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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
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(late 14C)
Narrative poem consisting of 2530 lines of *alliterative verse. It is in four 'fitts' or sections. In the first Gawain responds to a green knight, who arrives at King *Arthur's court one Christmas and invites anyone to strike him with an axe and to receive the blow back a year later; Gawain cuts off the head of the knight, who rides away with it. In the second fitt, Gawain travels north through a wintry landscape and arrives at a castle.
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In the third, he and the green knight agree to exchange whatever the knight kills on the hunting field for whatever Gawain gets in the castle; Gawain duly trades the kisses which he wins from the knight's wife, but he withholds a magic girdle which she says will save him from violent death. In the fourth, the green knight only pretends to cut off Gawain's head but he does nick his neck in gentle rebuke over the girdle. Gawain returns to Arthur's court wearing the girdle as a sign of shame, but the courtiers are delighted and adopt it as their badge (it has been suggested that the anonymous poem may have been written to celebrate the new Order of the *Garter). In 1991, as Gawain, it was turned into an opera by Harrison Birtwistle.
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