FRAGMENT OF THE MARRIAGE OF SIR GAWAINE.
From Percy's Reliques, iii. 403.
This is one of the few ballads contained in the Percy MS., which we have the pleasure of possessing as it is there written. Having first submitted an improved copy, "with large conjectural supplements and corrections," Percy added this old fragment at the end of the volume: "literally and exactly printed, with all its defects, inaccuracies, and errata," in order, as he triumphantly remarks, "that such austere antiquaries as complain that the ancient copies have not been always rigidly adhered to, may see how unfit for publication many of the pieces would have been, if all the blunders, corruptions, and nonsense of illiterate reciters and transcribers had been superstitiously retained, without some attempt to correct and amend them."
"This ballad," the Editor of the Reliques goes on to say, "has most unfortunately suffered by having half of every leaf in this part of the MS. torn away; and, as about nine stanzas generally occur in the half-page now remaining, it is concluded that the
other half contained nearly the same number of stanzas." The story may be seen, unmutilated and in an older form, in Madden's Syr Gawayne, p. 298, The Weddynge of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell.
The transformation on which the story turns is found also in Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, in Gower's tale of Florent and the King of Sicily's Daughter; (Confessio Amantis, Book I.) in the ballad of King Henry (page 147 of this volume); and in an Icelandic saga of the Danish king Helgius, quoted by Scott in his illustrations to King Henry, Minstrelsy, iii. 274.
Voltaire has employed the same idea in his Ce qui plaît aux Dames, but whence he borrowed it we are unable to say.
Worked over by some ballad-monger of the sixteenth century, and of course reduced to dish-water, this tale has found its way into The Crown Garland of Golden Roses, Part I. p. 68 (Percy Society, vol. vi.), Of a Knight and a Faire Virgin.
Kinge Arthur liues in merry Carleile,
And seemely is to see;