Work Text:
Translator's Note
In the last few months, the world of Middle English studies has been greatly excited by the discovery of a fragment from a second manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The poem, a major and very beautiful late fourteenth-century alliterative work, had only been known to us through its single appearance in London, British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x. Last August, the curator of a small Cambridge archival library, while examining the pastedowns in an otherwise undistinguished fifteenth-century psalter, realized that some of the vellum of the book binding contained a series of stanzas from Sir Gawain. Not only that, the stanzas in the Cambridge MS differed substantially from the corresponding stanzas at the end of the Cotton Nero Sir Gawain. Because of the difficulty of the passage's North West Midlands dialect, few non-specialists have yet been able to study the Cambridge fragment. With this translation, I hope to remedy that lack. I have aimed, as far as possible, to retain the passage's alliterative metre and rhyme scheme, while maintaining clarity and comprehensibility.
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Hardly wounded, from the hill, came Gawain, the hero
who nobly lay still, when a knight nicked his neck.
A bold lord followed behind, brawny and strong.
All green was that gentleman in the early glow of morning,
but bright gold was his beard when Bertilak emerged
from the chilly Chapel where Gawain met his challenge.
Sir Gawain marveled mightily, to see his merry host,
and Lord Bertilak laughed. "My own lady fair
will welcome you home, if you wish to return,
with full courteous kisses. A caress from her hand
is a gracious gift, more precious than your girdle."
Sir Gawain hesitated. "It has not been my habit
To kiss wedded women, or to worry their husbands."
"That's nothing," said the knight. "You need feel no
concern.
Come here and kiss me thrice,
So I may take my turn,
And let that pay the price,
my lady's lips to earn."
"The bite of your blade still burns on my neck,"
complained Gawain the courageous. "How may I confirm
that you are true and no traitor, and your tongue does not lie?"
"Simply taste it and see," the other lord smiled,
and Bertilak bent to embrace Gawain.
Then Gawain the gallant remembered their game,
and the sweet kisses shared in the sight of the hall.
Without any watchers, that day in the woods,
one knight kissed his neighbor. Now, Gawain intended
his kisses to be courteous, but carefully brief.
Yet Sir Bertilak was stalwart. He kissed Gawain steadily.
So pleasing, so perfect, was that rare pleasure
That Gawain's manhood was stirred, but he mastered his yearning
in time.
With tongue and lips, twice more,
in that hour after prime,
those knights, as told in lore,
embraced, their joy sublime.
At last, lord and knight left the woods for the castle.
the mistress of the manor awaited them by the moat,
ravishing and radiant in her red gown.
"How goes it?" the girl asked. "Did my girdle aid you?"
"A curse on its cunning! It nearly killed me,"
said rueful Gawain, with his ready smile.
"Yet, fair lady, I'll forgive you all of this folly.
A most precious prize I have won from my peril:
some small kisses from you, if you can spare them."
"Indeed, my dear," said the lady, "I will do so at will,
and I believe you, Bertilak, deserve to be blessed,
as you clearly collected this chivalrous offer.
You see,"
the dame declared,
"Our marriage is so free
that all our loves are shared;
what's his must come to me."
"So I did," spoke her husband, "and I would like to say
that although Gawain's touches were tempting before,
he has improved indeed. Perhaps he was inspired."
The man of the woods winked at his wife.
Sir Gawain pled, "I pray you, my perilous friends,
by heaven, to halt this too-hasty speech
until we are alone, not all in view of the house."
The merry master and his mistress laughed,
and chuckling still, took the knight to a chamber
encased in the castle. "Come now," said Sir Bertilak,
"And let me take my leave, or if you like, I will stay."
Gawain glanced at the lady, all garbed in red,
and lissome as a lark, light as a swallow,
and at broad-shouldered Bertilak, with his bright face, fierce
as flame.
Right then the knight did know
he loved them both the same,
and Gawain cried, "Don't go,"
and called him by his name.
Then Bertilak beamed. "By heaven, I'll stay.
My wife, I want you to welcome our guest."
That glad lady stepped into Gawain's arms.
Aware of his audience, Gawain held her adroitly,
and driven by a desire as deep as he had known,
he kissed her, and caressed her, three clasps and no more,
and breathing hard, broke away, a blush warming his face.
"Is that all?" laughed the lady, and turned to her lord.
"Our fair friend, to the pledges he swore you, is faithful.
It is right to reward him for his royal behavior."
"What guerdon would you give," asked Bertilak, "to that gallant?"
"I propose," said the pleasing and passionate lady,
"that we bring him to our bedroom, and bide with him there,
tonight.
We'll share him between us both,
This gay and noble knight,
and, husband, by my oath,
we'll all have our delight."
But peerless Gawain, the prince of the pentangle,
meek and well-mannered, loyal to Mary,
said, "Despite all our dalliances and our dear embraces,
I rue my unreadiness for such a reunion.
By my troth," he continued, "I beg that you teach me,
for I am not learned in the ways of love."
"Why, certainly, we will," they said. "Most willingly."
Holding Gawain's hands, they helped him along
to a bower bedecked with billowing silks.
Until sunrise they sported, all three, without sleeping,
and no pleasure was purer, no paradise more blissful nor
more free.
And may you have a New Year's
as full of game and glee,
as had, in joy together,
these bold and beauteous three.
AMEN.