These are records of hours spent by the village boys amid the noise of grinding and rush of water, in times when there was no rival mechanism to share the fascination of the water-driven mill.
137-43. 'This contrivance, as I believe, is prepared, sir knight, for the honour of meeting me by the way. Let God work His will, Lo! It helps me not a bit. Though I lose my life, no noise causes me to fear.' It has been suggested that wel o<r w>oo 'weal or woe' should be read instead of the interjection we loo! But Gawayn's despair (l. 141) is not in keeping with ll. 70 f., 90 f., or with the rest of his speech. The looseness of the short lines makes emendation dangerous. Otherwise we might read Hit helppeȝ þe not a mote, i.e. whatever happens, mere noise will not help the Green Knight by making Gawayn afraid; or, alternatively, hermeȝ 'harms' for helppeȝ.
151. 'Yet he went on with the noise with all speed for a while, and turned away <to proceed> with his grinding, before he would come down.' The nonchalance of the Green Knight is marked throughout the poem.
155. A Deneȝ ax: the ordinary long-bladed battle-axe was called a 'Danish' axe, in French hache danoise, because the Scandinavians in their raids on England and France first proved its efficiency in battle.
158. bi þat lace, '<measured> by the lace'. In Gawayne (ll. 217 ff. of the full text) the axe used at the first encounter is described. It had:
A lace lapped aboute, þat louked at þe hede,
And so after þe halme halched ful ofte,
Wyth tryed tasseleȝ þerto tacched innoghe, &c.
'A lace wrapped about <the handle>, which was fastened at the <axe's> head, and was wound about the handle again and again, with many choice tassels fastened to it', &c.