Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Back in 1979 when Rush were preparing music for what would become their Permanent Waves album lyricist and drummer Neil Peart had worked on a set of lyrics based on the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This isn't wholly surprising considering that he gave Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan the treatment a couple years previously. That song was never recorded but reading about this episode in the band's history was probably the first time I had ever heard of the poem.

This was probably sometime in the late 1980s and I am proud to say that I have finally read it. Better late then never.

The identity of the poem's author is lost in history but it was likely written in the late 14th century. But a single copy has survived in a manuscript with three other poems. None of works has a name so "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" was the appellation given to it by someone much later.

It begins in a rather odd way with the narrator approving telling us how Romulus had founded Rome, Ticius the same with Tuscany, and likewise with Langobard and Lombardy. Felix Brutus founded Britain and since then wonder, dread, and war have lingered there amongst a "bold race" of "battle-happy" men who cause "trouble and torment in turbulent times". He then proceeds to invite the reader to hear his tale of Arthurian legend.

It is New Year's Eve at Camelot. There was food aplenty, the wine flowed, and there was much rejoicing. Suddenly the merriment is halted when at the door appears a green knight upon a green steed. The poet spares no words in describing this guy. He is a giant of a man and everything about him is green. All of his clothes and every hair on his body. The same goes for the horse. However weird looking he is yet a man.

This most verdant of knights taunts Arthur and his men by issuing a challenge to anyone "big or bold or red blooded enough": he will give anyone willing his bare neck to strike a blow and, in return, the green knight will get to strike one blow in return. Sir Gawain takes up the challenge and lops the knight's head clean off. Amazingly, the knight's body picks up the head and mounts the horse. The head speaks and tells Gawain to find him in one year and a day's time at his green chapel so that he may fulfill their bargain.

Zoinks!

The seasons rush by and soon enough it is Christmas time yet again. Gawain, no coward he, gets all gussied up in his finest armor and sets out to find the Green Knight. He battles both the cold and snow and the natural inhabitants of the land - wolves, boars, serpents, etc. Weary of his wandering, Gawain prays to find a house for shelter. And so he does. Well, more than a house, actually. He stumbles upon the castle of Bertilak de Hautdesert who proves a most gracious host.

Gawain tells him of his quest to find a green chapel wherein dwells a green knight with whom he has business. de Hautdesert tells him that the chapel is but two miles away and since Gawain still has a few days before he must meet the knight, he should kick back and relax.

de Hautdesert later makes a strange bargain with Gawain. The lord is to go hunting and, in exchange for his prey, Gawain shall give him whatever he gets during the day in return. An odd bargain indeed. The three hunts are described in progressively more detail. First a deer, a rather easy prey. Then a fearsome boar which strikes fear into the hearts of many of the hunters. Lastly, a sly fox which proves to be the most difficult of all.

Parallel to the hunts are attempts by Lady de Hautdesert to seduce Gawain. But chivalrous to a fault, he rebuffs her lettings loose only kisses, for the most part. One on the first attempt, two on the second, and three on the last. But on the final attempt Lady de Hautdesert attempts to give our good Sir Knight a gold ring by which he can remember her. Gawain refuses knowing that his future holds a meeting with a hulking green knight who wields a very large and very sharp axe. Instead she offers a girdle and Gawain accepts. Curiously enough the girdle is green.

Gawain keeps his bargain with the lord of the house by offering many kisses in increasing quantities upon his return from the hunt.

Finally the day has come for our hero to fulfill his destiny. He is led to the green chapel where he meets the Green Knight who is sharpening his axe. As promised, Gawain exposes his neck but flinches as the axe is being brought down. The Green Knight chides him and provokes Gawain who settles down to receive the blow. The second swing is an intentional miss while the third hits its mark, but only just. It is a mere flesh wound.

The Green Knight reveals himself to be Lord de Hautdesert and that the whole scheme was cooked up by none other than Morgan le Fay, King Arthur's sister, to "put pride on trial" and test the mettle of those of Arthur's Round Table. Gawain has done well but not well enough for he had accepted the girdle. And so he wore it as a symbol of his failure. Upon his return to Camelot, Gawain saw to it that a green belt worn as a sash was to be worn by all the Knights of the Round Table.

So what is a 21st century guy to make of a 600+ year old poem? That's a tough question. The first problem was that I am not well-versed in poetry. Reading the stuff is surely a skill unto itself. You get used to dealing with meter and the tools of a poet's linguistic trade such as alliteration. Speaking of which, there is a lot of it here. The poem is written so that lengthy stanzas are full of alliteration. For example, "and quickly they collected and counted the kill." However, the stanzas close with a quatrain which summarizes events or internal states of characters and employs rhyme. Take this one: "No man felt more at home/tucked in between those two/the cute one and the crone/Their gladness grew and grew."

Such a style takes some getting used to for a poetic neophyte such as myself. I had the same problem when reading The Odyssey. I kept waiting for the Muse to sing in rhyme but she never did. But that didn't prevent me from reading large stretches of these poems in a cadence meant for rhyming. I would read it with this up and down pattern, accenting words which, in my head, would rhyme if this were a more modern effort. As I said above, it takes some getting used to and some effort to focus on the alliteration instead of waiting for words to rhyme with one another.

In addition to structure of the poetry itself this modern reader had to contend with a lot of symbolism which was unfamiliar. Why was the knight green instead of black or blue or orange? Hell, why color the guy at all and not just make him a hulking man of normal coloring? Since I happen to have a tattoo of the Green Man I quite naturally associate him with the Green Knight. But the action of the story takes place in the dead of winter and the Green Man is all about spring and summer when the flowers are in bloom, the birds and bees are doing it, and people aren't constantly fending off Jack Frost and praying that their larders hold up through the long cold season.

While I tend to think of the Green Man as having to do with the seasons, I suppose I also think of him as being an overseer of male virtues, for lack of a better way of putting it at the moment. He is a steward, of sorts. Being symbolic of life flourishing in the spring and summer, he oversees the welfare of the people who depend on the land for their food. A father figure of sorts. In the story, the Green Knight is testing Gawain to see if he can withstand the advances of a comely lady and maintain his virtue by continuing to adhere to the code of chivalry.

It's a stretch, to be sure, but there's no doubt that chivalry is a major theme here. I don't know the poem's intended audience but I'm pretty certain that Gawain is supposed to be held as an ideal for others to emulate and not a reflection of how things were. My guess is that we view chivalry in a very romantic light whereas knights back in the day did not struggle very much when pretty women came on to them. The Green Knight judges Gawain to be imperfect yet he is "by far the most faultless fellow on Earth". Perhaps there was an inordinate amount of bastards being born in the part of England where the author hailed from and this was a morality play, of sorts, imploring knights to keep their willies in their armor.

I enjoyed how the author alternated the scenes of the lord's hunt with those of his lady. Very different prey but both were hunting nonetheless. I suppose that by showing that Gawain was not caught contrasts him with the animals and that there's some symbolism at work here. Perhaps he is a stand-in for Christianity while the animals represent the heathens.

Obviously more research is to be done. I want to find out what medieval experts make of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The version I read was translated by Simon Armitage and included both his translation and the original text. I'm not sure how his take on the poem compares to others - something else to research. I found that some of the Middle English was easily discernible while the rest was positively impenetrable. One day while reading on the bus I noticed another passenger engrossed in an e-book reader. It occurred to me that having two versions of the same text side by side wasn't feasible with a Kindle or an iPhone. Or perhaps it is and I just don't know it. Still, from the e-readers I've seen on the bus, they just cannot replicate what a paper book can offer in a situation like this. The codex wins out here.

It would have been neat if Rush had finished their song as I'd have liked to have heard how Peart adapted the poem as lyrics. What would he have emphasized? We'll probably never know. Some of the music of "Natural Science" was supposedly taken from their aborted attempt at adapting Gawain to song so you can put that tune on and improvise some lines from the poem to get an idea of how it might have turned out. Try it. Replace these original lyrics:

"Wheels within wheels in a spiral array
A pattern so grand and complex"

With:

"I could tell you the truth once you've taken the blow
if you smite me smartly I could spell out the facts"

Neil would be proud.

Anyway, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was a very fun read that presented a challenge on multiple levels. I like all things medieval and found myself engrossed in the story. Would Gawain give in to temptation and I end up reading 14th century euphemisms for rumpy pumpy? Would our hero end up having his head lopped off?

Now I just have to watch Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight starring Sean Connery as the Green Knight. This could be his Zardoz of the fantasy genre.