Sir Eglamour of Artois
Encyclopedia
Sir Eglamour of Artois is a Middle English
verse romance
that was written sometime around 1350. It is a narrative poem of about 1300 lines, a tail-rhyme romance that was quite popular in its day, judging from the number of copies that have survived – four manuscripts from the 15th century or earlier and a manuscript and five printed editions from the 16th century. The poem tells a story that is constructed from a large number of elements found in other medieval romances and modern scholarly opinion has been critical of it because of this, describing it as unimaginative and of poor quality. Medieval romance as a genre, however, concerns the reworking of "the archetypal images of romance" and if this poem is viewed from a 15th century perspective as well as from a modern standpoint – and it was obviously once very popular, even being adapted into a play in 1444 – one might find a "romance [that] is carefully structured, the action highly unified, the narration lively."
The action of the story involves the hero fighting with a giant
who is fifty feet tall, a ferocious boar and a dragon
. His son is carried off as a baby by a griffin
. The mother of his son, like Emaré
and Geoffrey Chaucer's heroine Constance, is carried in an open boat to a distant land. There are scenes of non-recognition between the principal characters and a threat of incest; but after all these vicissitudes, father, son and mother are reunited at the end.
, to the seventeenth. It is also found in five 16th century printed versions. In one of the manuscripts, British Museum Egerton 2862 (c. 1400), only a fragment of the story survives:
A complete or nearly complete version of Sir Eglamour of Artois is found in these manuscripts:
Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, produced by Robert Thornton
, preserves the Arthurian romance Sir Perceval of Galles
and the popular romance Sir Isumbras
. In Cotton Caligula A.ii is found the tale of Emaré
. Like many other medieval English romances, Sir Eglamour of Artois is written in tail-rhyme verse; although it is somewhat irregular, written mostly in stanzas of the traditional twelve lines, rhyming aabccbddbeeb, although sometimes a stanza occurs of six or nine lines, sometimes of fifteen or more.
)
The medieval story of Sir Eglamour of Artois makes use of a number of themes and motifs that are found in other romances of the period. Near the very beginning of the tale the reader, or listener, is at once introduced to two of them. Sir Eglamour is in love with his overlord’s daughter. She is the child and heir of an earl. Sir Eglamour, a relatively poor knight, declares his love for Christabel and is immediately given three impossible tasks to achieve by her angry father in order to win her hand in marriage; just as Culhwch is given an impossibly long list of impossible tasks by Chief Giant Ysbaddaden in the Old Welsh Mabinogion
tale How Culhwch won Olwen
, in order to win the hand in marriage of his daughter and heir. Sir Eglamour’s first task is to take a deer from a forest far to the west, where the Celtic Otherworld is often located. The forest is surrounded by a stone wall and the deer are guarded by a giant who stands fifty feet tall. Despite these difficulties, Sir Eglamour manages to kill the principal stag of the giant’s herd and then kills the giant himself. Having achieved this first trial, Sir Eglamour returns home triumphant, carrying the giant’s head as well as that of the deer.
Annoyed at Sir Eglamour’s success, the next task that the earl gives his daughter’s suitor is to kill the Boar of Sidon, a dreadful beast that has laid waste to the area where it lives. Sir Eglamour spends a month travelling out to Sidon
where he locates this boar by seeing all the bodies of dead men strewn about the ground; in a scene that is perhaps mimicked by one featuring a Rabbit of Caerbannog
in the irreverent Monty Python movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail
. After a struggle with this boar that lasts for three days, Sir Eglamour kills the ferocious creature. His feat of bravery and skill-at-arms is noticed by the King of Sidon, who is riding nearby on the day that Sir Eglamour at last overcomes this beast. The king takes Sir Eglamour back to his castle where his daughter (beautiful, of course) is being threatened by a giant. This giant is demanding her hand in marriage and when he appears, Sir Eglamour kills him singlehandedly. The King of Sidon at once offers to confer onto Sir Eglamour all his titles and lands, as well as the hand of his daughter in marriage.
Sir Eglamour insists that he cannot stay – or in fact, it is Sir Adventurous who excuses himself in this way, since this is the name that Sir Eglamour has now assumed, without any explanation for doing so. As a departing gift, the king presents Sir Adventurous with a horse whose rider can never be toppled in any joust. His daughter, Organate, gives him a ring with the property that its wearer cannot be killed.
Sir Adventurous gratefully accepts these two gifts, Organate declares that she will wait for fifteen years for him to come for her. Sir Adventurous replies that he will have to see how things go. So he returns to Artois, reverts to his old name and presents to the earl, who is even less pleased than before to see him, the head of the boar and the head of the giant.
The third task that the earl gives Sir Eglamour is the kill a dragon
that is terrorising Rome
. Before leaving for this final test, Sir Eglamour asks for twelve weeks to recuperate and the earl’s noblemen support him in this request, so it is granted. During this time, Sir Eglamour gives Christabel a child. He also gives her the magic ring that Organate of Sidon gave to him. Then he goes off to Rome, where the dragon is soon lying dead at his feet. But he has been badly injured himself in the struggle to overcome this creature and will require many months of rest and recuperation before he can return to Artois.
Meanwhile, Christabel gives birth to a baby boy. Her father is so angry that he swears to have her killed, so he puts her into a small boat with her new-born baby and they are set adrift without food or water, at the mercy of the winds and the currents, to share a fate that is suffered also by Emaré
and by Geoffrey Chaucer’s heroine Constance in his Canterbury tale from the Man of Law. Soon they are driven onto a rock, and mother and baby go ashore to sit with the seagulls. A griffin
appears from out of nowhere and carries the baby off.
Now mother and father and son are all separated. But the reader or listener knows that they will be reunited at the end of the tale, for this is a romance; in essence a comedy, not a tragedy. The baby boy is carried to the kingdom of Israel
, where the griffin is spotted landing, stork-like, with the baby. News of this is brought to the king, the child is named Degarébel and he is raised as the king’s son. And his mother, in fact, suffers a curiously similar fate. Having set off again from the rock of seagulls, she is carried in the boat by wind and tide until she is washed ashore in Egypt
where she is found by the king of that country. She tells him who she is and is informed by the King of Egypt that she is his niece. Quite quickly, as the tale proceeds, she becomes his daughter, in a plotting device that, although clearly inconsistent with the beginning of the tale, has similarities with a new identity, following separation, taken by Emare, and by Sir Degare, by the boy Florent in the romance Octavian and by the blacksmith Sir Isumbras
. Fifteen years pass before she is made the high-ranking prize at a tournament
for would-be suitors.
Sir Eglamour has already recovered from the wound he received whilst slaying the dragon, returned home to Artois, been told the dreadful news about Christabel and after seizing control of Artois from the earl, has travelled to the Holy Land. But fifteen years have now passed and Sir Eglamour, at last, is making his way back home. Christabel is looking for a husband and is the prize at a tournament in Egypt. Her son Degarébel, in Israel, has just learned that a beautiful woman is available to wed. If he can prove his courage on the tournament field he can win her, so he is on his way to Egypt to take part in the fighting.
Of course, the inevitable happens. Just as in the Middle English Breton lai Sir Degare, Sir Degarébel marries his mother. Following recognition of the device on his shield, however, mother and son are quickly made aware of each other’s true identity and another tournament is swiftly arranged. By chance, Sir Eglamour is passing and resolves to take part in this tournament. Father and son fight together, each unaware of the other’s identity, but Sir Eglamour knocks Sir Degarébel from his horse with the flat of his sword, wins Christabel in marriage, the device on Sir Eglamour's shield gives away his identity and the romance concludes with recognition, celebration and reunion.
There is, however, one more loose end to tie up. Present at the tournament is Organate, the daughter of the King of Sidon who has been waiting for Sir Eglamour for fifteen years. But since Sir Eglamour has won Christabel in marriage, what better outcome than for Sir Degarébel, Sir Eglamour’s son, to marry Organate? He does, and the celebrations are truly joyous. They all return to Artois and the old earl falls from his tower in terror at the sight of them, and is killed.
also incorporates this element in its plot. Just like Constance, and just like Christabel in this tale of Sir Eglamour of Artois, Emaré narrowly survives death and is put instead into a boat which takes her to a distant land and a new life.
The Middle English poem, the Isle of Ladies describes a dreamer who is transported in his dream to an island where only women live, an Otherworldly island made of glass where he sees his lady love. She travels in a boat back to her own country and he travels back later with a cargo of corpses, which miraculously revive when they arrive on the further shore and seeds are put into their mouths.
in the 12th century concerns a young man named Guigemar
. Injured in a hunting accident, after making his way to a harbour that he had no idea existed, he climbs aboard a boat on which there is a bed, lies on this bed and soon the boat is underway, although there is nobody on board but himself. Burning at the boat's prow are lighted candles and, like King Arthur, this vessel takes him to a place where he will be healed of his wound.
Later in the tale, now healed, Guigemar returns to his homeland with the aid of this same boat and is followed a little while afterwards by the lady who healed him. But now that they have both crossed the sea again in the boat with candles at its prow, they are only able to recognize one another by distinguishing knots in their garments.
. The maiden is the daughter of the king of the Land of Youth and she has come to take Oisin back with her. They travel on horseback together across the waves and when Oisin returns to Ireland only a few weeks later, he finds that hundreds of years have passed there since he left. In an early-12th century Irish manuscript, the Lebor na hUidre
, Bran is visited by a mysterious female stranger holding a bough of apple blossom who urges him to sail his boat to a Land of Women, and a similar thing happens on his return. Connla is visited by a maiden, summoning him into her boat to a land of "women and girls only" and he is never seen again. A daughter of the Irish god Manannan carries her dead lover in her boat to an island, where she finds a plant that revives him.
's 8th century BC epic the Odyssey
, having suffered so much in an ocean within which he has been unable to find his way home, is at last taken to the shore of his native Ithaca in a boat that travels more quickly than a swallow in flight and completes the journey in a single night. On his return, Odysseus pretends at first to be a Cretan fugitive, then disguises himself as a beggar, then, to his own father, declares himself to be Eperitus, the son of Prince Apheidas of Alybas, who has been blown off course.
recounts the story of Elaine of Astolat
, who asks that her body be sent downstream to Westminster in a boat when she has died, holding a letter of rebuke to Sir Lancelot, whom she loved. The dominant image in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem The Lady of Shalott
, which is at least partly based upon Malory's story, is depicted in a painting
by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse
, and is one that gives expression to a mythical idea that is far older than Sir Thomas Malory.
Tristan kills a dragon that is ravaging Ireland, in the Arthurian romance set in Cornwall at the time of King Mark and set down by Thomas of Britain
in the mid-12th century, retold by Gottfried von Strassburg
in the early 13th century. Sir Lancelot kills a dragon that is living inside a tomb, in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthure.
Edmund Spenser
’s Elizabethan epic poem The Faerie Queene
describes how a Red Cross Knight defeats a dragon at a place where there is a Tree of Life and a Pool of Life, in whose waters the dead can be revived.
A Scandinavian romance has the hero go through the mouth of a dragon to reach the Otherworld.
and the head and the wings of an eagle
. Its earliest depiction can be seen in the throne room
of the Palace of Knossos
on the Mediterranean island of Crete, in Greece
, in a Minoan fresco that dates to the mid-2nd century BC.
Sir Eglamour's young son is not the only baby to be carried off by this mythical bird in medieval romance. The baby son of the Roman Emperor Octavian is seized, first of all by a lioness and then by a griffin, in the medieval romance Octavian. Lioness and baby are both carried to a distant isle by this flying creature, where the lioness is safely deposited, kills and eats the griffin and suckles the young boy as though he were her cub. Lioness and baby are accidentally found by the boy's mother, who travels on with them both into exile in the Middle East. Her other son, who was seized by an ape at the same time that his brother was seized by the lioness and then the griffin, journeys to a new life as Florent, the son of a Paris merchant. As in the tale Sir Eglamour of Artois, mother and son in Octavian are finally reunited after many years apart, and a giant is defeated during the unfolding of the tale.
wrote a work sometime around 1380 in which the poet himself is carried by an eagle up into the sky, near to the stars, to a place called the House of Fame, where he finds ancient writers and poets such as Orpheus
and Simon Magus
still living. The eagle then takes Geoffrey to a strange building built of "twigges" that revolves so frighteningly that the poet fears that even the eagle will have difficulty landing him safely into it; the building flies through the air like a stone ball from a siege engine. But the eagle carries Geoffrey safely into this revolving house and the poem ends in an ellipsis.
tells of the horror experienced by this youth who has volunteered to go to find flowers to bury the dead from an earthquake; flowers that are required during the ceremony of the burial of the dead, in this young man's world, to ease a smooth transition into the next life. In order to speed his journey, he is carried across the mountains by this giant bird, but finds himself in a land where war has left the dead unburied and uncared for, a brutal world, perhaps like that of the trenches of World War I
, a world that he can only believe is from his distant past. Hesse later went on to write the acclaimed novel Siddhartha
, exploring the life of Buddha.
, on his way to defeat a Roman army in the Alliterative Morte Arthure
. Sir Yvain kills one in Chrétien de Troyes
' Arthurian romance Yvain, the Knight of the Lion
. Sir Gawain encounters one in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle
.
Giants also abound in Greek mythology and in medieval Scandinavian myth and saga. The Icelandic outlaw Grettir encounters a giant behind a waterfall in a 13th century Icelandic tale. Odysseus encounters many giants, before returning to his home of Ithaca in the mysterious boat of King Alcinous. Hercules visits the Garden of the Hesperides in the far west of the world, near to where the giant Atlas
holds up the sky.
A magic ring that provides invulnerability to death is encountered not only in this tale of Sir Eglamour of Artois. In a 12th century romance Floris and Blancheflour
, Floris's mother gives her son a ring when he departs, disguised as a merchant, to look for the maiden Blancheflour, whose tomb he has just seen to be empty. ‘Take this ring, son. While you are wearing it, you need fear nothing. Fire will not burn you, the sea will not drown you and steel will not be able to cut you,' she urges him. And the boy Perceval, in the Middle English romance Sir Perceval of Galles
, steals a ring from the finger of a sleeping maiden, and only after having travelled to a Land of Maidens and defeated an entire Saracen army singlehandedly, does he learn that it is a magic ring that confers invulnerability to its wearer. In the late-14th century Middle English alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
, Sir Gawain refuses the offer of a ring from Sir Bertilak's amorous wife before accepting, instead, another circular adornment, a girdle, that will protect him from ever being killed, and which he wears when he goes to suffer a return stroke of the axe from the Knight of the Green Chapel.
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
verse romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
that was written sometime around 1350. It is a narrative poem of about 1300 lines, a tail-rhyme romance that was quite popular in its day, judging from the number of copies that have survived – four manuscripts from the 15th century or earlier and a manuscript and five printed editions from the 16th century. The poem tells a story that is constructed from a large number of elements found in other medieval romances and modern scholarly opinion has been critical of it because of this, describing it as unimaginative and of poor quality. Medieval romance as a genre, however, concerns the reworking of "the archetypal images of romance" and if this poem is viewed from a 15th century perspective as well as from a modern standpoint – and it was obviously once very popular, even being adapted into a play in 1444 – one might find a "romance [that] is carefully structured, the action highly unified, the narration lively."
The action of the story involves the hero fighting with a giant
Giant (mythology)
The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes of Greek mythology.In various Indo-European mythologies,...
who is fifty feet tall, a ferocious boar and a dragon
Dragon
A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...
. His son is carried off as a baby by a griffin
Griffin
The griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle...
. The mother of his son, like Emaré
Emaré
Emaré is a middle English Breton lai, a form of Mediaeval Romance poem, told in 1035 lines. The author of Emaré is unknown and exists in only one manuscript, the Cotton Caligula A. ii, which contains ten metrical narratives. Emaré seems to date from the late fourteenth century, possibly written in...
and Geoffrey Chaucer's heroine Constance, is carried in an open boat to a distant land. There are scenes of non-recognition between the principal characters and a threat of incest; but after all these vicissitudes, father, son and mother are reunited at the end.
Manuscripts
The story of Sir Eglamour of Artois was written in around 1350 and is found in six manuscript versions, four of them dating to the 15th century or earlier, one to the 16th century and one, the Percy FolioPercy Folio
The Percy Folio is a folio book of English ballads used by Thomas Percy to compile his Reliques of Ancient Poetry. Although the manuscript itself was compiled in the 17th century, some of its material goes back well into the 12th century...
, to the seventeenth. It is also found in five 16th century printed versions. In one of the manuscripts, British Museum Egerton 2862 (c. 1400), only a fragment of the story survives:
A complete or nearly complete version of Sir Eglamour of Artois is found in these manuscripts:
- Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, the Lincoln Thornton ManuscriptLincoln Thornton ManuscriptThe Lincoln Thornton Manuscript is a medieval manuscript compiled and copied by the fifteenth-century English scribe and landowner Robert Thornton. The manuscript is notable for containing single versions of important poems such as the Alliterative Morte Arthure and Sir Perceval of Galles, and...
(c. 1440) - Cambridge University Library Ff. 2.38 (c. 1460)
- British Library MS Cotton Caligula A ii (second half of the 15th century)
- British Library MS Douce 261 (1564)
- British Museum Additional 27879, the Percy Folio (c. 1650)
Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, produced by Robert Thornton
Robert Thornton (scribe)
Robert Thornton was a Yorkshire landowner, a member of the landed gentry. His efforts as an amateur scribe and manuscript compiler resulted in the preservation of many valuable works of Middle English literature, and have given him an important place in its history.-Biography:Thornton's name is...
, preserves the Arthurian romance Sir Perceval of Galles
Sir Perceval of Galles
Sir Perceval of Galles is a Middle English Arthurian verse romance whose protagonist, Sir Perceval, made his debut in medieval literature well over a hundred years before the composition of this work; in Chrétien de Troyes' final poem, the twelfth-century Old French Conte del Graal...
and the popular romance Sir Isumbras
Sir Isumbras
Sir Isumbras is a medieval metrical romance written in Middle English and found in no fewer than nine manuscripts dating to the fifteenth century...
. In Cotton Caligula A.ii is found the tale of Emaré
Emaré
Emaré is a middle English Breton lai, a form of Mediaeval Romance poem, told in 1035 lines. The author of Emaré is unknown and exists in only one manuscript, the Cotton Caligula A. ii, which contains ten metrical narratives. Emaré seems to date from the late fourteenth century, possibly written in...
. Like many other medieval English romances, Sir Eglamour of Artois is written in tail-rhyme verse; although it is somewhat irregular, written mostly in stanzas of the traditional twelve lines, rhyming aabccbddbeeb, although sometimes a stanza occurs of six or nine lines, sometimes of fifteen or more.
Plot
(This plot summary is based upon the version of the story found in British Museum MS Cotton Caligula A.iiCotton library
The Cotton or Cottonian library was collected privately by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton M.P. , an antiquarian and bibliophile, and was the basis of the British Library...
)
The medieval story of Sir Eglamour of Artois makes use of a number of themes and motifs that are found in other romances of the period. Near the very beginning of the tale the reader, or listener, is at once introduced to two of them. Sir Eglamour is in love with his overlord’s daughter. She is the child and heir of an earl. Sir Eglamour, a relatively poor knight, declares his love for Christabel and is immediately given three impossible tasks to achieve by her angry father in order to win her hand in marriage; just as Culhwch is given an impossibly long list of impossible tasks by Chief Giant Ysbaddaden in the Old Welsh Mabinogion
Mabinogion
The Mabinogion is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions...
tale How Culhwch won Olwen
Culhwch and Olwen
Culhwch and Olwen is a Welsh tale about a hero connected with Arthur and his warriors that survives in only two manuscripts: a complete version in the Red Book of Hergest, ca. 1400, and a fragmented version in the White Book of Rhydderch, ca. 1325. It is the longest of the surviving Welsh prose...
, in order to win the hand in marriage of his daughter and heir. Sir Eglamour’s first task is to take a deer from a forest far to the west, where the Celtic Otherworld is often located. The forest is surrounded by a stone wall and the deer are guarded by a giant who stands fifty feet tall. Despite these difficulties, Sir Eglamour manages to kill the principal stag of the giant’s herd and then kills the giant himself. Having achieved this first trial, Sir Eglamour returns home triumphant, carrying the giant’s head as well as that of the deer.
Annoyed at Sir Eglamour’s success, the next task that the earl gives his daughter’s suitor is to kill the Boar of Sidon, a dreadful beast that has laid waste to the area where it lives. Sir Eglamour spends a month travelling out to Sidon
Sidon
Sidon or Saïda is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located in the South Governorate of Lebanon, on the Mediterranean coast, about 40 km north of Tyre and 40 km south of the capital Beirut. In Genesis, Sidon is the son of Canaan the grandson of Noah...
where he locates this boar by seeing all the bodies of dead men strewn about the ground; in a scene that is perhaps mimicked by one featuring a Rabbit of Caerbannog
Rabbit of Caerbannog
The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog is a fictional beast in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It is the antagonist in a major setpiece battle, and makes a similar appearance in Spamalot, a musical inspired by the movie...
in the irreverent Monty Python movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a 1974 British comedy film written and performed by the comedy group Monty Python , and directed by Gilliam and Jones...
. After a struggle with this boar that lasts for three days, Sir Eglamour kills the ferocious creature. His feat of bravery and skill-at-arms is noticed by the King of Sidon, who is riding nearby on the day that Sir Eglamour at last overcomes this beast. The king takes Sir Eglamour back to his castle where his daughter (beautiful, of course) is being threatened by a giant. This giant is demanding her hand in marriage and when he appears, Sir Eglamour kills him singlehandedly. The King of Sidon at once offers to confer onto Sir Eglamour all his titles and lands, as well as the hand of his daughter in marriage.
Sir Eglamour insists that he cannot stay – or in fact, it is Sir Adventurous who excuses himself in this way, since this is the name that Sir Eglamour has now assumed, without any explanation for doing so. As a departing gift, the king presents Sir Adventurous with a horse whose rider can never be toppled in any joust. His daughter, Organate, gives him a ring with the property that its wearer cannot be killed.
- "Then seyde Organate, the swete thing,
- 'I schal you gyfe a good gold ryng,
- Wyth a full ryche ston;
- Whethur ye be on watyr or on lond,
- And this ryng be on your hond
- Ther schall no dede you sclon.'"
Sir Adventurous gratefully accepts these two gifts, Organate declares that she will wait for fifteen years for him to come for her. Sir Adventurous replies that he will have to see how things go. So he returns to Artois, reverts to his old name and presents to the earl, who is even less pleased than before to see him, the head of the boar and the head of the giant.
The third task that the earl gives Sir Eglamour is the kill a dragon
Dragon
A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...
that is terrorising Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. Before leaving for this final test, Sir Eglamour asks for twelve weeks to recuperate and the earl’s noblemen support him in this request, so it is granted. During this time, Sir Eglamour gives Christabel a child. He also gives her the magic ring that Organate of Sidon gave to him. Then he goes off to Rome, where the dragon is soon lying dead at his feet. But he has been badly injured himself in the struggle to overcome this creature and will require many months of rest and recuperation before he can return to Artois.
Meanwhile, Christabel gives birth to a baby boy. Her father is so angry that he swears to have her killed, so he puts her into a small boat with her new-born baby and they are set adrift without food or water, at the mercy of the winds and the currents, to share a fate that is suffered also by Emaré
Emaré
Emaré is a middle English Breton lai, a form of Mediaeval Romance poem, told in 1035 lines. The author of Emaré is unknown and exists in only one manuscript, the Cotton Caligula A. ii, which contains ten metrical narratives. Emaré seems to date from the late fourteenth century, possibly written in...
and by Geoffrey Chaucer’s heroine Constance in his Canterbury tale from the Man of Law. Soon they are driven onto a rock, and mother and baby go ashore to sit with the seagulls. A griffin
Griffin
The griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle...
appears from out of nowhere and carries the baby off.
Now mother and father and son are all separated. But the reader or listener knows that they will be reunited at the end of the tale, for this is a romance; in essence a comedy, not a tragedy. The baby boy is carried to the kingdom of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, where the griffin is spotted landing, stork-like, with the baby. News of this is brought to the king, the child is named Degarébel and he is raised as the king’s son. And his mother, in fact, suffers a curiously similar fate. Having set off again from the rock of seagulls, she is carried in the boat by wind and tide until she is washed ashore in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
where she is found by the king of that country. She tells him who she is and is informed by the King of Egypt that she is his niece. Quite quickly, as the tale proceeds, she becomes his daughter, in a plotting device that, although clearly inconsistent with the beginning of the tale, has similarities with a new identity, following separation, taken by Emare, and by Sir Degare, by the boy Florent in the romance Octavian and by the blacksmith Sir Isumbras
Sir Isumbras
Sir Isumbras is a medieval metrical romance written in Middle English and found in no fewer than nine manuscripts dating to the fifteenth century...
. Fifteen years pass before she is made the high-ranking prize at a tournament
Tournament
A tournament is a competition involving a relatively large number of competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:...
for would-be suitors.
Sir Eglamour has already recovered from the wound he received whilst slaying the dragon, returned home to Artois, been told the dreadful news about Christabel and after seizing control of Artois from the earl, has travelled to the Holy Land. But fifteen years have now passed and Sir Eglamour, at last, is making his way back home. Christabel is looking for a husband and is the prize at a tournament in Egypt. Her son Degarébel, in Israel, has just learned that a beautiful woman is available to wed. If he can prove his courage on the tournament field he can win her, so he is on his way to Egypt to take part in the fighting.
Of course, the inevitable happens. Just as in the Middle English Breton lai Sir Degare, Sir Degarébel marries his mother. Following recognition of the device on his shield, however, mother and son are quickly made aware of each other’s true identity and another tournament is swiftly arranged. By chance, Sir Eglamour is passing and resolves to take part in this tournament. Father and son fight together, each unaware of the other’s identity, but Sir Eglamour knocks Sir Degarébel from his horse with the flat of his sword, wins Christabel in marriage, the device on Sir Eglamour's shield gives away his identity and the romance concludes with recognition, celebration and reunion.
There is, however, one more loose end to tie up. Present at the tournament is Organate, the daughter of the King of Sidon who has been waiting for Sir Eglamour for fifteen years. But since Sir Eglamour has won Christabel in marriage, what better outcome than for Sir Degarébel, Sir Eglamour’s son, to marry Organate? He does, and the celebrations are truly joyous. They all return to Artois and the old earl falls from his tower in terror at the sight of them, and is killed.
Medieval Romance
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a Canterbury tale about a young lady, Constance, who alone survives a massacre only to be put into an open boat and set adrift upon the sea. Chaucer told this story as the Man of Law's Tale in the late-14th century, and his tale of the setting-adrift of Constance in an open boat derives from an earlier, Latin version. The Middle English Breton lai EmaréEmaré
Emaré is a middle English Breton lai, a form of Mediaeval Romance poem, told in 1035 lines. The author of Emaré is unknown and exists in only one manuscript, the Cotton Caligula A. ii, which contains ten metrical narratives. Emaré seems to date from the late fourteenth century, possibly written in...
also incorporates this element in its plot. Just like Constance, and just like Christabel in this tale of Sir Eglamour of Artois, Emaré narrowly survives death and is put instead into a boat which takes her to a distant land and a new life.
The Middle English poem, the Isle of Ladies describes a dreamer who is transported in his dream to an island where only women live, an Otherworldly island made of glass where he sees his lady love. She travels in a boat back to her own country and he travels back later with a cargo of corpses, which miraculously revive when they arrive on the further shore and seeds are put into their mouths.
Breton
One of the Breton lais recorded in Old French by Marie de FranceMarie de France
Marie de France was a medieval poet who was probably born in France and lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an undisclosed court, but was almost certainly at least known about at the royal court of King Henry II of England...
in the 12th century concerns a young man named Guigemar
Guigemar
"Guigemar" is a Breton lai, a type of narrative poem, written by Marie de France during the 12th century. The poem belongs to the collection known as The Lais of Marie de France...
. Injured in a hunting accident, after making his way to a harbour that he had no idea existed, he climbs aboard a boat on which there is a bed, lies on this bed and soon the boat is underway, although there is nobody on board but himself. Burning at the boat's prow are lighted candles and, like King Arthur, this vessel takes him to a place where he will be healed of his wound.
Later in the tale, now healed, Guigemar returns to his homeland with the aid of this same boat and is followed a little while afterwards by the lady who healed him. But now that they have both crossed the sea again in the boat with candles at its prow, they are only able to recognize one another by distinguishing knots in their garments.
Irish
In Irish mythology, the Otherworld often lies across the sea. Oisin is approached by a maiden on horseback while walking on the shore with his father Fionn mac CumhaillFionn mac Cumhaill
Fionn mac Cumhaill , known in English as Finn McCool, was a mythical hunter-warrior of Irish mythology, occurring also in the mythologies of Scotland and the Isle of Man...
. The maiden is the daughter of the king of the Land of Youth and she has come to take Oisin back with her. They travel on horseback together across the waves and when Oisin returns to Ireland only a few weeks later, he finds that hundreds of years have passed there since he left. In an early-12th century Irish manuscript, the Lebor na hUidre
Lebor na hUidre
Lebor na hUidre or the Book of the Dun Cow is an Irish vellum manuscript dating to the 12th century. It is the oldest extant manuscript in Irish. It is held in the Royal Irish Academy and is badly damaged: only 67 leaves remain and many of the texts are incomplete...
, Bran is visited by a mysterious female stranger holding a bough of apple blossom who urges him to sail his boat to a Land of Women, and a similar thing happens on his return. Connla is visited by a maiden, summoning him into her boat to a land of "women and girls only" and he is never seen again. A daughter of the Irish god Manannan carries her dead lover in her boat to an island, where she finds a plant that revives him.
Greek
Odysseus, in HomerHomer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's 8th century BC epic the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
, having suffered so much in an ocean within which he has been unable to find his way home, is at last taken to the shore of his native Ithaca in a boat that travels more quickly than a swallow in flight and completes the journey in a single night. On his return, Odysseus pretends at first to be a Cretan fugitive, then disguises himself as a beggar, then, to his own father, declares himself to be Eperitus, the son of Prince Apheidas of Alybas, who has been blown off course.
Pre-Raphaelite
A chapter in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'ArthurLe Morte d'Arthur
Le Morte d'Arthur is a compilation by Sir Thomas Malory of Romance tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table...
recounts the story of Elaine of Astolat
Elaine of Astolat
Elaine of Astolat or Ascolat is a figure in Arthurian legend who dies of her unrequited love for Lancelot. Also referred to as Elaine the White and Elaine the Fair, she is the daughter of Bernard of Astolat. Versions of her story appear in Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and Alfred Tennyson's...
, who asks that her body be sent downstream to Westminster in a boat when she has died, holding a letter of rebuke to Sir Lancelot, whom she loved. The dominant image in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem The Lady of Shalott
The Lady of Shalott
"The Lady of Shalott" is a Victorian ballad by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson . Like his other early poems – "Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere" and "Galahad" – the poem recasts Arthurian subject matter loosely based on medieval sources.-Overview:Tennyson wrote two versions of the poem, one...
, which is at least partly based upon Malory's story, is depicted in a painting
The Lady of Shalott (painting)
The Lady of Shalott is an 1888 oil-on-canvas painting by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse. The work is a representation of a scene from Lord Alfred Tennyson's 1832 poem of the same name, in which the poet describes the plight of a young woman isolated under an...
by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse
John William Waterhouse
John William Waterhouse was an English painter known for working in the Pre-Raphaelite style. He worked several decades after the breakup of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which had seen its heydey in the mid-nineteenth century, leading him to have gained the moniker of "the modern Pre-Raphaelite"...
, and is one that gives expression to a mythical idea that is far older than Sir Thomas Malory.
Dragon
Sir Eglamour kills a dragon as his third trial for the hand of Christabel, the earl's daughter. Dragons feature in many medieval stories, both in the Arthurian world and in medieval romance generally. The Middle English Breton lai Sir Degaré, for example, tells a broadly similar story to that of Sir Eglamour of Artois. A baby boy is separated from his mother, brought up by another family knowing nothing of his true origins and on reaching adulthood, takes part in a tournament at which he wins the hand of his own mother in marriage. In both cases, the mistake is soon realized by the recognition of an object; gloves in the case of Sir Degaré, a heraldic device on a shield in the case of Sir Eglamour of Artois's lost son. In both stories, a dragon is killed: Sir Degaré kills his before his journey to the tournament.Tristan kills a dragon that is ravaging Ireland, in the Arthurian romance set in Cornwall at the time of King Mark and set down by Thomas of Britain
Thomas of Britain
Thomas of Britain was a french poet of the 12th century. He is known for his Old French poem Tristan, a version of the Tristan and Iseult legend that exists only in eight fragments, amounting to around 3,300 lines of verse, mostly from the latter part of the story...
in the mid-12th century, retold by Gottfried von Strassburg
Gottfried von Strassburg
Gottfried von Strassburg is the author of the Middle High German courtly romance Tristan and Isolt, an adaptation of the 12th-century Tristan and Iseult legend. Gottfried's work is regarded, alongside Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and the Nibelungenlied, as one of the great narrative...
in the early 13th century. Sir Lancelot kills a dragon that is living inside a tomb, in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthure.
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
’s Elizabethan epic poem The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and is one of the longest poems in the English...
describes how a Red Cross Knight defeats a dragon at a place where there is a Tree of Life and a Pool of Life, in whose waters the dead can be revived.
A Scandinavian romance has the hero go through the mouth of a dragon to reach the Otherworld.
Griffin
Sir Eglamour's baby son is carried away from Christabel by a griffin. A griffin is a mythical creature with the body and feet of a lionLion
The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
and the head and the wings of an eagle
Eagle
Eagles are members of the bird family Accipitridae, and belong to several genera which are not necessarily closely related to each other. Most of the more than 60 species occur in Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just two species can be found in the United States and Canada, nine more in...
. Its earliest depiction can be seen in the throne room
Throne Room, Knossos
The Throne Room was a chamber built for ceremonial purposes during the 15th century BC inside the palatial complex of Knossos, Crete, in Greece...
of the Palace of Knossos
Knossos
Knossos , also known as Labyrinth, or Knossos Palace, is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and probably the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. The palace appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and store rooms close to a central square...
on the Mediterranean island of Crete, in Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, in a Minoan fresco that dates to the mid-2nd century BC.
Sir Eglamour's young son is not the only baby to be carried off by this mythical bird in medieval romance. The baby son of the Roman Emperor Octavian is seized, first of all by a lioness and then by a griffin, in the medieval romance Octavian. Lioness and baby are both carried to a distant isle by this flying creature, where the lioness is safely deposited, kills and eats the griffin and suckles the young boy as though he were her cub. Lioness and baby are accidentally found by the boy's mother, who travels on with them both into exile in the Middle East. Her other son, who was seized by an ape at the same time that his brother was seized by the lioness and then the griffin, journeys to a new life as Florent, the son of a Paris merchant. As in the tale Sir Eglamour of Artois, mother and son in Octavian are finally reunited after many years apart, and a giant is defeated during the unfolding of the tale.
Icelandic saga
When the Scandinavian hero Arrow-Odd, in a 13th century Icelandic tale, finds his path blocked by a deep gorge, he is lifted into the air by an eagle and carried to the eagle's nest high up on a sea cliff. Soon, a giant appears in a stone boat and rows up to the nest. Arrow-Odd is taken by this giant to Giantland where he spends some time, before continuing an extraordinary life that is destined to last for three hundred years.Chaucer's House of Fame
The English poet Geoffrey ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
wrote a work sometime around 1380 in which the poet himself is carried by an eagle up into the sky, near to the stars, to a place called the House of Fame, where he finds ancient writers and poets such as Orpheus
Orpheus
Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...
and Simon Magus
Simon Magus
Simon the Sorcerer or Simon the Magician, in Latin Simon Magus, was a Samaritan magus or religious figure and a convert to Christianity, baptised by Philip the Apostle, whose later confrontation with Peter is recorded in . The sin of simony, or paying for position and influence in the church, is...
still living. The eagle then takes Geoffrey to a strange building built of "twigges" that revolves so frighteningly that the poet fears that even the eagle will have difficulty landing him safely into it; the building flies through the air like a stone ball from a siege engine. But the eagle carries Geoffrey safely into this revolving house and the poem ends in an ellipsis.
Modern literature
The acclaimed German (later naturalized Swiss) writer Herman Hesse wrote a short story in 1915 in which a young man is carried by a giant bird across a mountain range to a distant plain that is to him like another world. Strange News from Another StarStrange News from Another Star
Strange News from Another Star is a collection of eight short stories written by the German author Hermann Hesse between 1913 and 1918. It was first published as Märchen in German in 1919 and was translated to English by Denver Lindley in 1972...
tells of the horror experienced by this youth who has volunteered to go to find flowers to bury the dead from an earthquake; flowers that are required during the ceremony of the burial of the dead, in this young man's world, to ease a smooth transition into the next life. In order to speed his journey, he is carried across the mountains by this giant bird, but finds himself in a land where war has left the dead unburied and uncared for, a brutal world, perhaps like that of the trenches of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, a world that he can only believe is from his distant past. Hesse later went on to write the acclaimed novel Siddhartha
Siddhartha (novel)
Siddhartha is a novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of an Indian man named Siddhartha during the time of the Buddha.The book, Hesse's ninth novel , was written in German, in a simple, powerful, and lyrical style. It was published in the U.S. in 1951 and became influential...
, exploring the life of Buddha.
Giants
The first task that the earl gives to Sir Eglamour, in order to win the hand of his daughter, is to defeat a giant far to the west. Giants are commonplace in medieval romance. Florent kills one that has been leaning over the outer wall of the city of Paris, taunting its inhabitants, in the medieval romance Octavian. King Arthur kills one that lives on the top of Mont Saint-MichelMont Saint-Michel
Mont Saint-Michel is a rocky tidal island and a commune in Normandy, France. It is located approximately one kilometre off the country's north-western coast, at the mouth of the Couesnon River near Avranches...
, on his way to defeat a Roman army in the Alliterative Morte Arthure
Alliterative Morte Arthure
The Alliterative Morte Arthure is a 4346-line Middle English alliterative poem, retelling the latter part of the legend of King Arthur. It is preserved in a single copy, in the early fifteenth-century Lincoln Thornton Manuscript.-History:...
. Sir Yvain kills one in Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Perhaps he named himself Christian of Troyes in contrast to the illustrious Rashi, also of Troyes...
' Arthurian romance Yvain, the Knight of the Lion
Yvain, the Knight of the Lion
Yvain, the Knight with the Lion is a romance by Chrétien de Troyes. It was probably written in the 1170s simultaneously with Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, and includes several references to the action in that poem...
. Sir Gawain encounters one in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle
Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle
Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle is a Middle English tail-rhyme romance of 660 lines, composed in about 1400. A similar story is told in a 17th century minstrel piece found in the Percy Folio and known as The Carle of Carlisle...
.
Giants also abound in Greek mythology and in medieval Scandinavian myth and saga. The Icelandic outlaw Grettir encounters a giant behind a waterfall in a 13th century Icelandic tale. Odysseus encounters many giants, before returning to his home of Ithaca in the mysterious boat of King Alcinous. Hercules visits the Garden of the Hesperides in the far west of the world, near to where the giant Atlas
Atlas (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Atlas was the primordial Titan who supported the heavens. Although associated with various places, he became commonly identified with the Atlas Mountains in north-west Africa...
holds up the sky.
Magic ring
The daughter of the King of Sidon gives a ring to Sir Eglamour that gives its wearer invulnerability to death. Sir Eglamour gives this ring, in turn, to Christabel before departing to undertake his third trial, and she is presumably wearing this magic ring when she is put into the boat and sent to what is expected to be her death.A magic ring that provides invulnerability to death is encountered not only in this tale of Sir Eglamour of Artois. In a 12th century romance Floris and Blancheflour
Floris and Blancheflour
Floris and Blancheflour is the name of a popular romantic story that was told in the Middle Ages in many different vernacular languages and versions. It first appears in Europe around 1160 in "aristocratic" French...
, Floris's mother gives her son a ring when he departs, disguised as a merchant, to look for the maiden Blancheflour, whose tomb he has just seen to be empty. ‘Take this ring, son. While you are wearing it, you need fear nothing. Fire will not burn you, the sea will not drown you and steel will not be able to cut you,' she urges him. And the boy Perceval, in the Middle English romance Sir Perceval of Galles
Sir Perceval of Galles
Sir Perceval of Galles is a Middle English Arthurian verse romance whose protagonist, Sir Perceval, made his debut in medieval literature well over a hundred years before the composition of this work; in Chrétien de Troyes' final poem, the twelfth-century Old French Conte del Graal...
, steals a ring from the finger of a sleeping maiden, and only after having travelled to a Land of Maidens and defeated an entire Saracen army singlehandedly, does he learn that it is a magic ring that confers invulnerability to its wearer. In the late-14th century Middle English alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance outlining an adventure of Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table. In the poem, Sir Gawain accepts a challenge from a mysterious warrior who is completely green, from his clothes and hair to his...
, Sir Gawain refuses the offer of a ring from Sir Bertilak's amorous wife before accepting, instead, another circular adornment, a girdle, that will protect him from ever being killed, and which he wears when he goes to suffer a return stroke of the axe from the Knight of the Green Chapel.
External links
- Sir Eglamour of Artois Introduction and Middle English text. TEAMS.
- Sir Eglamour of Artois Modern English prose translation