Chapter I: Front Matter

ARTHURIAN ROMANCES
Unrepresented in Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur”

_No. I_
Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight

A Middle-English Arthurian Romance _Retold in Modern Prose, with Introduction & Notes_, by Jessie L. Weston, _Translator_ of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s “Parzival” • _With Designs by_ M. M. Crawford

London: David Nutt in the Strand mdcccxcviii

Preface

The poem of which the following pages offer a prose rendering is contained in a MS., believed to be unique, of the Cottonian Collection, Nero A. X., preserved in the British Museum. The MS. is of the end of the fourteenth century, but it is possible that the composition of the poem is somewhat earlier; the subject matter is certainly of very old date. There has been a considerable divergence of opinion among scholars on the question of authorship, but the view now generally accepted is that it is the work of the same hand as _Pearl_, another poem of considerable merit contained in the same MS.

Our poem, or, to speak more correctly, metrical romance, contains over 2500 lines, and is composed in staves of varying length, ending in five short rhyming lines, technically known as a bob and a wheel,—the lines forming the body of the stave being not rhyming, but alliterative. The dialect in which it is written has been decided to be West Midland, probably Lancashire, and is by no means easy to understand. Indeed, it is the real difficulty and obscurity of the language, which in spite of careful and scholarly editing will always place the poem in its original form outside the range of any but professed students of mediæval literature, which has encouraged me to make an attempt to render it more accessible to the general public, by giving it a form that shall be easily intelligible, and at the same time preserve as closely as possible the style of the author.

For that style, in spite of a certain roughness, unavoidable at a period in which the language was still in a partially developed and amorphous stage, is really charming. The author has a keen eye for effect; a talent for description, detailed without becoming wearisome; a genuine love of Nature and sympathy with her varying moods; and a real refinement and elevation of feeling which enable him to deal with a _risqué_ situation with an absence of coarseness, not, unfortunately, to be always met with in a mediæval writer. Standards of taste vary with the age, but even judged by that of our own day the author of _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_ comes not all too badly out of the ordeal!

The story with which the poem deals, too, has claims upon our interest. I have shown elsewhere[a] that the beheading challenge is an incident of very early occurrence in heroic legend, and that the particular form given to it in the English poem is especially interesting, corresponding as it does to the variations of the story as preserved in the oldest known version, that of the old Irish _Fled Bricrend_.

[a]“The Legend of Sir Gawain,” Grimm Library, Vol. VII. (Chapter IX. Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight).

But in no other version is the incident coupled with that of a temptation and testing of the hero’s honour and chastity, such as meets us here. At first sight one is inclined to assign the episode of the lady of the castle to the class of stories of which the oldest version is preserved in Biblical record—the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife; a _motif_ not unseldom employed by mediæval writers, and which notably occurs in what we may call the _Launfal_ group of stories. But there are certain points which may make us hesitate as to whether in its first conception the tale was really one of this class.

It must be noted that here the lady is acting throughout with the knowledge and consent of the husband, an important point of difference. In the second place, it is very doubtful whether her entire attitude was not a _ruse_. From the Green Knight’s words to Gawain when he finally reveals himself, “I wot we shall soon make peace with my wife, who was thy bitter enemy,” her conduct hardly seems to have been prompted by real passion.

In my _Studies on the Legend of Sir Gawain_, already referred to, I have suggested that the character of the lady here is, perhaps, a reminiscence of that of the Queen of the Magic Castle or Isle, daughter or niece of an enchanter, who at an early stage of Gawain’s story was undoubtedly his love. I think it not impossible that she was an integral part of the tale as first told, and her rôle here was determined by that which she originally played. In most versions of the story she has dropped out altogether. It is, of course, possible that, there being but a confused reminiscence of the original tale, her share _may_ have been modified by the influence of the _Launfal_ group; but I should prefer to explain the episode on the whole as a somewhat distorted survival of an original feature.

But in any case we may be thankful for this, that the author of the most important English metrical romance dealing with Arthurian legend faithfully adheres to the original conception of Gawain’s character, as drawn before the monkish lovers of edification laid their ruthless hands on his legend, and turned the model of knightly virtues and courtesy into a mere vulgar libertine.

Brave, chivalrous, loyally faithful to his plighted word, scrupulously heedful of his own and others’ honour, Gawain stands before us in this poem. We take up Malory or Tennyson, and in spite of their charm of style, in spite of the halo of religious mysticism in which they have striven to enwrap their characters, we lay them down with a feeling of dissatisfaction. How did the Gawain of their imagination, this empty-headed, empty-hearted worldling, cruel murderer, and treacherous friend, ever come to be the typical English hero? For such Gawain certainly was, even more than Arthur himself. Then we turn back to these faded pages, and read the quaintly earnest words in which the old writer reveals the hidden meaning of that mystic symbol, the pentangle, and vindicates Gawain’s title to claim it as his badge—and we smile, perhaps; but we cease to wonder at the widespread popularity of King Arthur’s famous nephew, or at the immense body of romance that claims him as its hero.

Scholars know all this, of course; they can read the poem for themselves in its original rough and intricate phraseology; perhaps they will be shocked at an attempt to handle it in simpler form. But this little book is not for them, and if to those to whom the tale would otherwise be a sealed treasure these pages bring some new knowledge of the way in which our forefathers looked on the characters of the Arthurian legend, the tales they told of them (unconsciously betraying the while how they themselves lived and thought and spoke)—if by that means they gain a keener appreciation of our national heroes, a wider knowledge of our national literature,—then the spirit of the long-dead poet will doubtless not be the slowest to pardon my handling of what was his masterpiece, as it is, in M. Gaston Paris’ words, “The jewel of English mediæval literature.”

Bournemouth, _June 1898_.

CONTENTS

I 1
Of the making of Britain 1
How Arthur held high feast at Camelot 2
New Year’s Day 3
Of the noble knights there present 4
The coming of the Green Knight 5
The fashion of the knight 5
Of the knight’s steed 6
The arming of the knight 7
Of the knight’s challenge 9
The silence of the knights 11
How Sir Gawain dared the venture 12
The making of the covenant 13
The giving of the blow 15
The marvel of the Green Knight 16
II 19
The waning of the year 19
Sir Gawain bethinks him of his covenant 21
The arming of Sir Gawain 22
Wherefore Sir Gawain bare the pentangle 24
How Sir Gawain went forth 25
Of Sir Gawain’s journey 26
How Sir Gawain came to a fair castle on Christmas Eve 29
How Sir Gawain was welcomed 31
Sir Gawain tells his name 34
The lady of the castle 35
Of the Christmas feast 37
How the feast came to an end but Gawain abode at the
castle 38
Sir Gawain makes a covenant with his host 41
III 43
The first day’s hunting 43
How the lady of the castle came to Sir Gawain 45
How the lady kissed Sir Gawain 49
How the covenant was kept 51
Of the second day’s hunting 52
Of the lady and Sir Gawain 54
How the lady strove to beguile Sir Gawain with words of
love 55
How the boar was slain 57
The keeping of the covenant 59
Of the third day’s hunting 61
How the lady came for the third time to Sir Gawain 62
The lady would fain have a parting gift from Gawain 64
She would give him her ring 65
Or her girdle 65
The virtue of the girdle 66
How Sir Gawain took the girdle 67
The death of the fox 68
How Sir Gawain kept not all the covenant 69
How Sir Gawain took leave of his host 71
IV 72
The robing of Sir Gawain 73
How Sir Gawain went forth from the castle 74
The squire’s warning 75
Of the knight of the Green Chapel 76
Sir Gawain is none dismayed 77
The finding of the chapel 79
The coming of the Green Knight 80
How Sir Gawain failed to stand the blow 81
Of the Green Knight’s reproaches 82
How the Green Knight dealt the blow 83
Of the three covenants 84
The shame of Sir Gawain 85
How Sir Gawain would keep the girdle 87
How the marvel was wrought 88
How Sir Gawain came again to Camelot 89
Sir Gawain makes confession of his fault 90
The knights wear the lace in honour of Gawain 90
The end of the tale 91
Notes 93