Sir Perceval of Galles

Unique manuscript copy

The story of Sir Perceval of Galles is found in a single manuscript of the fifteenth century: Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript, which dates to around 1440. There are no known printed versions prior to nineteenth and twentieth century transcriptions of this unique manuscript text. The story is told in 2,288 lines, arranged in sixteen-line stanzas rhyming aaabcccbdddbeeeb, and was probably composed in the northeast Midlands of England, although the entire Thornton Manuscript is influenced by the North Yorkshire dialect of its copyist, the manor lord and amateur scribe Robert Thornton. The poem itself probably dates to the early fourteenth century.

Plot

Like the boy Perceval in Chrétien de Troyes' romance Perceval, le Conte du Graal, the hero of Sir Perceval of Galles is brought up alone in the forest by his mother. He is the son of Sir Perceval and King Arthur's sister Acheflour (probably a corruption of Blancheflour). Sir Perceval the father was a valiant knight who was killed in combat by a dastardly Red Knight and in grief at her husband’s death, and in distress at the thought that her baby might grow up to share this same fate, Acheflour retires into the forest to bring up her young son in seclusion, away from all the temptations of arms.

Wielding of arms is in the boy’s blood, however. His mother gives him, when he is old enough, a small hunting spear, the only weapon that she had brought into the forest with her. Soon the young boy Perceval is filling his mother’s table with all the game of the forest. No animal is safe from him, we are told. Then one day, in a way which shows that perhaps Sir Perceval of Galles is itself a parody, and in line with the pieces of good advice given to the young Perceval in Chretien’s tale which all lead him into error, Perceval’s mother tells him to honour the ‘great God’. Soon afterwards, Perceval encounters Sir Gawain, Sir Yvain and Sir Kay riding through the forest and asks them if any of them is the Great God whom his mother has told him about, who created the world in six days. Sir Kay, characteristically, is rude to the boy, but Sir Gawain engages him politely and tells him that they are called knights. Perceval immediately wishes to become a knight himself.

The first part of this Middle English tale follows Chretien de Troyes’ story quite accurately, although in abridged form and laced with comic touches at the boy’s expense. Perceval goes home to his mother with the intention of riding to King Arthur’s court to be made a knight. On the way he sees a clearing full of horses so, knowing now that knights ride horses, he captures one of them and rides it home. Perceval’s mother looks in horror and asks him why he is riding a mare. Perceval now imagines that all horses are called mares; a joke that will run throughout the story. The next morning Perceval rides his mare into King Arthur’s court, where he positions the animal so closely to the king that it nuzzles against King Arthur’s face as he eats. A red knight enters the court, insults the king and takes a goblet. Perceval rides out and kills this knight with his hunting spear, intending to be knighted by King Arthur for doing so. Before arriving at King Arthur’s court, Perceval has already taken a ring from the finger of a sleeping maiden, exchanging it with his own, believing himself to be acting in accordance with the advice that his mother gave to him on his departure.

This ring will prove to be very important. From now on, however, the Middle English tale departs wildly from Chretien’s story. The Red Knight has arrived during Perceval's visit to the king, not before it, as in Chrétien's tale. Quickly following his defeat of the Red Knight, and having thus unknowingly exacted revenge for his father’s death, Perceval tries to remove the dead knight’s armour. Unable to do so through ignorance of the way that it is fastened, he prepares a fire in order to try to burn it off. Sir Gawain arrives and, seeing the boy’s difficulty, helps him to disarm the corpse. Perceval dresses himself in the armour, throws the body into the flames that are already burning, and, in a last parallel with Chrétien's tale, rides off without returning to King Arthur. Soon he encounters a witch. She is the Red Knight’s mother and, at first thinking that it is her son riding towards her, she reminds him that, if the rumours had been true and that he had been killed, she would have been able to bring him back to life again. Perceval thanks her for this warning, skewers her on his lance, rides back to the fire and throws her in with her son.

Perceval now rides off and soon encounters some relatives of his, a knight and his sons, who flee in terror; thinking, of course, that the Red Knight is pursuing them, for he is their enemy. After some comic exchanges, mistakes are rectified and they all ride back to the old knight’s castle. A messenger soon arrives, bound for King Arthur, seeking help for a lady who is besieged by a sultan:

"Mete and drynke was ther dighte, And men to serve tham full ryghte; The childe that come with the knyghte, Enoghe ther he fand. At the mete as thay beste satte, Come the portere fro the gate, Saide a man was theratte Of the Maydenlande; Saide, 'Sir, he prayes the Off mete and drynke, for charyté; For a messagere es he And may nott lange stande.'"

Food and drink was provided, men to serve everybody and Perceval found everything he needed. As they sat eating, the porter entered with news of a man at the gate who was from the Land of Maidens: 'Sir, he asks you for food and drink, for charity, for he is a messenger and cannot stay long,' the porter tells his lord. Perceval rides off to the Land of Maidens in pursuit of this quest himself: "Als he ware sprongen of a stane, thare no man hym kende," – as though he had sprung from a stone, and nobody knew him. Soon he arrives at the lady’s castle and singlehandedly kills all the soldiers besieging the castle gate. Not one of them is left alive. Their head bones ‘hop like hail’ on the grass. The next morning, exhausted by his efforts, a sleeping Perceval is spotted resting against the outer wall and brought into the castle by its occupants to meet a delighted Lady Amour, who feeds him and offers him her body – provided, of course, that he can complete the destruction of her enemies. Very quickly, another Saracen force gathers and Perceval rides out to meet them. This force, too, is quickly routed by Perceval. Their blows bounce off him as though they are striking at a stone.

As Perceval surveys the carnage around him, however, four more knights appear. He rides to meet them and one approaches to engage him in combat. It is Sir Gawain. King Arthur has arrived, having heard from the messenger that a knight had already ridden off in pursuit of the quest and, guessing from his description and from Sir Gawain's account that it is the young Perceval, had ridden fiercely in pursuit. Sir Gawain and Perceval strike one another once, Perceval expresses his astonishment at the blow, Sir Gawain recognizes once again the armour he helped to dress Perceval in and they all retire into the castle where King Arthur knights the young Perceval and Lady Amour bemoans his lack of manners. Soon, the sultan arrives outside the castle. Sir Perceval rides out to meet him. The sultan is, of course, vanquished. Sir Perceval marries Lady Amour.

Only a few days after his marriage to Lady Amour, however, Sir Perceval rides off to find his mother. Soon, he encounters the woman whose ring he exchanged for his own. The explanation for his superhuman prowess is now explained. The ring is a magic ring. Whoever wears it cannot be killed.

Perceval offers to exchange this ring once again for his own and returns the magic ring to the lady. But he is told that a giant now possesses the ring that his mother had given to him, so Perceval rides off to seek this giant, finds him and defeats him by cutting off his head. Then he goes to the giant's castle to look for the ring. But the giant’s servant tells Perceval that when the giant went wooing Perceval’s mother, wearing the ring that she had given to her son, she recognized it and, thinking that her son must therefore be dead, went mad and ran into the forest to live, like a wild beast. Perceval immediately goes into the forest to search for his mother, finds her at a spring and carries her, on his back, to the castle, where she is given an infusion that restores her to her senses. Perceval then brings his mother to his wife’s castle to live and Perceval dies in the Holy Land, fighting for Christendom, we are told, as the story reaches its conclusion.

Parody

Sir Perceval of Galles is written in the style of a parody and it may be for this reason that Geoffrey Chaucer chose it as the basis for his own parody of chivalric romance – that "the poem provided an impetus as well as an object for Chaucer's satire." Chaucer's tale of Sir Thopas involves a young man who, like the eponymous hero of the Breton lai Guigemar, is uninterested in women. Guigemar, in the Breton lai by Marie de France, is involved in a serious hunting accident in the forest and is then taken on a bed in a mysterious boat with candles at its prow to a place where he is healed of his wound, and to a beautiful woman whom he falls in love with. Sir Thopas fully deserves to be killed in an accident in the forest, as he gallops like a maniac through the trees, but no accident occurs. Chaucer's story has him instead, rather like the naive and boyish Sir Perceval of Galles, intent upon fulfilling a quest that he has given himself.

Sir Thopas has vowed that he will marry an Elf Queen. So he is careering through the forest looking for one. At last, he seems to enter an Otherworld, because in front of him is a giant. The giant tells Sir Thopas that he has indeed entered a magic place, and:

"But-if thou prike out of myn haunt, Anon I slee thy stede With mace. Heer is the queen of Fayërye, With harpe and pype and simphonye, Dwelling in this place."

Unless you spur your horse out of my haunt, I will quickly kill it with my club. For here dwells the Queen of Faerie, with all sorts of beautiful music to soothe her. And just as Sir Thopas stumbles upon his Elf Queen in an enchanted forest, so Sir Perceval finds, and marries, his Lady Amour in a Land of Maidens.

Mythology

The Otherworld, in the myths and folktales that have come down to us from ancient Ireland, can be reached inside a hill, or through the depths of a lake, or across the sea in a Land of Youth. Oisín, the son of Finn mac Cumhail, is taken across the sea to the Land of Youth by Niamh, the daughter of the king of that country, and he returns to Ireland a few weeks later only to find that many hundreds of years have passed in his absence. Bran, in a tale recounted in the twelfth century Old Irish Book of the Dun Cow, is visited by a mysterious woman urging him to sail to a Land of Women. She is carrying an apple bough – like the sybil carrying a bough who escorts Aeneas down into the underworld in Virgil's epic poem, the Aeneid; the sybil who leads Aeneas to his dead father who shows him all the Trojan souls ready to be reborn in the new city of Rome that his son will found. This mysterious woman urges Bran to set sail for a Land of Women, and on his return Bran, too, finds that many hundreds of years have passed in Ireland during his absence. Connla, in another Irish tale, is given an apple by a mysterious woman and a month later, is visited by her again. She urges him to come with her to her country: "Come into my shining ship... though the bright sun is going down, we shall reach to that country before night." she calls. "There is no living race in it but women and girls only." Connla went into her boat, and was never seen again.

The night before he is killed, Bjorn dreams that a woman or a goddess wearing an arm ring is beckoning him home, in the thirteenth century Icelandic Bjorns Saga. In the thirteenth century Saga of Hallfred Troublesome-Poet, a supernatural woman is seen from a boat, walking across the water as Hallfred lies dying on board. She is his "fetch".

Medieval Romance

A Land of Maidens in an Otherworld is not restricted to ancient Irish tales. A Middle English dream vision known as The Isle of Ladies recounts a dreamer's visit to a magical island where only women live. The island is made of glass, like an Otherworldly island in another Old Irish tale from the Book of the Dun Cow, in which the voyager Máel Dúin sails a mysterious ocean, landing at one time on an island of glass in which a lady lives with a magic, grail-like pail, and another time on an Island of Women.

The dreamer who visits the medieval English Isle of Ladies encounters his own lady on a glass island. She has accompanied the queen of this isle from another island where apples grow, apples that sustain the longevity of these ladies. The name Avalon has been derived from "island of apples", and a boat full of ladies came to take the mortally-wounded King Arthur to Avalon in Malory's tale. And earlier in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, in his Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones, a tournament is arranged beside a Castle of Maidens. Sir Tristram has recently emerged from a spell of madness, living in a forest as a derelict following emotional turmoil involving his beloved Isolde; rather as Sir Yvain lives in the forest as a derelict after separating from his wife, in Chretien de Troyes Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, and Sir Orfeo for ten years after being separated from his, before following her into the Otherworld from which he rescues her. Like Sir Orfeo and Sir Yvain, and like Sir Perceval of Galles when he enters the Land of Maidens wearing the armour of the Red Knight and riding as though he has sprung from a stone, Sir Tristram takes on a disguise following his life in the forest. Sir Tristram, who has recently killed a giant, conceals his identity outside the Castle of Maidens, fighting at this tournament in black arms, and many wonder who he is. At this same tournament, Sir Lancelot, who is not a Cornish knight, is wearing a Cornish shield that might more properly identify Sir Tristram.

The hero Floris, in the twelfth century romance Floris and Blancheflour, finds his beloved Blancheflour, whose tomb he has just opened and found to be empty, in a tower of ladies whose garden is just like the garden of Paradise that had been depicted upon the tomb. This tower, however, is in Babylon, and Blancheflour has been purchased by the very real Emir of Babylon to add to his harem. Before leaving in search of Blancheflour, Floris is given a ring by his mother, a ring that makes him invulnerable to death.

Magic ring

Sir Perceval of Galles steals a ring from the finger of a sleeping lady he finds in a pavilion, one which he later learns has made him invulnerable to death. A similar ring occurs in the fourteenth century Middle English romance Sir Eglamour of Artois. Sir Eglamour is given this ring, that makes him unable to be killed while he is wearing it, in return for saving the daughter of the King of Sidon from the unwelcome attentions of a giant. He gives the ring to his true love Christabel who is carrying their son, and when she is later put in an open boat and set adrift by her angry father, she and her newborn baby are safely carried – in the case of the baby by a griffin – to a new life in a distant land.

Sir Gareth is given a magic ring by a damsel of Avalon, in The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur; a ring that not only makes him invulnerable to losing any blood at a tournament he is about to attend, but which will cause him to take on many different colours, one after the other, in the jousting, so allowing him to disguise himself.

Rings endowed with special properties were significant in pagan Scandinavia. A tenth-century pagan Icelandic chieftain had a temple in which an arm ring rested upon an "altar", and upon which all oaths in the district were to be sworn, according to the thirteenth century Eyrbyggja Saga. The Prose Edda, written in Iceland in the thirteenth century, relates the myth of Balder, how he was deceived into being killed and how his attempted rescue from the Scandinavian underworld brought back a gold ring that Odin had laid on Balder's burning funeral ship; a gold ring that subsequently spawned eight gold rings like itself every ninth night. Odin was also involved with a gold ring that the dwarf Andvari cursed, when Odin and Loki stole it, in a medieval Icelandic retelling from ancient poetry of the Saga of the Volsungs. This ring was later recovered by Sigurd from the dragon Fafnir and he inherited its curse, in a sequence of events that involves Sigurd changing shapes with his brother-in-law Gunnar.