle, who never
appears on stage (at least under that name). He owes his existence
to a mistake by Malory, who took the Old French roy Peschour
("Fisher King", a phrase Malory never otherwise uses) for a name
rather than an epithet. Nevertheless, Malory treats him as distinct
from Pelles.
An anonymous, bedridden Maimed King, healed by Galahad at the climax
of the Grail Quest. He is definitely distinct from Pelles, who has
just been sent out of the room, and who is anyway at least mobile.
It would appear that Malory intended to have one Maimed King,
wounded by Balin and suffering until healed by his grandson Galahad,
but never managed to successfully reconcile his sources.
King Pelles is the name of the Maimed King in some versions of the
Arthurian legend. One of a line of Grail keepers established by
Joseph of Arimathea, Pelles is the father of Eliazer and Elaine,
mother of Galahad, and resides in the castle of Corbinec in
Listenois. Pelles and his relative Pellehan appear in both the
Vulgate (Lancelot-Grail) and Post-Vulgate Cycles, as well as in
later works, such as Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (in which Pellehan
is called Pellam). In the Vulgate, Pelles is the son of Pellehan,
but the Post-Vulgate is less clear about their relationship. It is
even murkier in Malory's work: one passage explicitly identifies
them (book XVIII, chapter 5), though this is contradicted elsewhere.
Galahad, the knight prophesied to achieve the Holy Grail and heal
the Maimed King, is conceived when Elaine gets Dame Brisen to use
magic to trick Lancelot into thinking he is coming to visit Guenever
"to lay with her.". So Lancelot sleeps with Elaine, thinking her
Guenever, but flees when he realizes what he has done. Galahad is
raised by his aunt in a convent, and when he is eighteen, comes to
King Arthur's court and begins the Grail quest. Only he, Percival,
and Bors are virtuous enough to achieve the Grail and restore Pelles.
Modern Legend
Richard Wagner used the myth in his opera Parsifal, based on
Wolfram's work, and T. S. Eliot made extensive use of the legend in
his poem The Waste Land.
In Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle, Merlin's grandfather Avallach,
previously a king of lost Atlantis, is explicitly called the Fisher
King. He carries a wound never healed from battle and spends his
later years in Britain fishing on the lake. The character appears
again in opera in Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage, partly
inspired by Eliot's poem.
The story is told in Éric Rohmer's 1978 film Perceval le Gallois,
based on Chrétien de Troye's Perceval. The story of a wounded king
whose wounds cause the land to become a wasteland, then healed by
the grail recovered by Percival, is woven directly the story of King
Arthur in John Boorman's 1981 film Excalibur. The story is also
dealt with in the 1991 movie The Fisher King, starring Jeff Bridges.
Other modern takes on the Fisher King appear in novels like C. S.
Lewis' That Hideous Strength, Paule Marshall's The Fisher King: A
Novel, Tim Powers' novels The Drawing of the Dark and Last Call and
Matt Wagner's comic book series Mage. Don Nigro's play Fisher King
retells the story during the American Civil War. |
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Fisher King
