Questing Beast
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The Questing Beast, in T.H. White's The Once and Future King, is the legendary monster that King Pellinore is eternally hunting. It is described as having the head of a serpent, the body of a lizard, the haunches of a lion and the feet of a hart. It is also known as the Beast Glatisant.
As King Pellinore describes it, the hunt of the Beast has always been the Burden of the Pellinores, and all Pellinores are in fact trained for the hunt from birth (a training which does not seem to extend much beyond finding the Beast's fewmets, as Pellinore as described by White is more of a comic character than a great hunter or knight).
Having searched fruitlessly all his life for the Beast, near the beginning of The Sword in the Stone, Pellinore is convinced by his friend Sir Grummore Grummursum to drop his Quest. However, when it turns out later that due to this abandonment, the Beast had been pining away for lack of attention, King Pellinore nurses the Beast back to health and resumes his Sisyphean hunt.
See also: List of Arthurian characters
