And there’s as much corn in each o’ them
As they can grind in a year.’
THE MARRIAGE OF SIR GAWAINE
The Text is from the early part of the Percy Folio, and the ballad is therefore deficient. Where gaps are marked in the text with a row of asterisks, about nine stanzas are lost in each case—half a page torn out by a seventeenth-century maidservant to light a fire! Luckily we can supply the story from other versions.
The Story, also given in The Weddynge of Sr Gawen and Dame Ragnell (in the Rawlinson MS. C. 86 in the Bodleian Library), runs as follows:—
Shortly after Christmas, Arthur, riding by Tarn Wadling (still so called, but now pasture-land, in the forest of Inglewood), meets a bold baron, who challenges him to fight, unless he can win his ransom by returning on New Year’s Day with an answer to the question, What does a woman most desire? Arthur relates the story to Gawaine, asks him and others for an answer to the riddle, and collects their suggestions in a book (‘letters,’ 24.1). On his way to keep his tryst with the baron, he meets an unspeakably ugly woman, who offers her assistance; if she will help him, Arthur says, she shall wed with Gawaine. She gives him the true answer, A woman will have her will. Arthur meets the baron, and after proffering the budget of answers, confronts him with the true answer. The baron exclaims against the ugly woman, whom he asserts to be his sister.
Arthur returns to his court, and tells his knights that a wife awaits one of them on the moor. Sir Lancelot, Sir Steven (who is not mentioned elsewhere in Arthurian tales), Sir Kay, Sir Bauier (probably Beduer or Bedivere), Sir Bore (Bors de Gauves), Sir Garrett (Gareth), and Sir Tristram ride forth to find her. At sight, Sir Kay, without overmuch chivalry, expresses his disgust, and the rest are unwilling to marry her. The king explains that he has promised to give her to Sir Gawaine, who, it seems, bows to Arthur’s authority, and weds her. During the bridal night, she becomes a beautiful young woman. Further to test Gawaine, she gives him his choice: will he have her fair by day and foul by night, or foul by day and fair by night? Fair by night, says Gawaine. And foul to be seen of all by day? she asks. Have your way, says Gawaine, and breaks the last thread of the spell, as she forthwith explains: her step-mother had bewitched both her, to haunt the moor in ugly shape, till some knight should grant her all her will, and her brother, to challenge all comers to fight him or answer the riddle.
Similar tales, but with the important variation—undoubtedly indigenous in the story—that the man who saves his life by answering the riddle has himself to wed the ugly woman, are told by Gower (Confessio Amantis, Book I.) and Chaucer (The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe). The latter, which is also Arthurian in its setting, was made into a ballad in the Crown Garland of Golden Roses (circ. 1600), compiled by Richard Johnson. A parallel is also to be found in an Icelandic saga.