Gawain and the Green Knight, page 23
It was a curious fate that befell us, one surely unique in the literary experience of any nation, that of being compelled, by lack of means of expression, to have recourse to a foreign tongue in order to preserve the record of the king we delighted to honour. The poems that formed the basis of the extant Arthurian Romances were, doubtless, many of them, composed in England, but their writers were Anglo-Norman, and their language French. It was not till the end of the fifteenth century that England clothed in fitting words, and in her own tongue, the records of Arthur’s deed. The majority of the Arthurian Romances are French, some of the very finest of the entire cycle German.
Previous to Malory’s immortal composition, English Arthurian literature consisted of scattered ballads and metrical romances, the majority of which own Gawain, rather than Arthur, as their hero. In the form in which we possess them, these are rarely older than the fourteenth or fifteenth century, though the subject-matter doubtless is of much earlier date. But, though English literature generally abounded with Arthurian allusions, the feats of the hero King and his knight were at no time, earlier or later, woven into an epic poem. We have nothing in our literature to set over-against the works of such writers as Chrétien de Troyes, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassbourg, or Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Malory’s prose epic, which, fine as it is, is an example rather of excellence of style than a faithful representation of the original legend, was till this nineteenth century the sole great monument which English literature had dedicated to the memory of Arthur. Tennyson’s collection of Arthurian poems and Idylls has freed us from a well-deserved reproach, though, from a critical point of view, it must be admitted that his work is open to much the same objection as is Malory’s – it is admirable considered as literature, as legend it does even less justice to the original characters of the story.
This feature of the question, viz., that the great mass of Arthurian romance is in a foreign tongue, ought to be borne in mind; it goes far to explain the fact – for it is a fact – that the labours of English scholars in this field have hitherto been productive of less solid results than have been achieved either in France or in Germany. It must be admitted that it strikes an English student disagreeably to find that, in taking up the study of a subject so essentially national in spirit, the English books which can be relied upon for information are so few in number, and, with some honourable exceptions, of so little value in comparison with the foreign literature.
It has long been a matter of discussion whether there ever were an historical Arthur or not. Our minds are not so easily satisfied as was Caxton’s – who tells us, in his preface to Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, how he hesitated whether to print the romance or not, doubting whether Arthur had ever lived; but was reassured by those who had seen the King’s tomb at Glastonbury, and Gawain’s skull at Dover Castle. Such evidence as this would scarcely satisfy us nowadays, though for the sake of English literature we may well rejoice that it satisfied Caxton.
But without committing ourselves to a faith in these interesting relics, or in Arthur’s victories far afield, we may, so scholars tell us, believe that he really lived, and was a valiant warrior and successful general. Both Professor Rhys and Mr. Alfred Nutt adhere to the view that the historic Arthur occupied a position equivalent to that of the Comes Britannia, who under the Romans held a roving commission to defend the province wherever attacked. It is quite in keeping with this identification that we find Arthur warring in all parts of the island: now in Northumberland – crossing the border into Scotland to take counsel with the allied princes for an attack on the Saxons; now journeying southward to give the invaders battle on Salisbury Plain.
That mythical elements also entered largely into the popular conception of Arthur is doubtless true, as the curious story of his birth and election to the crown seem to testify, but whether he really represents a Celtic God or Culture Hero, or is a representative of a widespread Aryan myth, we have but scanty data to determine.
Dr. Oskar Sommer predicts that when all the leading MSS. of the cycle have been carefully edited, and all the romances dissected and compared, we shall find that the original Arthur saga is very simple in form – it is the stories connected with the other heroes who gathered round the British king, which have crossed and complicated the primitive legend. One, and that an important step in the great work of elucidating this confused tangle of romance, would therefore be the careful sifting of the stories connected with the individual knights; the attempt to discover what was the original form of each legend; to find out, if we can, how much they have borrowed – in the case of the leading knights, how much they have lent; and thus by separating, as far as may be, the threads of the fabric, to discover the nature of the ground-work. But this is a task which is only practicable, and indeed only serviceable, in the case of the leading figures of the legend – such characters as Gawain, Perceval, Kay, Tristan, Lancelot, and Galahad. The great crowd of minor characters who cross and recross the stage are in many instances only understudies of the principal heroes; their adventures but reflections of deeds originally attributed to other and more important actors in the drama. Many of these characters would well repay study of the details of their story, but in the case of those above named the work is not merely desirable, but absolutely essential, if we are ever to arrive at a clear idea of the growth of this great legend.
Something has already been done in this direction. Mr. Nutt’s Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail have gone far towards the elucidation of the original données of the Perceval story. Professor Zimmer’s study on the Tristan saga has thrown light upon the genesis of that legend; but there is still a vast field to be explored. The most perplexing, and in many ways the most important, of all the knights surrounding King Arthur, Gawain, has hitherto failed to meet with the favour accorded to his companions; true, the materials for an examination of his legend have in a great measure been prepared by Sir Frederick Madden in his collection of English metrical romances, and by M. Gaston Paris, in his study of the episodic romances connected with the hero; but the varying legends have not hitherto been examined and compared with a view to determining what was the original form of the Gawain Legend.
The more one studies the Arthurian cycle, the more one becomes convinced of the importance of this character, and of the necessity of discovering his original role. The materials at our disposal grow with every year, and we are now far better furnished for the task than was the case when Sir Frederick Madden undertook to collect the romances connected with Sir Gawain. These Studies therefore have been undertaken with the view of leading to a truer appreciation of one of the most puzzling, and at the same time most fascinating, characters of the Arthurian cycle, a character which later developments of the legend have greatly obscured, and most unjustly vilified. If in the course of these Studies certain points are established which may impel those better qualified than the present writer to pursue the investigation yet further, they will have amply fulfilled their object.
Chapter II
Early Conceptions of Gawain
There is practically no doubt that, as mentioned in the previous chapter, the Arthurian legend proper has become greatly obscured by the introduction of legends connected with other heroes; there is but little more doubt that the first of all the heroes with whom Arthur gradually became connected was he whom we know from the Anglo-Norman and French romances as Walwein, Gauvain, Gawain, and from Welsh texts as Gwalchmai. The first M. Gaston Paris looks upon as the oldest form of the name by which the knight is best known, and it is no unusual thing to find both Walwein and Gawain employed in the same romance. That the French Gawain and Welsh Gwalchmai are the same character is certain, but the connection of these two forms is not so clear.
Any student of the Arthurian cycle could, without difficulty, name romances in which such leading heroes as Tristan, Lancelot, or Galahad are not even mentioned, but it would be difficult to recall one in which Gawain does not figure – sometimes even more prominently than the ostensible hero of the romance. Always closely connected with Arthur, his uncle on the mother’s side, he is found in the historical accounts of that king, even as in the romantic. M. Gaston Paris gives, as the earliest mention of him, a quotation from William of Malmesbury (1125), relating to the discovery of Walwain’s tomb at Ross in Pembrokeshire; he is there mentioned as Arthur’s nephew, and ‘not unworthy of Arthur’. Professor Zimmer, in his criticism of M. Paris’ views, carries the literary evidence further back, by referring to Signor Rajna’s discovery of names of Breton heroes in Italian deeds of the early twelfth century; Artusius (Arthur) and Galvanus (Gawain) are names of frequent recurrence. The German scholar is of opinion that these names justify the conclusion that the heroes were well known in Italy by 1090 – arguing a widespread continental acquaintance with the romances during the last thirty years of the eleventh century, at the latest – a date considerably anterior to that of any romance we now possess. Of those which have descended to us we may take Chrétien de Troyes’ poems both as the earliest in themselves, and as representing a more primitive and less complicated form of the respective stories with which they deal. In all these poems, and also in the earlier prose romances, such as the Merlin (even in its extended form), Gawain appears as the beau-idéal of courage and courtesy, and this character he preserves in the English metrical romances. But in the later stage of the Arthur-saga, in those versions which are devoted to the most highly developed and ecclesiasticised form of the Grail legend, the character of Gawain undergoes a remarkable and striking change: he becomes a mere libertine, cruel and treacherous. Even his valour is no longer unquestioned. In the earlier romances Gawain is practically invincible; at the most, as in the case of Iwein, his opponent succeeds in achieving a drawn battle. Wirnt von Gravenberg, in his Wigalois, apologises eagerly for having repeated in his poems a statement to the effect that Gawain had been defeated by an unknown knight; if he had not been assured of it by his authority he would never have ventured to do so.
In the Suite de Merlin we find the enchanter prophesying Gawain’s glory, and foretelling that he shall only be overcome by one knight; but when we reach Malory (Book iv. chap. 18) we find a list of six knights, each of whom has proved superior in valour to the once invincible hero.
But Malory, who drew from various sources, and represents a late stage in the evolution of the legend, is remarkably inconsistent in his treatment of Gawain: the earlier and later conceptions strive together in his version, and he makes statements utterly at variance the one with the other. Thus in Books vii. chap. 35, and x. chap. 58, we find Gareth refusing to have anything to do with his brother Gawain, on the ground that he is treacherous, vengeable, a murderer of good knights, and a hater of all knights of the Round Table; while, in Book xiii. chap. 16, Gawain and Gareth ride together in search of the Grail; and in Book xx. chap. 1, Gawain, Gareth, and Gaheris together refuse to countenance Mordred and Agravain in their betrayal of Lancelot and Guinevere to King Arthur. It is in revenge for the death of Gareth at Lancelot’s hands that Gawain urges the King to the fatal war with Lancelot; he can forgive the death of his sons, but not that of his dearly loved brother. And, when Gawain himself dies, both Arthur and Lancelot lament him in terms utterly out of keeping with Malory’s previous indications; to Arthur he is the man in the world I loved most; to Lancelot, a ful noble knyght as ever was borne. It is not easy to account for this change in the estimation in which Gawain was held; Sir F. Madden thinks that the original offender was the compiler of the prose Tristan, who desired to exalt the fame of his special hero at the expense of the better-known Gawain. It seems, however, more probable that the reason may rather be sought in the strongly moralising tendencies of the later romances, there being certain features of the original Gawain story difficult to combine with edification. If it were the author of the Tristan only who was in fault, we should expect to find the old conception of Gawain obtaining in romances not affected by the Tristan, but all the later versions show this same declension.
But, whatever the original reason, it is unfortunately the case that later writers have followed in the track of Malory rather than in that of Chrétien; and the English nineteenth-century representations of Gawain are even more unjust to the original than are the fifteenth. Tennyson depicts him as light of love, false, reckless, and irreverent; and when we find Morris speaking of gloomy Gawain, we have indeed travelled far from the early English Sir Gawayne, the gay, gratious, and gude who
plus volt faire que il ne dist,
Et plus doner qu’il ne promist.
Scholars are now practically unanimous in admitting that, though the development of Gawain as a model of chivalrous knighthood is due largely to the Northern French poets, the character is, in its origin, Celtic. M. Gaston Paris says that Gawain belongs ‘certainement à la tradition celtique la plus ancienne’; but what was the special ‘tradition celtique’ relating to the hero it is now difficult to say. The very popularity which Gawain so long enjoyed has operated disastrously, by making him the hero of such a perplexing crowd of adventures that it might well seem labour thrown away to endeavour to separate from the mass any incidents which may be regarded as forming the kernel, so to speak, of his story, and yet, at the outset, he must have been the hero of certain definite adventures, certain special feats, which caused him to be looked upon as worthy to be allied with the hero-king of the Britons. It is possible that at first he may have been even a more notable hero than Arthur himself.
It ought not to be impossible to single out from among the various versions of Gawain’s adventures certain features which, by their frequent recurrence in the romances devoted to him, and their analogy to ancient Celtic tradition, seem as if they might with probability be regarded as forming part of his original story. It is scarcely to be hoped that we can ever construct a coherent account on which we may lay our finger and say ‘This, and no other, was the original Gawain story’; but we may, I think, be able to specify certain incidents, saying, ‘This belongs to Gawain and to no other of King Arthur’s knights. That adventure is a necessary and integral part of his story.’
One of the most striking characteristics of Gawain, and one which may undoubtedly be referred to the original conception of his character, is that of the waxing and waning of his strength as the day advances and declines. Probably the earliest version of this is the one given by Chrétien’s continuator, Gautier de Doulens:
Hardemens et force doubloit
Toustans puis ke midis passoit,
Por voir, a monsignor Gauvain,
Tout en devons estre certain;
Quant la clartés del jor faloit
Icelle force tresaloit
Et de miedi en avant
Li recroissoit tot autretant.
The Merlin gives it somewhat differently, e.g. ‘quant il se levoit au matin il avoit la force al millor chevalier del monde; et quant vint à eure de prime si li doubloit, et à eure de tierce ausi. et quant ce vint à eure de midi si revenoit à sa première force, ou il avoit esté au matin; et quant vint à eure de nonne et à toutes Its eures de la nuit estoit il toudis en sa premiere force.’
Malory has again another version: ‘but Sir Gawayne fro it passed 9 of the clok waxed ever stronger and stronger / for thenne hit cam to the hour of noone and thryes his myghte was encreaced. / And thenne whan it was past noone / and whan it drewe toward evensong Syre Gawayne’s strengthe febled and waxt passynge faint that unnethe he myght dure ony lenger.’
And later on: ‘Then had Syr Gawayne suche a grace and gyfte that an holy man had gyven to hym / That every day in the year from underne tyl hyghe noone hys myght encreaced tho thre houres as moche as thryse hys strengthe.’
This, though the latest version, and ascribing a reason for the peculiarity utterly out of keeping with Gawain’s general character in the romance (for he is certainly no favourite with ‘holy men’) agrees better with the Perceval than with the Merlin.
Scholars have seen in this growth and waning of Gawain’s power, directly connected as it is with the waxing and waning of the sun, a proof that this Celtic hero was at one time a solar divinity.
Another characteristic of Gawain, in which he differs from the other knights, is that he possesses a steed, which is known by a special name. Gringalet, or le Gringalet, is the form generally found in the French romances, but Professor Zimmer maintains that the name is more correctly Gingalet or Guingalet, a view to which the Welsh form of the word, Keincaled, lends support. This horse figures repeatedly in the old romances; the Merlin gives a long account of how Gawain at the outset of his knightly career won it by force of arms from the Saxon king, Clarions. There has been a great deal of discussion as to the original meaning of the name; the author of the Merlin says the steed was so called ‘por sa grant bonté’; Bartsch, commenting on the names given in the Parzival, gives as its meaning ‘cheval maigre et alerte’; Zimmer prefers ‘schön-ausdauernd’ (as we should say, of good staying power); M. Gaston Paris more cautiously says that the name was originally Celtic, but that its signification has been lost. In any case it doubtless referred to some special virtue in the steed, which, judging from the frequency with which it was stolen, or taken by stratagem, from its rightful owner, was a highly desirable possession.
One point which Zimmer brings out, in the article above referred to, is of special interest and significance in its bearing on the direction in which we must seek for light on the earliest forms of the Gawain story. The name of this horse, so closely connected with the hero, and that in romances admittedly belonging to an early stage of the Arthurian cycle, only occurs once in Welsh literature, and then in a triad preserved in a late twelfth-century ms., where it is found in company with the horse of a certain Gilbert, identified by Zimmer as an Anglo-Norman follower of Henry I. Even in stories of which we possess parallel versions, such for instance as the Erec (Geraint), which has come down to us in French, German, and Welsh, the Welsh writer refrains from mentioning Gawain’s famous steed, where, in the parallel French passages, the name occurs. Zimmer opines that the omission was of set purpose, the name being a foreign one. Without entering into the question as to which of the versions, the French or the Welsh, is dependent on the other, it seems clear that the Northern French poets and romancers did not get the Gringalet tradition from Wales, yet the horse figures in stories which manifestly represent the oldest version we at present possess of Gawain’s adventures. The inference seems to be that we must go behind the Welsh stories to arrive at the earliest form of the legend; that we need even pass through them on our journey to the remote Celtic antiquity in which the key to the main problem of our study will be found, seems increasingly doubtful.
Previous to Malory’s immortal composition, English Arthurian literature consisted of scattered ballads and metrical romances, the majority of which own Gawain, rather than Arthur, as their hero. In the form in which we possess them, these are rarely older than the fourteenth or fifteenth century, though the subject-matter doubtless is of much earlier date. But, though English literature generally abounded with Arthurian allusions, the feats of the hero King and his knight were at no time, earlier or later, woven into an epic poem. We have nothing in our literature to set over-against the works of such writers as Chrétien de Troyes, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassbourg, or Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Malory’s prose epic, which, fine as it is, is an example rather of excellence of style than a faithful representation of the original legend, was till this nineteenth century the sole great monument which English literature had dedicated to the memory of Arthur. Tennyson’s collection of Arthurian poems and Idylls has freed us from a well-deserved reproach, though, from a critical point of view, it must be admitted that his work is open to much the same objection as is Malory’s – it is admirable considered as literature, as legend it does even less justice to the original characters of the story.
This feature of the question, viz., that the great mass of Arthurian romance is in a foreign tongue, ought to be borne in mind; it goes far to explain the fact – for it is a fact – that the labours of English scholars in this field have hitherto been productive of less solid results than have been achieved either in France or in Germany. It must be admitted that it strikes an English student disagreeably to find that, in taking up the study of a subject so essentially national in spirit, the English books which can be relied upon for information are so few in number, and, with some honourable exceptions, of so little value in comparison with the foreign literature.
It has long been a matter of discussion whether there ever were an historical Arthur or not. Our minds are not so easily satisfied as was Caxton’s – who tells us, in his preface to Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, how he hesitated whether to print the romance or not, doubting whether Arthur had ever lived; but was reassured by those who had seen the King’s tomb at Glastonbury, and Gawain’s skull at Dover Castle. Such evidence as this would scarcely satisfy us nowadays, though for the sake of English literature we may well rejoice that it satisfied Caxton.
But without committing ourselves to a faith in these interesting relics, or in Arthur’s victories far afield, we may, so scholars tell us, believe that he really lived, and was a valiant warrior and successful general. Both Professor Rhys and Mr. Alfred Nutt adhere to the view that the historic Arthur occupied a position equivalent to that of the Comes Britannia, who under the Romans held a roving commission to defend the province wherever attacked. It is quite in keeping with this identification that we find Arthur warring in all parts of the island: now in Northumberland – crossing the border into Scotland to take counsel with the allied princes for an attack on the Saxons; now journeying southward to give the invaders battle on Salisbury Plain.
That mythical elements also entered largely into the popular conception of Arthur is doubtless true, as the curious story of his birth and election to the crown seem to testify, but whether he really represents a Celtic God or Culture Hero, or is a representative of a widespread Aryan myth, we have but scanty data to determine.
Dr. Oskar Sommer predicts that when all the leading MSS. of the cycle have been carefully edited, and all the romances dissected and compared, we shall find that the original Arthur saga is very simple in form – it is the stories connected with the other heroes who gathered round the British king, which have crossed and complicated the primitive legend. One, and that an important step in the great work of elucidating this confused tangle of romance, would therefore be the careful sifting of the stories connected with the individual knights; the attempt to discover what was the original form of each legend; to find out, if we can, how much they have borrowed – in the case of the leading knights, how much they have lent; and thus by separating, as far as may be, the threads of the fabric, to discover the nature of the ground-work. But this is a task which is only practicable, and indeed only serviceable, in the case of the leading figures of the legend – such characters as Gawain, Perceval, Kay, Tristan, Lancelot, and Galahad. The great crowd of minor characters who cross and recross the stage are in many instances only understudies of the principal heroes; their adventures but reflections of deeds originally attributed to other and more important actors in the drama. Many of these characters would well repay study of the details of their story, but in the case of those above named the work is not merely desirable, but absolutely essential, if we are ever to arrive at a clear idea of the growth of this great legend.
Something has already been done in this direction. Mr. Nutt’s Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail have gone far towards the elucidation of the original données of the Perceval story. Professor Zimmer’s study on the Tristan saga has thrown light upon the genesis of that legend; but there is still a vast field to be explored. The most perplexing, and in many ways the most important, of all the knights surrounding King Arthur, Gawain, has hitherto failed to meet with the favour accorded to his companions; true, the materials for an examination of his legend have in a great measure been prepared by Sir Frederick Madden in his collection of English metrical romances, and by M. Gaston Paris, in his study of the episodic romances connected with the hero; but the varying legends have not hitherto been examined and compared with a view to determining what was the original form of the Gawain Legend.
The more one studies the Arthurian cycle, the more one becomes convinced of the importance of this character, and of the necessity of discovering his original role. The materials at our disposal grow with every year, and we are now far better furnished for the task than was the case when Sir Frederick Madden undertook to collect the romances connected with Sir Gawain. These Studies therefore have been undertaken with the view of leading to a truer appreciation of one of the most puzzling, and at the same time most fascinating, characters of the Arthurian cycle, a character which later developments of the legend have greatly obscured, and most unjustly vilified. If in the course of these Studies certain points are established which may impel those better qualified than the present writer to pursue the investigation yet further, they will have amply fulfilled their object.
Chapter II
Early Conceptions of Gawain
There is practically no doubt that, as mentioned in the previous chapter, the Arthurian legend proper has become greatly obscured by the introduction of legends connected with other heroes; there is but little more doubt that the first of all the heroes with whom Arthur gradually became connected was he whom we know from the Anglo-Norman and French romances as Walwein, Gauvain, Gawain, and from Welsh texts as Gwalchmai. The first M. Gaston Paris looks upon as the oldest form of the name by which the knight is best known, and it is no unusual thing to find both Walwein and Gawain employed in the same romance. That the French Gawain and Welsh Gwalchmai are the same character is certain, but the connection of these two forms is not so clear.
Any student of the Arthurian cycle could, without difficulty, name romances in which such leading heroes as Tristan, Lancelot, or Galahad are not even mentioned, but it would be difficult to recall one in which Gawain does not figure – sometimes even more prominently than the ostensible hero of the romance. Always closely connected with Arthur, his uncle on the mother’s side, he is found in the historical accounts of that king, even as in the romantic. M. Gaston Paris gives, as the earliest mention of him, a quotation from William of Malmesbury (1125), relating to the discovery of Walwain’s tomb at Ross in Pembrokeshire; he is there mentioned as Arthur’s nephew, and ‘not unworthy of Arthur’. Professor Zimmer, in his criticism of M. Paris’ views, carries the literary evidence further back, by referring to Signor Rajna’s discovery of names of Breton heroes in Italian deeds of the early twelfth century; Artusius (Arthur) and Galvanus (Gawain) are names of frequent recurrence. The German scholar is of opinion that these names justify the conclusion that the heroes were well known in Italy by 1090 – arguing a widespread continental acquaintance with the romances during the last thirty years of the eleventh century, at the latest – a date considerably anterior to that of any romance we now possess. Of those which have descended to us we may take Chrétien de Troyes’ poems both as the earliest in themselves, and as representing a more primitive and less complicated form of the respective stories with which they deal. In all these poems, and also in the earlier prose romances, such as the Merlin (even in its extended form), Gawain appears as the beau-idéal of courage and courtesy, and this character he preserves in the English metrical romances. But in the later stage of the Arthur-saga, in those versions which are devoted to the most highly developed and ecclesiasticised form of the Grail legend, the character of Gawain undergoes a remarkable and striking change: he becomes a mere libertine, cruel and treacherous. Even his valour is no longer unquestioned. In the earlier romances Gawain is practically invincible; at the most, as in the case of Iwein, his opponent succeeds in achieving a drawn battle. Wirnt von Gravenberg, in his Wigalois, apologises eagerly for having repeated in his poems a statement to the effect that Gawain had been defeated by an unknown knight; if he had not been assured of it by his authority he would never have ventured to do so.
In the Suite de Merlin we find the enchanter prophesying Gawain’s glory, and foretelling that he shall only be overcome by one knight; but when we reach Malory (Book iv. chap. 18) we find a list of six knights, each of whom has proved superior in valour to the once invincible hero.
But Malory, who drew from various sources, and represents a late stage in the evolution of the legend, is remarkably inconsistent in his treatment of Gawain: the earlier and later conceptions strive together in his version, and he makes statements utterly at variance the one with the other. Thus in Books vii. chap. 35, and x. chap. 58, we find Gareth refusing to have anything to do with his brother Gawain, on the ground that he is treacherous, vengeable, a murderer of good knights, and a hater of all knights of the Round Table; while, in Book xiii. chap. 16, Gawain and Gareth ride together in search of the Grail; and in Book xx. chap. 1, Gawain, Gareth, and Gaheris together refuse to countenance Mordred and Agravain in their betrayal of Lancelot and Guinevere to King Arthur. It is in revenge for the death of Gareth at Lancelot’s hands that Gawain urges the King to the fatal war with Lancelot; he can forgive the death of his sons, but not that of his dearly loved brother. And, when Gawain himself dies, both Arthur and Lancelot lament him in terms utterly out of keeping with Malory’s previous indications; to Arthur he is the man in the world I loved most; to Lancelot, a ful noble knyght as ever was borne. It is not easy to account for this change in the estimation in which Gawain was held; Sir F. Madden thinks that the original offender was the compiler of the prose Tristan, who desired to exalt the fame of his special hero at the expense of the better-known Gawain. It seems, however, more probable that the reason may rather be sought in the strongly moralising tendencies of the later romances, there being certain features of the original Gawain story difficult to combine with edification. If it were the author of the Tristan only who was in fault, we should expect to find the old conception of Gawain obtaining in romances not affected by the Tristan, but all the later versions show this same declension.
But, whatever the original reason, it is unfortunately the case that later writers have followed in the track of Malory rather than in that of Chrétien; and the English nineteenth-century representations of Gawain are even more unjust to the original than are the fifteenth. Tennyson depicts him as light of love, false, reckless, and irreverent; and when we find Morris speaking of gloomy Gawain, we have indeed travelled far from the early English Sir Gawayne, the gay, gratious, and gude who
plus volt faire que il ne dist,
Et plus doner qu’il ne promist.
Scholars are now practically unanimous in admitting that, though the development of Gawain as a model of chivalrous knighthood is due largely to the Northern French poets, the character is, in its origin, Celtic. M. Gaston Paris says that Gawain belongs ‘certainement à la tradition celtique la plus ancienne’; but what was the special ‘tradition celtique’ relating to the hero it is now difficult to say. The very popularity which Gawain so long enjoyed has operated disastrously, by making him the hero of such a perplexing crowd of adventures that it might well seem labour thrown away to endeavour to separate from the mass any incidents which may be regarded as forming the kernel, so to speak, of his story, and yet, at the outset, he must have been the hero of certain definite adventures, certain special feats, which caused him to be looked upon as worthy to be allied with the hero-king of the Britons. It is possible that at first he may have been even a more notable hero than Arthur himself.
It ought not to be impossible to single out from among the various versions of Gawain’s adventures certain features which, by their frequent recurrence in the romances devoted to him, and their analogy to ancient Celtic tradition, seem as if they might with probability be regarded as forming part of his original story. It is scarcely to be hoped that we can ever construct a coherent account on which we may lay our finger and say ‘This, and no other, was the original Gawain story’; but we may, I think, be able to specify certain incidents, saying, ‘This belongs to Gawain and to no other of King Arthur’s knights. That adventure is a necessary and integral part of his story.’
One of the most striking characteristics of Gawain, and one which may undoubtedly be referred to the original conception of his character, is that of the waxing and waning of his strength as the day advances and declines. Probably the earliest version of this is the one given by Chrétien’s continuator, Gautier de Doulens:
Hardemens et force doubloit
Toustans puis ke midis passoit,
Por voir, a monsignor Gauvain,
Tout en devons estre certain;
Quant la clartés del jor faloit
Icelle force tresaloit
Et de miedi en avant
Li recroissoit tot autretant.
The Merlin gives it somewhat differently, e.g. ‘quant il se levoit au matin il avoit la force al millor chevalier del monde; et quant vint à eure de prime si li doubloit, et à eure de tierce ausi. et quant ce vint à eure de midi si revenoit à sa première force, ou il avoit esté au matin; et quant vint à eure de nonne et à toutes Its eures de la nuit estoit il toudis en sa premiere force.’
Malory has again another version: ‘but Sir Gawayne fro it passed 9 of the clok waxed ever stronger and stronger / for thenne hit cam to the hour of noone and thryes his myghte was encreaced. / And thenne whan it was past noone / and whan it drewe toward evensong Syre Gawayne’s strengthe febled and waxt passynge faint that unnethe he myght dure ony lenger.’
And later on: ‘Then had Syr Gawayne suche a grace and gyfte that an holy man had gyven to hym / That every day in the year from underne tyl hyghe noone hys myght encreaced tho thre houres as moche as thryse hys strengthe.’
This, though the latest version, and ascribing a reason for the peculiarity utterly out of keeping with Gawain’s general character in the romance (for he is certainly no favourite with ‘holy men’) agrees better with the Perceval than with the Merlin.
Scholars have seen in this growth and waning of Gawain’s power, directly connected as it is with the waxing and waning of the sun, a proof that this Celtic hero was at one time a solar divinity.
Another characteristic of Gawain, in which he differs from the other knights, is that he possesses a steed, which is known by a special name. Gringalet, or le Gringalet, is the form generally found in the French romances, but Professor Zimmer maintains that the name is more correctly Gingalet or Guingalet, a view to which the Welsh form of the word, Keincaled, lends support. This horse figures repeatedly in the old romances; the Merlin gives a long account of how Gawain at the outset of his knightly career won it by force of arms from the Saxon king, Clarions. There has been a great deal of discussion as to the original meaning of the name; the author of the Merlin says the steed was so called ‘por sa grant bonté’; Bartsch, commenting on the names given in the Parzival, gives as its meaning ‘cheval maigre et alerte’; Zimmer prefers ‘schön-ausdauernd’ (as we should say, of good staying power); M. Gaston Paris more cautiously says that the name was originally Celtic, but that its signification has been lost. In any case it doubtless referred to some special virtue in the steed, which, judging from the frequency with which it was stolen, or taken by stratagem, from its rightful owner, was a highly desirable possession.
One point which Zimmer brings out, in the article above referred to, is of special interest and significance in its bearing on the direction in which we must seek for light on the earliest forms of the Gawain story. The name of this horse, so closely connected with the hero, and that in romances admittedly belonging to an early stage of the Arthurian cycle, only occurs once in Welsh literature, and then in a triad preserved in a late twelfth-century ms., where it is found in company with the horse of a certain Gilbert, identified by Zimmer as an Anglo-Norman follower of Henry I. Even in stories of which we possess parallel versions, such for instance as the Erec (Geraint), which has come down to us in French, German, and Welsh, the Welsh writer refrains from mentioning Gawain’s famous steed, where, in the parallel French passages, the name occurs. Zimmer opines that the omission was of set purpose, the name being a foreign one. Without entering into the question as to which of the versions, the French or the Welsh, is dependent on the other, it seems clear that the Northern French poets and romancers did not get the Gringalet tradition from Wales, yet the horse figures in stories which manifestly represent the oldest version we at present possess of Gawain’s adventures. The inference seems to be that we must go behind the Welsh stories to arrive at the earliest form of the legend; that we need even pass through them on our journey to the remote Celtic antiquity in which the key to the main problem of our study will be found, seems increasingly doubtful.
