Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Wirral (which he describes as a wilderness), and his statement that “few dwelt there that either God or man loved” is the sort of half-malicious generalisation that points to his being a neighbour. He was probably a native either of Lancashire or some part of North Cheshire adjoining it. The date of the manuscript is about 1400, and that of the poem perhaps twenty or thirty years earlier, 1370⁠–⁠1380. This agrees very well with the internal evidence; Sir Gawain’s sabatons, or broad-toed steel shoes, the younger lady’s fretted headdress, and the elaborate details of castle architecture are all features pointing to the last quarter of the fourteenth century.

The poem is written in a Northwestern dialect, which is the ancestor of the South Lancashire folk-speech of today. Characteristic features of it are present plurals in -en (we thinken), second person singulars in -s (thou says), preterites like geet and leet, and the o-sound before nasals in mon, mony, hommer, bront (brand), etc. The reader must be cautioned, however, against supposing that Sir Gawain is a dialect poem in the usual acceptation of the term, written by a rustic bard for a rustic audience. In the fourteenth century there was as yet no standard literary English, and each writer wrote as he spoke, in the dialect of the district to which he was native; for all its dialect, Sir Gawain is as courtly, both in matter and style, as the best of French romances. There is nothing rustic or provincial about it.

The alliterative metre in which the poem is written had evidently come down in an unbroken tradition from Old English times, and was a living thing in the Northwest. In all parts of England except the North and Central West it seems to have been extinct, and even two centuries earlier in Layamon it appears badly broken down. The “Gawain” poet uses it with a sure sense of its varied rhythms. A few brief notes on the metre will, I hope, enable anyone to read it readily and with pleasure.

Alliteration. Normally there are four stresses in a line (two in each half-line or “verse”) of which three alliterate, i.e. are syllables beginning with the same letter. Occasionally there are only two alliterating syllables, one in each verse. Note that:

1. words beginning with any vowel or with h alliterate, e.g.

   Ágravain Hárd-hand at her óther side sat.

2. The first letter in words like knight, wrought, was of course pronounced by the poet, and such words alliterate on the k or w. I have sometimes retained this alliteration as a licence (like the eye-rhymes in modern verse), e.g.:

   Who knéw ever King such coúnsel to take?

Rhythm. In theory there is no limit to the number of unstressed syllables in a line, and we find not infrequently, especially in the first verse or half-line, four or even five such syllables between two adjacent stresses. To a reader accustomed to our modern syllabic metres such an accumulation of unstressed syllables might be strange and difficult, and in this version I have avoided any sequence of more than three.

The two chief rhythms in a verse are the “rising” × × / × × /, and the “falling” (×) / × × / ×; sometimes the same rhythm runs through a whole line, e.g.:

(rising) When the siége and the assáult | were ceásed at Tróy
(falling) Dríving to the dáis | no dánger affráy’d him,

but the half-line is the unit. Occasional variants of the rhythms in the second verse are:

• × / × / × e.g.

  | through reálms so mány

• × / × / e.g.

  | at Gáwain’s hánds

• / × × / e.g.

  | Árthur my náme

A third rhythm, rare except in the second verse, is the “rising-falling” or circumflex × ×/\×, e.g.:

| with a wróth clàmour

or

| by the búrn sìde

It makes a charming variation from the other two.

Long lines. Many lines have three stresses in the first verse. These I have usually simplified; when retained they have the stresses marked, unless the punctuation shows the caesura, e.g.:

And mány a bírd unblíthe on the bare twigs sitting.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Fit I

I

When the siege and the assault were ceasèd at Troy,
When the burg had been broken, and burnt to ashes,
The wight that the trains of treason there laid
Was tried for his treachery, the truest on earth:3
It was Éneas4 the Athel5 and his high kindred
Who kingdoms then conquered, and princes became
Of all the wealth, well-nigh, in the West Isles.
Sóon as the róyal Rómulus to Rome made his way,
That burg with great pomp then builded he first
And named it his own name, as now it is called:
Ticius6 in Tuscany townships founded,
Langobard in Lombardy lifted up homes,
And far o’er the French flood Felix Brutus
On many a bank full broad, Britain he set,
well fain.
War and woe and wonder
On that fair land have lain,
And oft both bliss and blunder,7
Time and time again.

II

Now when Britain had been built by Brutus the prince,
Bold men there bred, that lov’d battle and strife
And at times a many wrought teen and trouble;
More wonders, I wis, on this wold have befallen
Than on any other I wot of, since those ancient days.
But of all that here built, that of Britain were kings,
Áy was Árthur the noblest, as I have heard tell;
And so an adventure I essay to show you,
Which many men reckon a main marvel,
All wonders o’ertopping that of the Table are told.
If ye’ll listen to my lay but a little while,
I shall tell ’t you this tide, as in town I heard it,
with tongue.
Well is it writ for you
In story brave and strong,
Linkèd8 with letters true;
In land has so been