60 [teches]] towches Cambridge MS. DD. 5. 64.
63 [þar]] þat MS. Thornton.
69 [mens]] so Cambridge MS. DD. 5. 64 = mene MS. Thornton.
79 [hope]] from Cambridge MS. DD. 5. 64: om. MS. Thornton.
84 [þan]] Cambridge MS. DD. 5. 64: þen MS. Arundel 507: þat MS. Thornton.
V SIR GAWAYNE AND THE GRENE KNIGHT ABOUT 1350-75.
Sir Gawayne has been admirably edited by Sir F. Madden for the Bannatyne Club, 1839, and later by R. Morris for the Early English Text Society. It is found in British Museum MS. Nero A X, together with three other alliterative poems, named from their first words Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness. Pearl supplies the next specimen; Patience exemplifies the virtue by the trials of Jonah; Cleanness teaches purity of life from Scriptural stories. All these poems are in the same handwriting; all are in a West-Midland dialect; all appear to be of the same age; and none is without literary merit. For these reasons, which are good but not conclusive, they are assumed to be by the same author. Attempts to identify this author have been unsuccessful.
The story runs as follows:
King Arthur is making his Christmas feast with his court at Camelot. On New Year's Day he declares that he will not eat until he has seen or heard some marvel. The first course of the feast is barely served when a tall knight, clad all in green, with green hair, and a green horse to match, rides into the hall. He carries a holly bough and a huge axe, and tauntingly invites any knight to strike him a blow with the axe, on condition that he will stand a return blow on the same day a year hence. Gawayne accepts the challenge and strikes off the Green Knight's head. The Green Knight gathers up his head, gives Gawayne an appointment for next New Year's Day at the Green Chapel, and rides off.