THE GREENE KNIGHT: FOOTNOTES

1 In return for a similar stroke at his neck twelve months from this day

2 If (the concealment of) the lace had not happened

THE GREENE KNIGHT: NOTES

Abbreviations: P = Percy Folio; BP= Bishop Percy's marginal notes in the MS; M = Madden's edition; F = Furnivall's edition. See Select Bibliography for these editions.


First Part The first fitt or section of the poem is not marked by a rubric in the manuscript; I have added a rubric here to correspond with the one the scribe adds after line 258.

2 all att. M prints att all; though a blot in the MS makes the reading indistinct, it appears that att follows all.

   leadinge. M disregards the final stoke and prints leading.

10 strove of. I follow BP; F reads strong of, then inserts strove as initial word of line 11.

12 Arthur's founding of a round table in order to prevent squabbling among his knights about rank, about who "bygan the highe dese" (Ragnelle, line 601), is mentioned first in Geoffrey of Monmouth. Cornwall begins with Guenevere's demurral concerning Arthur's statement to Gawain that his is "one of the fairest Round Tables / That ever you see with your eye" (lines 3-4).

22 on head. P: & head; I emend for sense, following F.

27 puissance. Through Shakespeare's time, this word is used to designate a crowd or force of people.

28 they. P: the; F: thé. I emend to they here and in lines 159, 199, 225, 240, 243, 246, 307, 308, 312, 430, 494, and 497.

31 came and went. P: came went; I follow F's emendation.

39 in the west countrye. The poem sets its action in the northwest midlands, near the Welsh border, with localized references to Hatton and Delamere Forest (see lines 87 and 493 and notes). Arthur's court nonetheless remains at Carlisle (line 85); despite the impression of proximity offered in the poem, this would have been a long northern journey for Sir Bredbeddle.

41 mickele. M: mickel.

43 his wiffe. P: wis wiffe; I follow F's emendation.

49 Agostes. So far as I know, this name does not occur elsewhere in Arthurian literature, though the connection between her supernatural powers of witchcraft and the consonance of Agostes with `ghostly' is striking. Agostes' counterpart in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Morgan le Fay, is called `Argante' in Layamon's Brut (see note at line 169).

54 lightt. The manuscript is indistinct; M prints light, reading only a single "t" in the tangle of strokes. The tail rhyme is clearly defective in the stanza, and lightt may have crept in through analogy with rhymes in lines 60, 63, 66, 69, and 72. BP suggested a variation on "lythe," a word for trunk or body which would rhyme with frythe (line 57); licham (spelled "lygham" in Alliterative Morte Arthure, lines 3281, 3286), also meaning body, would fit still better, making the phrase an alliterative tag. The scribe or a later reader seems to have overwritten the "g," but no amount of straining produces a certain or convincing reading.

62 That which she. P: that theye which; M: Yt the witch (emending the MS, which he reads as they wch); I follow F's emendation.

70 Gawaines points three. Gawain's three points are his boldness, his courtesy, and his hardiness.

79 a jolly sight. Though Bredbeddle's "horsse and armour was all greene" (line 80), the magic by which Agostes "transpose[s]" his "likenesse" does not seem to transform his person (lines 53, 56); the porter notes that "his vesture is greene" (line 105), and when he meets Gawain for the return blow, Bredbeddle has "transposed him in another array, / Before as it was greene" (lines 442-43). This distinguishes him from the marvelous intruder of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, who (although he bears no arms or armor) is not simply dressed in green, but is "overal enkergrene" (line 150; everywhere bright green) right down to his hair and skin; the uncanny, and potentially mythic or supernatural, character of that Green Knight separates him from Bredbeddle, and helps mark the radical difference in atmosphere and effect between the two poems. See also line 109 and note, below.

87 the Forrest of Delamore. Unlike other Gawain romances, which set their adventures in Inglewood Forest near Carlisle, Greene Knight specifies places that are in "the west countrye," in particular, in Cheshire. The reference here is to Delamere Forest, east and slightly north of Chester, in which local Cheshire families maintained interests; see B. M. C. Hussain, "Delamere Forest in Later Medieval Times," Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 107 (1955), 23-59, and the more general discussion of the region and its cultural life in M. J. Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). In giving Sir Bredbeddle a seemingly brief journey to Arthur's court, the poem presents his manor as bordering upon the Wirral (the peninsula that extends northwest from Chester, between the Rivers Dee and Mersey), the wilds through which Sir Gawain travels to meet the Green Knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (line 701). As the further reference to Hutton (line 493 and note) suggests, the locale has only an imaginary connection to Carlisle, despite the assertion of lines 85 and 89. The Castle of Flatting (line 86) remains unidentified.

90 fayre countrye. BP emends to countrye faire, to improve the rhyme (but not by much).

104 Heer. P: hee; BP: there is; I emend for sense.

109 the Greene Knight: As the introduction points out, Cornwall expressly refers to Sir Bredbeddle as "the Greene Knight" (lines 214, 222, 233, 267 and 285). Chivalric champions presenting themselves under the name of "Green Knight" occur in several other romances as well: in Carlisle, the son of Sir Ironside is apparently referred to as "The Knyght of Armus Grene" (line 45 and 68), and in the same poem Gawain's own livery seems green, for he throws his "manttell of grene" over the small horse of the Carl (line 353). In Malory, Gawain's brother Sir Gareth (fighting as Sir Bewmaynes) has a long encounter with the Grene Knyght (also called Sir Pertholepe; Works, pp. 305-10; 314). It is possible that within popular tradition Sir Gawain and his kin had some long-standing association with Green Knights; see note to line 64 of Carlisle.

116 a venterous. BP adds knight, and F so emends, echoing, e.g., line 104.

119 everye. M: eu ye, though it seems that M's usual abbreviation mark - an ' for er - has been omitted (see p. lxix in his edition); this appears to be a typographical error since there is space within the word as printed for the mark to have been added.

169 your sisters sonne. Gawain's mother is Arthur's half-sister and the wife of King Lot of Lothian and Orkney, variously called Morgause (in Malory) or Anna. She is mother also of Mordred (by Arthur), and sister to Morgan le Fay, who in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight sponsors the transformation of the Green Knight. Morgan is therefore the counterpart of the witch Agostes (line 49), who in the present poem is also the Green Knight's mother-in-law.

181 it. M: itt.

220 perill. M: pil, with a stroke through the descender of the p as an abbreviation mark for er (see his edition, p. lxix).

235 courtt. P: covett; I follow BP's suggested emendation here. F reads Couett, and speculates that this may be covey from French couvée, i.e., "gathering."

242 revell. M prints karoll, emending the MS, which he reads as keuell.

246 They wold bren all the west. The off-hand character of this threat perhaps reflects its anachronistic status. Though chevauchée - the systematic devastation of resources and countryside through pillaging and burning - was a feature of chivalric warfare throughout the Middle Ages, such raids would not have been usual in the conduct of royal justice or even private war after the thirteenth century, at least in "the west." On the northern borders, including Carlisle, such destructive raids continued beyond the end of the Middle Ages.

259 The scribe brackets the stanza beginning with this line, and the accompanying rubric reads, Second parte.

280 furleys. P: furlegs; I follow F's emendation.

289 evening. P: eveing; I follow F's emendation.

304 Hee. F: He.

323 This stanza lacks its sixth line. Madden supplies a possible filler of his own devising: "Shee tooke her maids [every one,] / And to her chamber [will] gone."

325 St. Martine. St. Martin of Tours was one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages. His best known act, dividing his cape in two to share with a beggar, made him a patron of the poor and an exemplar of charity and hospitality. Perhaps his invocation here, as a welcoming gesture, reflects the nature of his cult; compare line 420 and note.

327 F labels this as line 328, and his numeration is consequently off by a single line from here to the poem's end. Subsequent citations will refer to actual line numbers (as in the present edition) rather than to F's numbers.

348 frauce. This word is apparently not recorded in the OED or MED. The meaning, "uproar, noise," seems clear, though the origin is not. MED lists the apparently onomatopoeic verb fracchen or frashen, "to make a harsh or strident noise," but gives no cognate noun. F connects it to French frais, "noise," but it seems more likely connected to French fracas, as in modern English "fracas," i.e., "uproar, row."

396 a lace of silke. This phrase vividly recalls the third encounter between Gawain and Lady Bertilak in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where she offers him her "girdel," "a lace" adorned with "grene sylke" (lines 1829 ff.). This lace is not a garment, but an elaborately worked, ornamental braid used as a cincture or belt, or perhaps as a fastener (as in "shoelace"). Lace meaning cloth worked in delicate patterns seems not to occur in medieval English, and (like "girdle" before twentieth-century American usage) it has no association with intimate apparel; a luflace (as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, lines 1874, 2438) is simply an accessory of dress, though perhaps especially appropriate as a love token because of its woven, interlaced character. In Middle English, lace seems to have had as a primary meaning "net" or "snare." Both here and in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, therefore, the repetition of the word may entail a suggestive pun; see R. A. Shoaf, The Poem as Green Girdle: "Commercium" in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984).

400 noe. F: no.

401 upon. I follow F, based upon his glimpsing of a stroke in the manuscript that BP did not see.

418 heer. P: heers; I emend for sense and meter.

420 St. Leonard. St. Leonard of Noblac (near Limoges) was widely celebrated as the patron of captives, peasants, pregnant women, and the sick. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the invocation of particular saints seems at times coordinated to specific moments in the narrative, though the linking of St. Leonard to the exchange here is not clear. See line 325 above and note.

434 Att. M: At; the MS is no longer clearly legible, though the spacing seems to support Att.

449 evyes. P: euyes. According to BP, probably "ivies," but conceivably "yews."

459 shontest. The interchangability of letter forms makes it possible to read this as "shoutest" (as does Madden). It is a further recollection of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight where, when Gawain "schranke a lytel" from the Green Knight's stroke, the latter held back with "wyth a schunt" (line 2268). In reply to the Green Knight's taunt, "Thou art not Gawayn . . . that is so goud halden" [so highly esteemed], Gawain replies, "I schunt onez, / And so wyl I no more" (lines 2270 ff.).

461 feete. P: ffeete; I emend to single initial f rather than capitalize as in lines 352 and 405.

488 nicked her with nay. This vivid alliterative formula occurs frequently in late medieval poetry; see Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, lines 706 and 2471, and Gawain and Gologras, line 115 and note.

493 the Castle of Hutton. Hutton (and Hatton) are relatively common place and family names. F suggests this is Hutton manorhouse, in Somerset. Given the other localizing details of Greene Knight (see lines 39, 85 ff. and notes, above), it seems more likely that the reference here is to Hatton in Cheshire, some seven miles north of the Delamere Forest. It is perhaps worth noting that there is a Hutton in Inglewood Forest, Cumberland; it is the neighboring village to Hesket, the parish that contains the Tarn Wathelene. Madden considers this the locale intended, and says the "whole of the territory hereabout was romance-ground" (p. 354).

502 Knights of the Bathe. This allusion parallels the insertion of the motto of the Order of the Garter at the conclusion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which was written only a generation after the Order was founded in the 1340's. Unlike the Garter, which was a formal Order with statutes and distinctive garb, the category "Knights of the Bath" seems to have been used simply to designate knights of special eminence; often this high rank may have been based upon receiving knighthood from the sovereign's hand after an elaborate, ritualized ceremony (including bathing). Froissart makes this connection explicit in his account of the coronation of Henry IV (1399); on that occasion, with full ceremony, the king created forty-six Knights of the Bath. Particular customs - for example, the removal of a white silken shoulder lace or insignia - became associated with the Knights of the Bath. Nonetheless, the formal Order of the Bath was founded only in 1725 by King George I. John Anstis, who wrote a Historical Essay Upon the Knighthood of the Bath (London, 1725) and produced the statutes of the Order, made much use of these historical traditions that preceded the actual founding, though he seems not to have known about the allusion in Greene Knight. As noted in the Introduction to this poem, Sir John Paston owned a copy of a poem entitled "the Greene Knyght"; in addition, in a separate volume (his "boke off knyghthod"), he owned a description of "Hou Knyghtis of the Bath shulde be made," a detailed formulary specifying just what "our soveraigne lord" the king must do to create knights of this rank. A scribe or reader, finding these volumes side by side in Sir John's library, might well have been struck by similarities between the actual ceremonies of fifteenth-century knighthood and the fictional portrayal in Greene Knight, and may have decided to add this "historical" allusion. For a full discussion of this ceremonial, see G. A. Lester, Sir John Paston's "Grete Boke" (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1984), pp. 80-83; Lester's account of this "boke off knyghthod" sheds much light on the links between chivalric romance, the ideals and rituals of chivalric behavior, and the role of courtesy, violence, and political manoeuvering in the lives of a late medieval knight and his associates. James C. Risk, in The History of the Order of the Bath and Its Insignia (London, 1972), provides a full account of the Order's origins. The use of an Arthurian poem to lend authority to such "Ancient Ceremonials" makes clear how this chivalric material is rewritten for the interests of each generation and audience.

weare. F prints wear.

516 Finis. F: ffins.