EARLY ROMANCES

 

From George Saintsbury's Short History of English Literature (1907):

 

CHAPTER V

EARLY ROMANCES: ALLITERATIVE

 

Gawain and the Green Knight — The Awntyrs of Arthur — William of Palerme — Joseph of Arimathea — The Thornton Morte d'Arthure — The Destruction of Troy — The Pistyl of Susan. 

The interesting phenomenon of the revival of alliteration, the facts and causes of which in the early fourteenth century have been more than once referred to, naturally had its chief exercising ground in the field of Romance. The most remarkable of all English alliterative poems later than Anglo-Saxon times, the Vision concerning Piers the Plowman, falls for treatment in the next Book, and a good many others date only from the fifteenth century. But not a little interesting work belongs to the time of this chapter. (1).

(1). The greater part of the work mentioned in this chapter will be found in the following collections, some  of which include much else. One or two pieces which occur by themselves will, as before ,be noted later:—

(a) Pinkerton (J.). Scottish Poems, Edinburgh, 1792, which gives a version, with altered title, of the Awntyrs of Arthur.

(b) Lang (D.). Ancient and Popular Poetry of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1822, and thrice reprinted since, including the Pistyll of Susan and the Awntyrs.

(c) Madden (Sir Frederick), Sir Gawayne (Bannatyne Club, 1839), giving Gawayne and the Green Knight, the Awntyrs, etc.

(d) Robson (J.). Three Metrical Romances (Camden Society, 1842), containing a thrid text of the Awntyrs. 

(e) Amours (F. J.). Scottish Alliterative Poems (Scottish Text Society, 1897) containing the Pistyl of Susan and the Awntyrs. 

Much of the introductory matter of these books is occupied with a discussion of the authorship of these poems, into which it is impossible here to enter fully, but of which so much has been made that a slight notice of it, with the present writer's own conclusions, may justly be expected. Wyntoun, the verse chronicler (vide Book iv.), dealing with a disputed point in Arthurian matters, cites a certain "Huchowne," describing him as "of the Awle Ryale," and saying that

He made the great geste of Arthure,

And the Awntyrs of Gawane

The Pistyl also of sweet Susane.

This has set the speculative commentators off at an almost interminable score. Huchowne (Hutcheon, Huchon, the usual French accusative-diminutive of Hugh or Hughes) has been erected into a great poet of the thirteenth century, the earliest (or the earliest next to Thomas the Rhymer) of known Scottish poets, and has been endowed with all, or more, or fewer of such early alliterative poems as are known to be or may possibly be of his time, the amplest appanage including  Gawayne and the Green Knight, the three alliterative religious pieces notices at the end of Chap. iii [Pearl, Cleanliness and Patience], the Pistyl, the Awntyres, an alliterative Morte d'Arthure, also contained in the Thornton MS., and what not. In argument for and against this the stores of dialect, allusion, diction, and the like have been literally ransacked, with the most contradictory results. Those interested in the matter may be referred to the introductions in question. We may here safely say three things—(1) Nothing is known of "Huchowne" save from Wyntoun, and Wyntoun does not say whether he was Frenchman, Englishman, or Scot, nor in what language he wrote; (2) It is not impossible that he may have written some of the poems in question, especially the extant Pistyl of Susan, which (vide infra) is at least as old as 1380; (3) There is no evidence that he wrote this or any other.

The most intrinsically interesting examples of Alliterative Romance are beyond doubt Gawain and the Green Knight (1) and William of Palerne  or William and the Werewolf. 

(1) Re-edited after Madden by Professor Skeat for the E.E.T.S.

Gawain and the Green Knight.

The former may, like the latter, have had a French original, but none such is known, and it stands at the head of an interesting group of Gawain Romances, which it is not fantastic to associate with Cumbrian rather than Welsh or Armorican traditions, but which are certainly Celtic in character. (2). 

(2). Gawain, unlike Lancelot, appears in the earliest handling of the story; and Welsh authorities always strive to put him above his rival This is most curiously illustrated in the late Welsh version of the Graal story, Y Seint Graal (London 1876).

Of Gawain I have already observed that the identity of its author with him of the interesting Pearl group is not, according to my notions of literary evidence, proven; but it is not impossible. The poem consists of rather more than 2500 lines, in a curious irregular sort of stanza, consisting of an uncertain number (from sixteen to twenty), mostly unrhymed, unmetred, but somewhat dactylically rhythmed "four-accent" lines regularly alliterated, terminating with what Guest has made it usual to term a "bob and wheel," that is to say, a single foot iambic and an eight-or six-syllabled quatrain—the five rhymed ababa. This scheme, which, with variations, is not uncommon, seems to show that some revivers of alliteration themselves felt that it could not be depended upon entirely alone—that it must be backed by the charms of metre and rhyme.

Even in this poem, the best of its kind, the fatal danger of alliteration—that the selection, or at worst invention, of the "rhyme-words" is too often solely determined by their sound, not their sense—makes itself painfully felt. But the auth'rs power is very much greater than that of most of his competitors in metre or in alliteration, and the story is one of singular interest and force. It opens with a few touches suggesting the very old and popular piece (also a Gawain one) of the Chevalier au Lyon or Ywain, but soon all resemblance ceases. Gawain (who in all this group, as in the earlier romances generally, is not represented as the light o' love which the French and Germans made him) undertakes, when others quail, the adventure of a perilous "Green Knight" who enters Arthur's hall ubidden and who challenges any one to give him a buffet and bide one in turn. The king's nephew fetches a swashing blow with his battleaxe and beheads the knight clean, but the trunk picks the head up, mounts the green steed with it in hand, and departs after the lips of the severed head have given Gawain his venue at the Green Chapel on New Year's day twelvemonth. When the appointment draws near Gawain arms himself splendidly and rides alone through England to North Wales in quest of his doom. He is royally guested at a castle where the knight welcomes him warmly, and the lady even more so, and where he is told that the Green Chapel is close at hand. His host proposes a bargain—that they shall exchange whatever they gain in hunting or otherwise—and Gawain grants it. The host hunts with great  success, but Gawain stays at home. He is tempted by the chatelaine, but resists so far as only to take a kiss. He keeps his word on receiving the host's game by giving him a kiss, though he will not (as indeed he need not) tell him where he got it. A second day witnesses the same events; but on the third the lady, who now very nearly overcomes the knight's steadfastness, forces on him her girdle, which has the virtue of making the wearer invulnerable. This temptation is too much for him when he thinks of his perilous adventure, and he takes it (with "kisses three") under promise of secrecy. Accordingly when swapping-time comes (This is no slang—the word "swap" is in the text) he gives his host the kisses, but says nothing about the girdle. The reader anticipates the result. The host is the Green Knight, though not even at the last, when in his fantastic garb he meets Gawain and deals the deadly blow, does he reveal this. Gawain flinches ("shunts") at the first stroke, but manfully bides another, which only gives him a flesh wound. He draws his sword, prepared to fight it out as the wager is accomplished, but the knight leans calmly on his axe and reveals the truth. He and his wife agreed to tempt Gawain, who came out scatheless except in his acceptance, thorugh caution, if not exactly cowardice, of the girdle-lace, and his failure to give it up according to compact. Therefore he saved his life, but lost his blood. The knight, Bernlac de Hautdesert (who is one of Morgane la Faye's) forgives him, gives him the lae, and all ends happily. The hight and yet not mawkish morality of the piece is well matched by the telling, and the romance is certainly one of our very best.

 

The Awntyrs of Arthur

The still more curious, though as literature inferior, Anturs or Awntyrs (adventures) of Arthur at the Tarne Watheling (Tarn Wadling in Cumberland), but for it strong and regular alliteration, might have been been put in the last chapter [on metrical romances]. For here the unrhymed tirades of the Green Knight became regular nine-lined stanzas, rhymed (rather imperfectly, it is true) abbababc. There is no "bob," but the "wheel" consists of a triplet and singleton rhymed dddc. The story opens in a strange and promising manner with the apparition to Gawain and the Queen of a specially loathly spirit, the ghost of Guinevere's mother, to give her good advice, and this is told with some power; but the romanc then declines into an ordinary fight between Gawain and Sir Galleron of Galway. We have three texts of it in the Douce, Thornton, and Ireland-Blackburne MSS. respectively; and all three have been printed in the collections referred to in the note at the beginning of this chapter. The language is in no case "Scots"—indeed, as we shall see later, it could not be; but it is in all Northern,, like that of almost the whole of the poems of this group, and in at least one form, that of the Ireland-Blackburne version it is distinctly uncomely, not to say barbarous, thouh this rather suits the grisliness of the ghost. 

 

William of Palerne

William and the Werewolf, or William of Palerne (Ed. Skeat, E.E.T.S.), less original, so far as we know, than the Green Knight, but pretty freely adapted from its extant French model, is in plain and unadulterated "four-accent" verses, directly comparable with Piers Plowman, of the oldest version of which it may be ten or fifteen years the elder. The story of a missing heir fostered by a werewolf, who is himself the victim of machinations, is interesting, and the execution sometimes capital. Indeed, it is superior to the Green Knight itself in one point, the rejection of uncouth or manufactured words for the mere sake of alliteration. 

 

Joseph of Arimathea

Two important Arthurian poems, one certainly and the other very probably dating from this period, belong to the plain unrhymed and unstamped variety of alliterative verse. One of these is on Joseph of Arimathea (Ed. Skeat, E.E.T.S.), and the other is the long alliterative Morte d'Arthure of the Thornton MS., which has had its claims put in as the "great geste" of Huchowne. The date of this manuscript is, as has been said, much later than our present period: but in view of its other contents this is no argument. The Joseph is contained in the Vernon MS., and therefore certainly ours here. 

It is of no great length—about 700 lines—and does not seem, through its incompleteness, to have been ever much longer; it is only a paraphrase of the constantly reworked legend of its subject, and it has no sepcial literary characteristics. Yet it has interest for us, like so much else, because it shows the set of the tide—not in this case the main set but an important "overfall"—in the alliterative direction, and the way in which the great "matters" of medieval interest were beig at the moment handled in England.

 

The Thornton Morte d'Arthure

The alliterative Morte d'Arthure (Ed. Perry, E.E.T.S.) is a much bigger thing, extending to over 4000 lines, nad possessed of distincter literary character. It belongs in point of matter to what may be generally called the "Brut" rather than the romance type of the Arthurian story, and busies itself, like the older versions of that story generally, with the king's wars against the Romans chiefly, ignoring the more romantic, and even the more mystical, parts of the legend almost or altogether. But it is a vigorous piece, employing the somewhat rugged and clumsy implement of verse with a sort of sword- or rather axe-play which is refreshing and effective, and calling to its aid a vocabulary well suited to the subject and style, and sufficiently individual. Few will wish for a complete literature of such poems; but we could endure  several more as good as this Morte d'Arthure. 

 

The Destruction of Troy

Among its actual companions it seems to have had pieces dealing with both the great classical subjects of medieval romance, Alexander and Troy; but the alliterative poems on the first subject  which can be probably referred to this period are but fragmentary. It is otherwise with the great Destruction of Troy (E.E.T.S., ed. Panton and Donaldson), which we possess in plainly alliterated verse, and which is not impossibly older than 1400. 

This is a huge poem of over 14,000  lines, translated with a certain amount of freedom from the popular compilation on the subject by Guido Colonna, written in a Northern or North Midland dialect,  and containing no sort of identification of author or time of composition, though attempts have been made to father it on the usual Huchowne. It is less rugged than the Morte d'Arthure, and a good deal less picturesque, though appearances are unfairly against the poet when he says in his penultimate line "Now the proses is put plainly to end," for he only means "process." On the whole, it is by no means unreadable, long as it is, and every know and then, in some of the interminable fighting, in some storm passages, in the account of the death of Ulysses at the hands of Telegonus, and in the Troilus and Briseida (3) episodes, the writer contrives to acquit himself very fairly. But it does not compare well with its chief rival in the same "matter" on the metrical side, King Alisaunder. 

(3) The retention of this form of the name is perhaps an argument for an early date. For by 1400 the authority of Chaucer would most probably have whelmed "Briseis" and "Briseida" once for all in "Cressid." Yet some think that Chaucer's Troilus is referred to.

The Pistyl of Susan

And so we come to the Pistyl of Susan, one of the smallest in bulk, but, for reasons already given and others, one of the most remarkable. It is a versification of the pleasant piece of poetical justice which, as "not found in the Hebrew" of the Book of DAniel, was turned out from the Canon into the Apocrypha of the English Bible, but is still to be found there, and was, until recent tamperings with the Lectionary, regularly read as First Lesson at Even-song in the Church of England on 22nd November. The earliest version (there are four others dating from the fifteenth century) is found in the great Vernon MS. of the Bodleian Library, one of the hugest of its kind, containing some 800 very large pages filled with religious compositions, and put by experts at no later than 1380.

Susan contains exactly 366 verses (a number perhaps not fortuitous) arranged in one of the varieties (the eight-line with bob and wheel) of the peculiar alliterated and rhymed stanzas already described. The alliteration is heavy—four alliterated and rhymed stanzas already described. The alliteration is heavy—four alliterated words being often, and I think five sometimes, crowded into a not very long line. But it is very well managed, and the poem is distintly above the average not merely of its class but of medieval verse generally. The author follows the Vulgate narrative closely as a framework, but amplifies and embroiders in the usual fashion, and occasionally breaks in with a completely original addition. The two chief of these (of unequal value) are one of the stock mediaeval gardens, with apples and pomegranates, parrots and goldfinches as serenely mingled as in the Swiss Family Robinson, and a most beautiful stanza describing the parting of Susanna and her husband Joachim:—

 

She fell down flat on the floor, her fere when she found,

Carped [spoke] to him kindly as she full well couthe (could):

"Iwis I thee wrathed never at my witand (witting),

Neither in word nor in work, in eld nor in youth."

She cowered up on her knees and kissed his hand—

"For I am damned, I not dare disparage thy mouth."

Wa never more sorrowful segge (man) by sea nor by sand,

Ne never a sorrier sight by north ne by south.

                        Then there

They took the fetters off her feet,

And ever he kissed that sweet.

"In other worlds shall we meet,"

Seid he no mair.

 

Huchowne or no Huchowne, the man who wrote that was a poet in form and in fact. Nor does his dealing "disparage" the mouth of Daniel when that youthful prophet comes to judgment and addresses the elders (indeed they richly deserved it) in language of extreme directness.

 

 

 

—oOo—