"yowre kny3t I becom and kryst yow for3elde"

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Beheading Scene

Our 'scholarly' preoccupation with Chaucer might lead us to imagine 14th-century England accurately reflected in The Canterbury Tales, but Chaucer is only one poet, and an urban one at that.

Very different is that provincial poet of the northwest midlands, the Pearl Poet, a contemporary of Chaucer who composed Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as well as Pearl, Purity, and Patience -- all three of these latter treating specifically moral and religious issues. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is broader in conception, telling an Arthurian tale about a knight upon a quest for which he might well lose his head, but it also focuses upon moral issues, specifically the dilemma posed by the related but conflicting norms of courtesy and piety.

Courtesy extolls courtly love and a playful flirtatiousness that flits about the border between a heartfelt duty to the lady of one's lord and an adultry of the heart that can seduce the lady -- or the knight.

Piety extolls religious devotion to God, and if love of a lady is encouraged, then it should be a pure love for the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven.

In Part 3 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the young, pious, and courteous Gawain finds himself at the mercy of a very beautiful young lady, the wife of the lord who has shown him hospitality, for she has slipped into his room early one morning while the lord is out hunting, and by her flirtatious manner, she appears to be trying to seduce him ... or test him?

Let's look at stanza 51 (lines 1263-1289), and do note the difficult Middle English dialect, very different from Chaucer's and even harder to read (to which, I've added quotation marks for ease in distinguishing speakers):

"madame" quoþ þe myry mon "mary yow 3elde
for I haf founden in god fayth yowre fraunchis nobele
and oþer ful much of oþer folk fongen hor dedez
bot þe daynte þat þay delen for my disert nysen
hit is þe worchyp of yourself þat no3t bot wel connez"
"bi mary" quoþ þe menskful "me þynk hit an oþer
for were I worth al þe wone of wymmen alyue
and al þe wele of þe worlde were in my honde
and I schulde chepen and chose to cheue me a lorde
for þe costes þat I haf knowen vpon þe kny3t here
of bewte and debonerte and blyþe semblaunt
and þat I haf er herkkened and halde hit here trwee
þer schulde no freke vpon folde bifore yow be chosen"
"iwysse worþy" quoþ þe wy3e "3e haf waled wel better
bot I am proude of þe prys þat 3e put on me
and soberly your seruaunt my souerayn I holde yow
and yowre kny3t I becom and kryst yow for3elde"
þus þay meled of muchquat til mydmorn paste
and ay þe lady let lyk a hym loued mych
þe freke ferde with defence and feted ful fayre
þa3 I were burde bry3test þe burde in mynde hade
þe lasse luf in his lode for lur þat he so3t
boute hone
dunte þat sclulde hym deue
and nedez hit most be done
þe lady þenn spek of leue
he granted hir ful sone

Here's a literal translation by Ernest J. B. Kirtlan:

"Madam," quoth the merry man, "may Mary bless thee!
I have found thee, in good faith, noble and frank.
Full many others did me courtesy,
and the dainty that they dealt me was foolishness;
but thy worship is that of one who knoweth nothing but good."
"By Mary," quoth the lady, "I think otherwise,
for were I worth all the wealth of women on earth,
and all the wealth of the world were in my hand,
were I to bargain and choose and take captive a lord,
then no fellow on earth before thee would I choose,
because of thy courtesy and beauty and good manners,
and thy blitheness of mien,
and because of what I have heard from thee and hold for the truth."
"Well I wot," quoth Gawain, "thou hast chosen a better man than I am,
yet am I proud of the price thou puttest upon me,
and soberly as thy servant I hold thee as my sovereign,
and thy knight I become, and may Christ requite thee."
Thus did they talk of many things till the midnoon was past.
The lady seemed to be pleased therewith, and to love him.
And Sir Gawain bore himself bravely.
Yet the knight had in mind that though she were the fairest of ladies,
there must be no love-making for him because of the loss that he was
seeking eftsoon.
The blow he must abide,
And it must needs be done;
The lady turned aside;
He grants her leave full soon.

I would have differently translated the following lines by the lady:

"bi mary" quoþ þe menskful "me þynk hit an oþer
for were I worth al þe wone of wymmen alyue
and al þe wele of þe worlde were in my honde
and I schulde chepen and chose to cheue me a lorde
for þe costes þat I haf knowen vpon þe kny3t here
of bewte and debonerte and blyþe semblaunt
and þat I haf er herkkened and halde hit here trwee
þer schulde no freke vpon folde bifore yow be chosen"

Following Kirtlan but altering somewhat in wording and order:

"By Mary," quoth the lady, "I think otherwise,
for were I worth all the wealth of women on earth,
and all the wealth of the world were in my hand,
were I to bargain and choose and take captive a lord
for the cost that I have known upon the knight here
of beauty and gentleness and blithe appearance,
and because of what I have heard from thee and hold for the truth,
then no fellow on earth before thee would I choose."

My translation more closely follows the original poem's sequence of lines, which is helpful for anyone trying to puzzle out the original text by following the modern version.

One could say a great deal about these lines, but for our purposes here, the most interesting point is their difference from Chaucer's poetry. We see a handsome young man in bed deflecting courteously -- and occasionally with pious expressions -- the advances of a very seductive, lovely young woman, all the while both of them maintaining a tone more elevated than many of Chaucer's characters do despite the fact that the Pearl Poet's characters are speaking a far more 'Germanic' English.

Chaucer probably would have had Gawain and the lady hopping into bed at the first opportunity and would have used far more vulgar terms to describe their actions.

Copyright Information:

Original text: Karen Arthur, ed., in Using TACT and Electronic Texts: Text-Analysis Computing Tools Vers. 2.1 for MS-DOS and PC DOS, by I. Lancashire, in collaboration with J. Bradley, W. McCarty, M. Stairs, and T. R. Wooldridge (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1996). CD-ROM. Interlineation translation taken from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Rendered Literally into Modern English from the Alliterative Romance-Poem of A.D. 1360, from Cotton MS. Nero A x in British Museum, trans. Ernest J. B. Kirtlan (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1912). PR 2065 G3 1912 Robarts Library.

(Online text copyright © 2005, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of Toronto. Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.)