(_c_) In two cases it is definitely stated that the King will be restored to youthful vigour and beauty. (_d_) In both cases where we find Gawain as the hero of the story, and in one connected with Perceval, the misfortune which has fallen upon 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 _Diû Crône_ 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 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 Chrétien, 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]