thee, lad, for I am as gentle of humour as I am stout of limb. Know ye that yon stenchy hag has oft and again sent befuddled fools to wrest my oak patch from me, and each of those simple fellows has earned damage most woeful. But I had rather deal with thee than dent thee. Let us bargain. Forsake that crone clinging behind thee and let me welcome thee as my son. For know ye that my daughter is a frick, lusty-tempered lass of rutting age and the need to swive and be swiven is hot and hasty upon her. But there are no men in this damned forest but we two.' And with this the peasant gestured to the side of the path, where stood a maiden ripe and moist, with breasts that strained the fabric of her bodice, with hair fresh-spun of gold, fair of face, clear of eye, slim of waist, comfortable of haunch, and whose pink tongue did flicker between teeth of purest white.
Seeing her, Sir Gervais's pulse did quop in his temple, and elsewhere the restraints of his armour did irk him.
But before he could spit on his palm and cry, 'Agreed, done, and double-done!' the seeming hag rasped into his ear hole, 'I perceive, brave hero, that thou dost pant and drool and quop and bulge, but remember that all things here are other-seeming. To unenchanted eyes this maiden is revealed to be the very lees and slag of womanhood, ugly beneath description, diseased to the marrow, so repulsive that passing toads do retch and gag.' And she went on to confide that the source of her discord with the scrawny baron was that he could not marry off his flawed and blemished daughter because his neighbour's beauty diminished the wretched little thing by comparison.
After a very long silence devoted to trying to unsnarl this, Sir Gervais said, 'Uh-h-h... You mean... Wait a minute— She's not... While you're... Hm-m-m. Ah-h-h, of course!' Nevertheless, his manhood continued to pulse and quop of its own will until the crone mentioned that the seeming frick and juicy girl was not of their class. Her vowels! Her aitches! No, no, not at all one of
But the seeming giant grasped the hilt in midair, brast the blade over his knee, and tossed the pieces into the brook.
'Oh-ho!' cried the knight. 'Wow hast thou precipitated my wrath upon thine aged and brittle back!' He leapt from the saddle and clutched at his adversary's throat.
But the woodcutter lifted the grasping hands from his throat as easily as if they had been placed there in caress, and he slapped those steel gauntlets together until the knight's palms stung with his vigorous applause. Then he turned the knight upside down and swung him so that his head played the clapper to the bell of his helm.
'There now,' he said, setting Sir Gervais again upon his feet. 'Let that be an end to it. If thou wilt not have my daughter to wed, so be it. Go and pester me no further.'
Dazed, his ears ringing, his palms throbbing, the knight staggered to his horse and clung to the pommel, his knees buckling.
But the seeming hag leaned down from the saddle and whispered, 'Prithee, be more gentle with this frail old baron, my champion! Though I would see him punished for his insults, I do not want the sin of his murder upon thy soul!'
'Sayest what?' Sir Gervais muttered, half senseless.
'Thou hast done him great and telling hurt. Sure, he must yield after another such chastisement.'
'Joy-o'-my-nights, hast thou forgot that here all things are other-seeming?'
'What?' The battered knight frowned in deepest thought. 'Uh-h-h-h.' He squinted at the sky in intense concentration. 'Er-r-r-r-r.' He squeezed his eyes shut and marshalled all his powers of reasoning to the problem. 'Uhn-n-n-n-n.' And finally, 'Ah, of course!' And with that, he flung himself again at the seeming giant's throat.
Annoyed by this fool's persistence, the woodcutter grasped him by his shoulders and shook him until his limbs dangled and flopped loose, then he forced the knight's helmet into the fork of an oak and left him hanging by his chin, his body swaying gently in the breeze. And with this, he strode away, taking his daughter with him.
Tossing the fig after the departing woodcutter, the seeming hag growled bitterly that Sir Gervais was useless to a poor girl seeking to affirm her swine's snouting rights, and she departed to her castle to await the arrival of a stouter champion.
Night fell; the forest darkened; nocturnal creatures scuttled and scurried; and still Sir Gervais hung in deepest melancholy, wondering what magic had transported him to this high tree and lodged his neck in the crook of this branch after he had so sorely punished the feeble old baron that enchantment had disguised as a stout woodcutter.
He was lost in these philosophical speculations when a soft voice called from the forest floor. Bending his eyes downward—for nothing else could he move—the knight espied the seeming lush and juicy daughter of the seeming giant, the moonlight shining upon her golden-seeming hair and her bulging, ripe-seeming breasts.
'I'll have thee down in a trice, handsome knight,' she called up.
'Thank... you,' he muttered between clenched teeth.
'But first, thou must promise me a boon.'
'What... boon?'
'Before I dislodge thee from yon forked bough, thou must promise—' And here the maiden blushed and turned her fair face aside. 'Oh, how can I say it with modesty?'
'Get... on... with... it!' muttered the distressed knight.
'Well, then. As my father told thee, I am of swiving age and humour, but there is no swiveworthy man in this forest. Hence, ere I dislodge thee, thou must promise to teach me the ways of swiving. There, I have said it!' And she hid her face with her hands and blushed modestly.
'Agreed,' Sir Gervais rasped between his locked teeth.
Whereupon the seeming sumptuous maid armed herself with a stout stick, then hitched her up skirts so high that both fud and ecu were cooled by the night breezes, and scaled the tree. Jamming the stick in behind the knight's helmet, she heaved with such good will that Sir Gervais was pried free and fell with a stunning clatter to the earth, where he sat all a-daze.
Before his swirling senses settled, the maiden was upon him, clawing at the lacings of his armour that he might serve her as he had pledged to do. So willing was his brawn to redeem his promise that often he did mount her to this end, but upon each instance, his imagination warned him that this moist and panting maid was, in truth, a low-born person the swiving of whom was beneath his dignity, and this realization instantly made him all limp and unable.
For many and many an hour was he, by turns, stiffened and shriveled until, near the dawning, he was sorely cramped with dog's cullions caused by the flowing and ebbing of ardent blood.
Then did the maiden draw aside and pout and sniff and stamp her little foot. 'All this fumbling and prodding, then fading and shriveling, surely this cannot be the swiving that I have heard so widely praised!'
In his shame he attested that, yes, they had done the most and the best of swiving.
'Nay, then,' cried the maiden. 'This swiving is a sport most treacherously o'er-famed! If it be for this that maidens dream and sigh, and in consequence of which they grow great and make babes to dangle from their teats, then no more of swiving shall I have! If God protect me from increase upon this occasion, I vow me to a nunnery, there to do His will and work 'til my flesh ages beyond yearning.'
And Sir Gervais did gravely affirm her in this choice, saying that if she drew not pleasure from his swiving— which was the best and highest of that delectable art—then surely no man could ever please her. And he did feel some pride in the knowledge that he was serving God by assisting a maiden to a nunnery where she would pass her life to the leeward of temptation.
So it was that, in the fullness of time, the Maid of the Enchanted Forest rose from nun to abbess, and at last was hoisted to the high rank of saint in reward for abjuring the joy of men for all the six-and-eighty years she passed on this earth. For celibacy is rightly accounted a miracle in one so beauteous, lush, moist, and frick as she; while in the generality of nuns it is but a petty accomplishment, as it is no great feat to defend a fruit rendered forbidding and unpluckworthy by Nature.
As for Sir Gervais, he did return to the Table Round, there to regale his comrades, recounting how he had passed a year and a day in the arms of a most desirable—if other-seeming—princess; and how, out of due
