Sir Isumbras is a medieval metrical 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...

 written in Middle English

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....

 and found in no fewer than nine manuscripts dating to the fifteenth century. This popular romance must have been circulating in England before 1320, because William of Nassington, in his work Speculum Vitae, which dates from this time, mentions feats of arms and other 'vanities', such as those found in stories of Sir Guy of Warwick

Guy of Warwick

Guy of Warwick is a legendary English hero of Romance popular in England and France from the 13th to the 17th century. The story of Sir Guy is considered by scholars to be part of the Matter of England.-Plot:...

, Bevis of Hampton

Bevis of Hampton

Bevis of Hampton is a legendary English hero and the subject of Anglo-Norman, French, English, Venetian and other medieval metrical romances that bear his name...

, Octavian

Octavian (Middle English verse romance)

Octavian is a 14th-century Middle English verse translation and abridgement of a mid-13th century Old French romance of the same name. This Middle English version exists in three manuscript copies and in two separate compositions, one of which may have been written by the 14th century poet Thomas...

and Sir Isumbras. Unlike the other three stories, the Middle English Sir Isumbras is not a translation of an Old French original.

The tale of Sir Isumbras bears many similarities to the legend of Saint Eustace

Saint Eustace

Saint Eustace, also known as Eustachius or Eustathius, was a legendary Christian martyr who lived in the 2nd century AD. A martyr of that name is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, which, however, judges that the legend recounted about him is "completely fabulous." For that reason...

, a popular saint in medieval England. Some sources have classified it categorically as an adaptation of this legend, and point to the fact that Sir Isumbras has been grouped in manuscripts with saints' legends and other religious materials. Others have drawn attention to close parallels in the story of Sir Isumbras, and in other medieval hagiographic works, with tales from Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 and northern India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

Sir Isumbras is an over-proud knight who is offered the choice of happiness in his youth or his old age. He chooses the latter, and falls from his high estate by the will of Providence. He is severely stricken; his possessions, his children and, lastly, his wife, are taken away; and he himself becomes a wanderer. After much privation he trains as a blacksmith, learning to forge anew his armour, and he rides into battle against a sultan. Later, he arrives at the court of the sultan's queen, who proves to be his long-lost wife. He attempts to Christianise the Islamic lands over which he now rules, provoking a rebellion which is then defeated when his children miraculously return to turn the tide of battle.

A popular tail-rhyme romance

Sir Isumbras is a relatively short Middle English romance, less than eight hundred lines in length, in twelve-line tail-rhyme stanzas. This is the form of romance parodied by Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey 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...

 in his Canterbury Tale of Sir Thopas

Chaucer's Tale of Sir Topas

Sir Thopas is a story in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales published in 1387.In Canterbury Tales, there is a character named Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer's portrait of himself is unflattering and humble. He presents himself as a reticent, maladroit figure who can barely summon a tale to mind...

. Tail-rhyme verse, however, was very popular in late-medieval English for recording tales of adventure and romance, and used in many Middle English romances, such as 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...

, Sir Amadace, 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...

, Ipomadon

Ipomadon

A tale of the Old French romance hero Ipomedon in Middle English survives in three separate versions, a long poem Ipomadon composed in tail-rhyme verse, possibly in the last decade of the fourteenth century, a shorter poem The Lyfe of Ipomydon, dating to the fifteenth century and a prose version,...

and Sir Gowther

Sir Gowther

Sir Gowther is a relatively short Middle English tail-rhyme romance in twelve-line stanzas, found in two manuscripts, each dating to the mid- or late-fifteenth century...

. A typical verse begins with a group of three lines, such as this one describing the scene as Sir Isumbras arrives at his burnt-out manor, during his long slide into penuary and loss:

”A doleful syghte thenne ganne he se,

His wife and his chylderen thre

Owte of the fyre were fled.”

These lines are then expanded into a single stanza by stacking four similar triplets together, to rhyme aabccbddbeeb.

Manuscripts

The story of Sir Isumbras is found in 9 manuscript versions, mostly dating to the fifteenth century or earlier, as well as five sixteenth century printed versions (at least one was estimated to have been published perhaps as early as 1530—see 1530 in poetry

1530 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Great Britain:* Anonymous, Boccus and Sydrake, publication year uncertain but sometime from this year to 1537, edited by John Twyne, an encyclopedia in dialogue form, derived from the Old French Sidrac, in...

). In three of the manuscripts, only a fragment of the story survives:

• Oxford, University College MS 14
• Naples MS 13 B 9 (dated to 1457)
• Gray’s Inn MS 20 (dated to 1350)

A complete or nearly complete version of Sir Isumbras is found in these manuscripts:

• Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 175 (mid-fifteenth century)
• Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript
  Lincoln Thornton Manuscript
  The 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)
• British Library MS Cotton Caligula A ii (second half of the fifteenth century)
• British Library MS Douce 261 (1564)
• National Library of Scotland Advocates MS 19.3.1 (late-fifteenth century)
• Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61 (late-fifteenth century)

Plot

(This plot summary is based upon the version of the poem found in Gonville and Caius College Cambridge MS 175, a missing folio supplied by British Library Cotton Caligula A ii.)

Sir Isumbras lives a comfortable life; he is a generous nobleman with a young family, a beautiful, loving wife and enjoys a respected position in society. One day, however, God decides that Sir Isumbras is too proud and sends him a message telling him so.

The message is delivered, curiously, by a speaking bird; in much the same way that Sigurd is warned by the birds to kill Regin in the Saga of the Volsungs when he is splashed by the juice from the dragon's heart as it cooks and can immediately understand their language, and when Canace is able to understand the lament of a lady-falcon in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tale from the Squire. Sir Isumbras is riding in his forest early one morning when a bird in the branches above him begins to talk. It tells him that one of two things must happen, and that he can choose which it is to be: either he can be wealthy in his youth and impoverished in his old age, or the other way around. Sir Isumbras, with no hesitation, chooses to have wealth in his old age, since:

“In yowthe I may ryde and go,

I elde I may noght do so,

My lymes wyll wex unwelde.”

‘In youth I can run about and ride a horse, but in old age I won’t be able to do any of these things because my limbs will be crippled.’ Immediately, Sir Isumbras’s horse falls down dead beneath him, his hawks and hounds flee away in startled fright and a boy comes running up to tell him that his manor house has just burnt to the ground. On the way to see for himself, he learns that all his cattle and sheep have been stolen during the night.

But at least his wife and his children are safe. Sir Isumbras arrives at a scene of devastation to see them standing charred and naked before him, having run from their beds to escape the flames. He has lost everything except his wife and his three sons. But fate has not finished with him yet. He quickly decides that he and his family must go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They set out with nothing except the torn clothes they are wearing, begging for food along the way. Soon they come to a great river and try to cross it. Quickly, Sir Isumbras loses two of his sons to wild animals. A lion and a leopard make off with the boys as he leaves each of them in turn on the far bank in order to return for the others.

When the depleted group arrives at last at the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, intending to find a ship to take them to the Holy Land, an invading sultan takes a liking to Sir Isumbras’s wife and buys her from him, much to the knight’s distress. She is packed away into a ship to sail to the sultan’s kingdom to be made the sultan's queen. Before they part, Sir Isumbras’s wife urges her husband to try to find her by any means he can, and gives him a ring by which she might know him. Very shortly afterwards, Sir Isumbras’s remaining son is carried off by a unicorn.

Sir Isumbras finds himself alone and destitute in a foreign land. The wheel of fortune has carried him to its lowest depths.

But like the hero of the romance Sir Gowther

Sir Gowther

Sir Gowther is a relatively short Middle English tail-rhyme romance in twelve-line stanzas, found in two manuscripts, each dating to the mid- or late-fifteenth century...

, who may similarly have been punished for excessive pride, having reached this low point halfway through the tale, Sir Isumbras’s climb now begins. He arrives at a working smithy, asks for food and is told in no uncertain terms that everybody there has to work for their food and why should he be any different? So he labours for his meals and after a while they take him on as an apprentice. For seven years he works in this smithy, and at the end of this time he is so proficient at metalwork that he is able to make himself a suit of armour. But all this while, the sultan has been campaigning throughout Europe and only now do the forces of Christendom feel able to commit an army to battle. The two sides face one another across a field of conflict.

Sir Isumbras, keen to avenge himself on the sultan who stole his wife, rides into battle on a horse used by the smithy for carrying coal, armed in his own armour (perhaps conjuring an image like that of Florent riding out against a giant wearing his father’s rusty armour in the medieval romance Octavian

Octavian (Middle English verse romance)

Octavian is a 14th-century Middle English verse translation and abridgement of a mid-13th century Old French romance of the same name. This Middle English version exists in three manuscript copies and in two separate compositions, one of which may have been written by the 14th century poet Thomas...

). Sir Isumbras performs magnificent deeds of valour and when his sorry horse is killed from under him, an earl rescues him from the battlefield, gives him a new horse and new arms and Sir Isumbras rides once again into the melee, managing at last to kill the sultan himself. The battle is won!

When the Christian king wishes to congratulate him, however, Sir Isumbras acknowledges himself simply as a blacksmith, much to the monarch’s incredulity. He is sent to a convent to receive medical attention and convalescence and when he is fit again, rather than going to the king to claim the honours promised him, he makes his way once more towards the Holy Land as a beggar.

For many years Sir Isumbras lives in desperate poverty in the city of Acre

Acre

The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...

, which was the last Christian stronghold to fall to the Muslims, in the late-thirteenth century. Then he makes his way to Jerusalem, and outside the walls of this city an angel appears one night to tell Sir Isumbras that God has at last forgiven him his sins. Destitute still, however, Sir Isumbras wanders the eastern lands until he comes to a city that once belonged to a great sultan before he was killed on the battlefield. Now it is ruled by his former queen. This lady is accustomed to distributing alms to wandering paupers and to taking in the most needy to feed and to ask them about their travels; as though keen to hear news of somebody. But Sir Isumbras cannot guess who she is. He is brought into the castle, meets with her, tells her his news and is invited to live there and to serve at the table, which he does. But, like Sir Eglamour of Artois

Sir Eglamour of Artois

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...

 after his travels, he does not recognise his own wife. Like Sir Yvain’s

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...

 wife, the Lady of the Fountain

Three Welsh Romances

The Three Welsh Romances are three Middle Welsh tales associated with the Mabinogion. They are versions of Arthurian tales that also appear in the work of Chrétien de Troyes. Critics have debated whether the Welsh Romances are based on Chrétien's poems or if they derive from a shared original...

, and the wife of the eponymous hero of the romance Guy of Warwick

Guy of Warwick

Guy of Warwick is a legendary English hero of Romance popular in England and France from the 13th to the 17th century. The story of Sir Guy is considered by scholars to be part of the Matter of England.-Plot:...

, she does not recognise him.

One day, as he is outdoors pursuing the sports he used to love, he climbs a crag up to an eagle’s nest and finds within it the distinctive red cloak which an eagle had stolen from him just after he had been parted from his wife, and before his youngest son had been abducted by the unicorn. The cloak had contained some food, all those years ago, and all the gold that the sultan had given to him in payment for his wife. In a sudden agony of memory, Sir Isumbras takes this cloak with the gold, carries it to his room and puts in under his bed. Then he goes about the castle grief-stricken and in tears, remembering the family he had once had.

This change in his behaviour is noticed by everybody and is brought to the queen’s attention. One day, some noblemen break down the door to Sir Isumbras’s room and find the gold lying beneath the bed. They bring it to the queen. She recognises it immediately as the gold that her husband was once given for her. That evening, she confronts Sir Isumbras with the discovery and he tells her what happened. She asks him to produce the ring that she gave to him; it matches hers and they at last recognise each other. There is a tearful scene of reunion.

But the story does not end there. Sir Isumbras remarries his wife, then he is made king and soon decrees that everybody should become Christian. The population rebels and an army is raised against him, commanded by the kings of two neighbouring countries. Soon, Sir Isumbras and his wife – for she has armed herself as a knight – face the forces alone. From out of nowhere, three knights suddenly arrive on the battlefield, one riding a lion, another riding a leopard and the third a unicorn. Sir Isumbras’s lost sons! The battle is won and Sir Isumbras appoints his sons to rule over the three kingdoms he now possesses.

‘And when they had established their rule they caused all the people to be christened, as the book relates. And they upheld justice and the rule of God's law and their souls went to heaven when they died.’

Variants

Eight medieval versions of the Man Tested By Fate are known; except for an exemplum in Gesta Romanorum

Gesta Romanorum

Gesta Romanorum, a Latin collection of anecdotes and tales, was probably compiled about the end of the 13th century or the beginning of the 14th...

and the legend of Saint Eustace

Saint Eustace

Saint Eustace, also known as Eustachius or Eustathius, was a legendary Christian martyr who lived in the 2nd century AD. A martyr of that name is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, which, however, judges that the legend recounted about him is "completely fabulous." For that reason...

, all such tales are highly developed romances, such as Sir Isumbras.

Sir Isumbras is noteworthy among them for a blunt realism of language; while most have the hero performing menial labor, Isumbras is described in detail laboring at a smithy.

In Sir Isumbras, the wife suffers no particular hardships when separated from her husband; this is the romantic practice, but differentiates it from Saint Eustace

Saint Eustace

Saint Eustace, also known as Eustachius or Eustathius, was a legendary Christian martyr who lived in the 2nd century AD. A martyr of that name is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, which, however, judges that the legend recounted about him is "completely fabulous." For that reason...

, where the heroine lives a life of humble self-support, similar to the legends of Helena, mother of Constantine, and such romances as 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...

.

External links

• Sir Isumbras, TEAMS Middle English Texts