The old woman was waiting for Florent, and he now had full leisure to inspect all her points; but he was a knight, and would hold his troth. He set her on his horse before him, rode by night and lay close by day, till he came to his castle. There the ladies made an attempt to attire her for the wedding, and she was the fouler for their pains. They were married that night. He turned away from the bride; she prayed him not to be so discourteous. He turned toward her, with a great moral effort, and saw (for the chamber was full of light) a lady of eighteen, of unequalled beauty. As he would have drawn her to him she forbade, and said he must make his choice, to have her such by day or by night. "Choose for us both," was his reply. "Thanks," quoth she, "for since you have made me sovereign, I shall be both night and day as I am now." She explained that, having been daughter of the king of Sicily, her stepmother had forshapen her, the spell to hold till she had won the love and the sovereignty of what knight passed all others in good name.
The scene of Chaucer's tale, The Wife of Bath, returns to Arthur's court. One of the bachelors of the household, when returning from hawking, commits a rape, for which he is condemned to death. But the queen and other ladies intercede for him, and the king leaves his life at the disposal of the queen. The queen, like the shrewd lady in Gower, but with no intent to trapan the young man, says that his life shall depend upon his being able to tell her what women most desire, and gives him a year and a day to seek an answer. He makes extensive inquiries, but there is no region in which two creatures can be found to be of the same mind, and he turns homeward very downcast.
On his way through a wood he saw a company of ladies dancing, and moved towards them, in the hope that he might learn something. But ere he came the dancers had vanished, and all he found was the ugliest woman conceivable sitting on the green. She asked the knight what he wanted, and he told her it was to know what women most desire. "Plight me thy troth to do the next thing I ask of thee, and I will tell thee." He gave his word, and she whispered the secret in his ear.
The court assembled, the queen herself sitting as justice, and the knight was commanded to say what thing women love best. He made his response triumphantly; there was no dissenting voice. But as soon as he was declared to have ransomed his life, up sprang the old woman he had met in the wood. She had taught the man his answer, he had plighted his word to do the first thing she asked of him, and now she asked him to make her his wife. The promise was not disputed, but the poor youth begged her to make some other request; to take all he had in the world, and let him go. She would not yield, and they were married the next day. When they have gone to bed, the old wife, "smiling ever mo," rallies her husband for his indifference, and lectures him for objecting to ugliness, age, and vulgar birth, which things, she says, are a great security for him, and then gives him his election, to have her ugly and old as she is, but true, or young and fair, with the possible contingencies. The knight has the grace to leave the decision to her. "Then I have the sovereignty," she says, "and I will be both fair and good; throw up the curtain and see." Fair and young she was, and they lived to their lives' end in perfect joy.
Chaucer has left out the step-mother and her bewitchment, and saves, humbles, and rewards the young knight by the agency of a good fairy; for the ugly old woman is evidently such by her own will and for her own purposes. She is "smiling ever mo," and has the power, as she says, to set all right whenever she pleases. Her fate is not dependent on the knight's compliance, though his is.
The Wife of Bath's Tale is made into a ballad, or what is called a sonnet, 'Of a Knight and a Fair Virgin,' in The Crown Garland of Golden Roses, compiled by Richard Johnson, not far from 1600: see the Percy Society reprint, edited by W. Chappell, vol. vi of the series, p. 68. Upon Chaucer's story is founded Voltaire's tale, admirable in its way, of Ce qui plaît aux Dames, 1762; of which the author writes, 1765, November 4, that it had had great success at Fontainebleau in the form of a comic opera, entitled La Fée Urgèle.[291] The amusing ballad of The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter has much in common with the Wife of Bath's Tale, and might, if we could trace its pedigree, go back to a common original.[292]
Tales resembling the Marriage of Gawain must have been widely spread during the Middle Ages. The ballad of 'King Henry' has much in common with the one now under consideration, and Norse and Gaelic connections, and is probably much earlier. At present I can add only one parallel out of English, and that from an Icelandic saga.
Grímr was on the verge of marriage with Lopthæna, but a week before the appointed day the bride was gone, and nobody knew what had become of her. Her father had given her a step-mother five years before, and the step-mother had been far from kind; but what then? Grímr was restless and unhappy, and got no tidings. A year of scarcity coming, he left home with two of his people. After an adventure with four trolls, he had a fight with twelve men, in which, though they were all slain, he lost his comrades and was very badly wounded. As he lay on the ground, looking only for death, a woman passed, if so she might be called; for she was not taller than a child of seven years, so stout that Grímr's arms would not go round her, misshapen, bald, black, ugly, and disgusting in every particular. She came up to Grímr, and asked him if he would accept his life from her. "Hardly," said he, "you are so loathsome." But life was precious, and he presently consented. She took him up and ran with him, as if he were a babe, till she came to a large cave; there she set him down, and it seemed to Grímr that she was uglier than before. "Now pay me for saving your life," she said, "and kiss me." "I cannot," said Grímr, "you look so diabolical." "Expect no help, then, from me," said she, "and I see that it will soon be all over with you." "Since it must be, loath as I am," said Grímr, and went and kissed her; she seemed not so bad to kiss as to look at. When night came she made up a bed, and asked Grímr whether he would lie alone or with her. "Alone," he answered. "Then," said she, "I shall take no pains about healing your wounds." Grímr said he would rather lie with her, if he had no other chance, and she bound up his wounds, so that he seemed to feel no more of them. No sooner was Grímr abed than he fell asleep, and when he woke, he saw lying by him almost the fairest woman he had ever laid eyes on, and marvellously like his true-love, Lopthæna. At the bedside he saw lying the troll-casing which she had worn; he jumped up and burned this. The woman was very faint; he sprinkled her with water, and she came to, and said, It is well for both of us; I saved thy life first, and thou hast freed me from bondage. It was indeed Lopthæna, whom the step-mother had transformed into a horrible shape, odious to men and trolls, which she should never come out of till a man should consent to three things,—which no man ever would,—to accept his life at her hands, to kiss her, and to share her bed. Gríms saga loðinkinna, Rafn, Fornaldar Sögur, II, 143-52.
Sir Frederic Madden, in his annotations upon this ballad, 'Syr Gawayne,' p. 359, remarks that Sir Steven, stanza 31, does not occur in the Round Table romances; that Sir Banier, 32, is probably a mistake for Beduer, the king's constable; and that Sir Bore and Sir Garrett, in the same stanza, are Sir Bors de Gauves, brother of Lionel, and Gareth, or Gaheriet, the younger brother of Gawain.
'The Marriage of Sir Gawaine,' as filled out by Percy from the fragments in his manuscript, Reliques, 1765, III, 11, is translated by Bodmer, I, 110; by Bothe, p. 75; by Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen Alt-Englands, p. 135.