Timothy Ferguson's Blog

Yellow water filled the ditches by the roadside. Yellow clouds drifted lazily through tranquil webs of darkness and obscured far, glimmering stars. Horror and misery stared out of sodden eyes, and the night was filled with voices. Men with packs made vivid, grotesque gestures against the yellow sky and swore in their beards. Men ambled over stony paths and climbed hills and passed with disgust through shadowy orchards and gray, deserted vineyards.

Prangois Villon fingered his stained cowl and sighed. The thing above his head moaned and gibbered in the wind and occasionally the chains up on its poor, maimed wrists and ankles clinked like jolly glasses raised to toast a well-fed abbot or a stout, beneficent knight. The night wind whistled through its flailing garments as it swung pathetically to and fro, and Villon pitied it.

Villon pitied all outcast, shameful things. Ho had wasted his lean years in an orgy of pity and exaltation and song. Unfortunately he had lost his teeth and he had no hair to warm his chastened head; but still he pitied. Through the vineyards of Picardy he

strolled in his splendid misery and shame, and he stopped and wept when he met men who could no longer ex¬ change happy memories, or slap unresisting backs or laugh over deliciously calculated jests. High up in the cool, damp air they swung—and no one ever spoke to them.

Villon wiped the comers of his shapeless, dissipated mouth and stared indignantly at the yellow sky. The feet of the thing on the gibbet swept rapidly across his world of clouds and owls and trees and made no sound under the stars. Then the chains clinked out a curt command and the gibbet held itself erect and replied with a barbaric rattle. Villon knew that on still, cold nights gibbets become restless and chafe under their heavy burdens and move about, seeking warmth and companionship. They have been known to stroll at midnight through lonely vineyards; and legends of walking gibbets were rife in Picardy. Villon coughed and shivered, and suddenly he thought: “It is very cold, and that poor man has no covering for his feet!”

Something fumbled nervously with the edge of his ragged cowl. He turned and stared into inconceivable blue eyes wide with horror. The eyes were mild and soft, and tears had gathered in the corners of them.

“A wonderful profile,” thought Villon. “Beautifully proportioned, too. And hair like fields of waving summer com, and Flora or Archipiade or Heloisa did not possess such

While he reflected thus she took him by the hand and dragged him ruthlessly across the road. “I have a favor of great magnitude to beg of you,” she said.

Villon scowled, but he was secretly elated, and he observed how gracefully the small yellow curls clung to the nape of her neck and how buoyantly she held herself as she walked over the hard, frozen ground. He followed her indoors, and watched her spread a table and make a fire. Then she turned to him. Pity and. misery and terror looked together at him out of her vividly unconventional eyes.

“He is my husband, and there is no one else to whom I can appeal. Of course you will get him down. I ask only that. I want yon to climb up and cut him down. It will be difficult, of course, with the wind whistling about your ears, and the horrible birds—” she blushed and dropped her eyes.

Villon nodded. “I understand,” he said. “And as you suggest, it will be exceedingly disagreeable. But when I think of his poor, frozen feet I am prepared to sacrifice both my comfort and peace of mind!”

“And I shall give you a good dinner,” she added shyly, feeling per¬ haps that she owed him some induce-

“Very well,” said Villon, “I shall do it!” It had not occurred to Villon that she might invite him to dinner. Now that he thought of it, he was atrociously hungry. For three days he had tramped through the vineyards, scribbling ballads to Guenevere the mythical and Guillemette the upholstress and Jenny the

hatter, and to his cronies Master Jehan Cornu and the Seigneur de Grigny, to notaries and abbesses and to Merlin, but nought to whet his appetite had he derived therefrom, and he had munched disconsolately at insufficient cheese and tasted of immature wine, and once he had crawled on his hands and knees to a pool by the roadside to cool his thirst with water that stank. It would be good to sit at a merry provincial board, and with such a companion the time would pass right jollily.

“Sit by the fire,” she commanded, “while I cook the meat. Do you like rice and sugar? And would you care for some champagne of the vintage of 1216?”

“I am not at all difficult to please, ’ ’ said Villon, as he slid into a chair and removed his boots.

The fire was warm and luxurious.

Villon spread out his feet and warmed his great, cumbersome toes by shoving them into the glowing coals and withdrawing them before the heat, could painfully or seriously blister them. Then he stretched his fingers above the coals and whistled a Parisian tune.

The wife of the man on the gibbet unwrapped a dozen white loaves, and heated some broth in a bronze kettle and rolled several small casks of wine into the center of the room. The table was spread with embroidered yellow linen, filigreed on the edges with designs of falcons and hydra-headed dogs wrought in gold and silver wire. Upon the gorgeous cloth she laid large wooden spoons, copper cups and knives and tiny containers replete with various seasoning: vermilion pepper, spice, oil of cloves, nutmeg.

The dinner heralded itself by enticing and glorious odors. Villon sat up, and drew into his nostrils the rich variegated smells of roast geese, fried snails, and scrambled ostrich eggs. Villon displayed upon the whole an admirable restraint. Only once did he lose countenance. A loud hissing sound arose from behind his chair, and Villon shook like an aspen-leaf in an October gale. “ What is that 5 ” he demanded, considerably put out.

“Only mussels from Marseilles. I am putting them into hot water. Don’t you like them?”

Villon sighed and relaxed. The fire became less hot, and he permitted his toes the luxury of a longer interval of repose between the blinking coals.

He was fairly famished, and when she invited him to the board he fell to with relish. He ate furiously, immoderately, and with passion. He swallowed, stuffed and crammed. He discarded spoons and knives, and took between his soiled fingers great chunks of firm, white meat. His manners were deplorable, but his enthusiasm deserved commendation.

“Now,” she said, when he had finished, “you must go out and cut him down. I ask only that. It is so cold that his feet will freeze!”

But Villon had forgotten the man upon the gibbet. His hostess was charming. Theoretically, he had noticed it before, but he suddenly dis¬ covered that she was made of flesh and blood. And the champagne had unfortunately gone to his head.

“Perhaps you do not know that I am a poet,” said Villon, holding on to his chair for support.

“I should never have guessed it!”

“But I am, really. And in Paris I am famous, in spite of—er—an unfortunate accident.”

“An accident?”

“I killed a booby. But it doesn’t really matter. And I’m a master of arts at the University of Paris, and I belong by birth to an exceedingly aristocratic family.”

“But that has nothing to do with my husband, whose feet will surely freeze if you do not go out and cut him down.”

“Naturally. But it is not pleasant to go out in the cold, with the wind whistling about your ears, and the

“What more do you wish?”

“Well, you might spare me one little kiss. No one would ever know. Your husband is scarcely in a position to care, and a kiss is never taken seriously outside of Paris.”

Villon’s hostess seemed a little angry, and her eyes narrowed dangerously. Villon preferred this, since he disliked both high-pitched and docile women. The quiet, angry variety pleased him.

He knew that his proposal was odious to her, but he reflected that a hopeless desire frankly expressed was better than innumerable beatings about the bush. She might refuse his request, but he would not have failed through a cowardly reticence. The thought of his courage nerved him, and he released his hold upon the chair. Then he discovered that he was hopelessly drunk. He seemed so pitiful as he swung back and forth above the table, with his crimson cowl rent in twain and covered with stains, that his considerate and adorable hostess could not contemplate him with anger.

“If I kiss you just once,” she asked, “will you go out and cut him

Villon nodded dejectedly, and con¬ fessed that he would do anything within reason to please her.

“Very well,” she said, “you may kiss me.”

Villon wondered if perchance he had fallen asleep, and he tweaked his nose to assure himself that he did not dream. He had scarcely expected a victory so complete. It seemed unreasonable. Nevertheless, he prepared to take advantage of the opportunity offered him. He smoothed his mustache, and endeavored to cover up the rents in his cowl. “So rapid a con-quest is really very flattering,” he reflected.

She stood in the center of the room, and she did not move away when he came up to her and took her into his arms. “Remember,” she said, “you are only to kiss me once! ’ ’

Villon nodded, and sighed. “That is a misfortune!” he said, and kissed her with delectable impudence. She made no attempt to push him away, and he kissed her eyes, and her hair. Then he quailed and released her. Something horrible had taken place in the soul of the woman before him. The skin on her face had gone suddenly bloodless, and her eyes did not blink at him, but simply stared. Her mouth hung agape, and her shoulders rose up until her head seemed lost between them. She threw out her arms, as if warding off some unthinkable spiritual presence, and retreated toward the comer of the room.

Villon stepped forward, and then, all at once, a sense of profound physical fatigue overwhelmed him. He stood .horribly still in the center of the room, and gazed at his hostess reproachfully as shriek after shriek came from between her colorless lips.

“He’s at the window!” she screamed. “Don’t you see him? And he’s holding up his poor frozen hands, and little streams of blood are running out of his eyes down his frozen cheeks! He saw you kiss me, and now he’s come—he’s come!”

Villon turned slowly and gazed stupidly at the window. It was a small, diamond-paned window set high up in the wall, and Villon saw nothing but darkness, and vague, disturbing shadows that occasionally passed to and fro in back of the shimmering blue glass. “You are very idiotic,” said Villon, “to dis¬ turb yourself over shadows!”

He knew that women often behaved unaccountably, but he could

not explain the change in the woman in the comer. A moment before she had been in his arms, and had not objected to his innumerable caresses; but now she lay huddled in the corner, shivering and wailing, which put quite a different complexion upon the affair. “One never knows,” thought Villon, “what they will take it into their heads to think or do!”

Villon wished that he had not accepted the invitation of his erratic hostess, and he cast anxious glances toward the door. The words that came from between her lips did not carry moral conviction, and Villon preferred not to test her allegations in the light of reason. He preferred to ignore them, which was wise.

But he was really quaking from toe to chin, and when he heard a voice without calling him loudly and urgently by name he sought to establish friendly relations with the woman in the corner. She might, conceivably, be able to intercede for him. “You know that my intentions were honor¬ able,” he said, and this might have led to further talk and discussion, but someone pounded heavily upon the

“Don’t let him in!” shrieked the woman in the comer, and tears ran down her sallow face, and her wide, unblinking blue eyes glittered with unspeakable terror. Villon’s actions failed to reassure her, and when she had exhausted a repertoire of conventional emotions she collapsed in a heap upon the floor.

Villon devoted his entire attention to the door. It was an enormous door, fashioned of stout oak, and it was heavily studded with great bronze nails, and it might have resisted Satan; but Villon felt that the bolt was feeble, and the suspense was killing him. The door bulged inward and shook visibly, and Villon re¬ solved to seize the occasion by its tail. He stepped quickly to the door and unbolted it. A gust of wind swept into the room and whistled up the chimney.

And there in the doorway stood what Villon had feared. It had come down from the gibbet and it stood trembling with wrath, and waving its blood-clotted, skeleton arms against a glimmering square of yellow sky.

F or a moment it wavered uncertainly in the doorway, and then it raised its right foot, and stepped over the sill and into the room. The chains on its wrists and ankles clanked as it advanced leeringly over the smooth floor. Its hollow eyes glittered, and phosphorescently illumed a face that was eaten away at the corners. Its mouth gaped, and a portion of the lower jaw had fallen away, and its teeth projected through a surface layer of mottled and striated and nauseously flabby skin. Villon screamed when he saw its flaring eyes, and the tiny rivulets of blood that oozed from beneath its lids and ran out of the corners of its poor mouth. He covered his eyes with his hands, and endeavored to shut out the noisome sight; but the thing from the gibbet was a screeching reality, and Villon was so intent upon trying to turn it into the stuff of dreams that he aided his imagination to his own hurt. He saw it imaginatively, which was imprudent. He was probably un¬ able to seize upon any straw that might have saved him, and he got to explaining the situation in a manner that was ridiculously trite. It was the champagne, he told himself, and he assured himself that the best thing he could do would be to ignore the thing that had come down from the gibbet.

Perhaps that is the reason why he stood still and did nothing when the thing came up to him and breathed heavily into his pinched, frightened face. But the thing was quite blind, in spite of its coruscating eyes, and it somehow failed to get wind of Villon,

and it stood shivering and moaning and showing all of its yellow teeth, and Villon was conspicuously upset.

Villon stared frowningly for a moment, and thought how much the thing reminded him of the woman in the corner. Married women, thought Villon, noticeably resemble their husbands. For himself he began to wonder why he had ever desired to kiss her. He had, for no definite reason, impaired his dignity. He was so deeply moved when he thought of his humiliation that he entirely forgot the insane, hybrid creature that had stumbled into the room. He could not help feeling that the cards were against him. His several fates had played him a scurvy trick, had rubbed it in disconcertingly thick. With something like a grimace he sat down upon the floor.

The thing went tearing past him and collided against the opposite wall. It collapsed with a terrific rattle, and lay still for a few seconds, breathing heavily. Then it got awkwardly to its feet, and prepared to search the room. It made a disastrous circuit of the walls, groping blindly. It could not speak, but it hissed and whistled, and Villon was sorry, for in spite of his affected indifference he strenuously objected to half-articulate vituperation. The thing was facetiously cursing him and Villon’s spleen rose eloquently. He got to his feet, and stepped forward, and affirmed to the creature’s face that while he conceded its hallucinatory nature he was ill-prepared to overlook even imaginary insults. But the thing continued to search the room, and finally it stumbled upon the woman in the comer.

It bent, evidently in a state of pro¬ found agitation, and its thin, bony fingers fastened upon the woman’s left wrist. Then it drew itself erect, and started across the floor, dragging the woman brutally with it. Villon’s drunken and speculative anger was succeeded by white-hot terror. But he valiantly endeavored to intercept the thing he could not subdue.

Unfortunately the initiative dis¬ played by Villon proved curiously worthless. When he stood in the creature’s path and endeavored to wave it back it simply spat at him, and then it extended a long, bony arm and struck him across the face with the flat of its hand. Villon reeled back, and the knowledge that he had deserved the blow sobered him. He made no further attempt to retard the creature’s progress, and he did not even object when the thing from the gibbet pummeled the woman from the corner until she awoke and screamed—and screamed He did nothing when the loathsome thing re¬ leased its grip upon the woman’s arm and seized upon her long, yellow hair. And when it dragged her out through the door into a night of clouds and owls and trees, Villon simply stared and groaned and fell back against the

Later on he found his way out into the cool night, and discovered to his delight that every little wind awoke and sang. Owls were hooting on the twisted, cankerous arms of hopelessly distorted trees and the boles of the great oaks resembled men walking. The night was filled with futile whispering, and men swore roundly, and ambled through gray orchards and lonely vineyards.

Villon fingered Ins stained cowl and sighed. Above his head two gray, amorphous forms swung merrily in the night wind. The wind tore through their fluffing garments, and they made no sound under the stars. Only the chains clanked on their poor, maimed wrists and ankles, and Villon noticed that one figure held the other closely.

He turned on his heels and walked in the opposite direction. “The pity of it!” he murmured. “Oh, the pity of it!”

The following very curious story is from the Eyrbyggja Saga, one of the oldest and noblest of the Icelandic histories. As it results in an action unique in its way,—a lawsuit brought against a party of ghosts who haunted a house,—it well merits attention from all lovers of curiosities.

In the summer of 1000, the year in which Christianity was established in Iceland, a vessel came off the coast near Snæfellness, full of Irish and natives of the Hebrides, with a few Norsemen among them; the ship came from Dublin, and lay alongside of Rif, waiting a breeze which might waft her into the firth to Dögvertharness. Some people went off in boats from the ness to trade with the vessel. They found on board a Hebridean woman called Thorgunna, who, hinted the sailors, had treasures of female attire in her possession the like of which had never been seen in Iceland. Now when Thurida, the housewife at Frod river, heard this, she was all excitement to get a glimpse of these treasures, for she was a dashing, showy sort of a woman. She rowed out to the ship,[Pg 75] and on meeting Thorgunna, asked her if she had really some first-rate ladies’ dresses? Of course she had, was the answer; but she was not going to part with them to any one. Then might she see them? humbly asked Thurida. Yes, she might see them. So the boxes were opened, and the Iceland lady examined the foreign apparel. It was good, but not so very remarkable as she had anticipated; on the whole she was a bit disappointed, still she would like to purchase, and she made a bid. Thorgunna at once refused to sell. Thurida then invited the Hebridean lady home on a visit, and the stranger, only too glad to leave the vessel, accepted the invitation with alacrity.

On the arrival of the lady with her boxes at the farm, she asked to see her bed, and was shown a convenient closet in the lower part of the hall. There she unlocked her largest trunk, and drew forth a suit of bed-clothes of the most exquisite workmanship, and she spread over the bed English linen sheets and a silken coverlet. From the box she also extracted tapestry hangings and curtains to surround the couch; and the like of all these things had never been seen in the island before.

Thurida opened her eyes very wide, and asked her guest to share bed-clothes with her.

“Not for all the world,” replied the strange lady, with sharpness; “I’m not going to pig it in the rushes, for you, ma’am!”

An answer which, the Saga writer assures us, did[Pg 76] not particularly gratify the good woman of the house.

Thorgunna was stout and tall, disposed to become fat, with black eyebrows, a head of thick bushy brown hair, and soft eyes. She was not much of a talker, not very merry, and it was her wont to go to church every day before beginning her daily task. Many people took her to be about sixty years old. She worked at the loom every day except in haymaking time, and then she went forth into the fields and stacked the hay she had made. The summer that year was wet, and the hay had not been carried on account of the rain, so that at Frod river farm, by autumn, the crop was only half cut, and the rest was still standing.

One day appeared bright and cloudless, and the farmer, Thorodd, ordered the house to turn out for a general haymaking. The strange lady worked along with the rest, tossing hay till the hour of nones, when a black cloud crossed the sky from the north, and by the time that prayers had been said such a darkness had come on that it was almost impossible to see. The haymakers, at Thorodd’s command, raked their hay together into cocks, but Thorgunna, for no assignable reason, left hers spread. It now became so dark that there was no seeing a hand held up before the face, and down came the rain in torrents. It did not last many minutes, and then the sky cleared, and the evening was as bright as had been the morning.

[Pg 77]It was observed by the haymakers on their return to their work that it had rained blood, for all the grass was stained. They spread it, and it soon dried up; but Thorgunna tried in vain to dry hers, it had been so thoroughly saturated that the sun went down leaving it dripping blood, and all her clothes were discoloured. Thurida asked what could be the meaning of the portent, and Thorgunna answered that it boded ill to the house and its inmates. In the evening, late, the strange woman returned home, and went to her closet and stripped the stained clothes off her. She then lay down in her bed and began to sigh. It was soon ascertained that she was ill, and when food was brought her she would not swallow it.

Next morning the bonder came to her bedside to inquire how she felt, and to learn what turn the sickness was likely to take. The poor lady told him that she feared her end was approaching, and she earnestly besought him to attend to her directions as to the disposal of her property, not changing any particular, as such a change would entail misery on the family. Thorodd declared his readiness to carry out her wishes to the minutest detail.

“This, then,” said she, “is my last request. I desire my body to be taken to Skalholt, if I die of this disease, for I have a presentiment that that place will shortly become the most sacred in the island, and that clerks will be there who will chant over me; and do you reimburse yourself from my[Pg 78] chattels for any outlay in carrying this into effect. Let your wife Thurida have my scarlet gown, lest she be put out at the further distribution of my effects, which I propose. My gold ring I bequeath to the Church; but my bed, with its curtains, tapestry, coverlet, and sheets, I desire to have burned, so that they go into nobody’s possession. This I desire, not because I grudge the use of these handsome articles to anybody, but because I foresee that the possession of them would be the cause of innumerable quarrels and heart-burnings.”

Thorodd promised solemnly to fulfil every particular to the letter.

The complaint now rapidly gained ground, and before many days Thorgunna was dead. The farmer put her corpse into a coffin; then took all the bed-furniture into the open air, and, raising a pile of wood, flung the clothes on top of it, and was about to fire the pile, when, with a face pale with dismay, forth rushed Thurida to know what in the name of wonder her husband was about to do with those treasures of needlework, the coverlet, sheets, and curtains of the strange lady’s bed.

“Burn them! according to her dying request,” replied Thorodd.

“Burn them?” echoed Thurida, casting up her hands and eyes; “what nonsense! Thorgunna only desired this to be done because she was full of envy lest others should enjoy these incomparable treasures.”

“But she threatened all kinds of misfortunes[Pg 79] unless I strictly obeyed her injunctions; and I promised to do what she bid,” expostulated the worthy man.

“Oh, that is all fancy!” exclaimed the wife; “what misfortune can these articles possibly bring upon us?”

Thorodd still stood out; but in his house, as in many another, the gray mare was the better horse, and what with entreaties, embraces, and tears, he was forced to effect a compromise, and relinquish to his wife the hangings and the coverlet in order that he might secure immunity for burning the pillow and the sheets. Yet neither party was satisfied, says the historian.

Next day preparations were made for flitting the corpse to Skalholt, and trustworthy men were appointed to accompany it. The body was swathed in linen, but not stitched up; it was then put into the coffin and placed on horseback. So they started with it over the moor, and nothing particular happened till they reached Valbjarnar plain, where there are many pools and morasses, and the corpse had repeated falls into the mire. Well, after a bit they crossed the North river at Eyar ford, but the water was very deep, for there had been heavy rains.

At nightfall they reached Stafholt, and asked the farmer to take them in. He declined peremptorily, probably disliking the notion of housing a corpse, and he shut the door in their faces. They could go no farther that night, as the White river was before them, which was very deep and broad and could only[Pg 80] be traversed in safety by day; so they took the coffin into an outhouse, and after some trouble persuaded the farmer to let them sleep in his hall; but he would not give them any food, so they went supperless to bed. Scarcely, however, was all quiet in the house before a strange clatter was heard in the shed serving as larder. One of the farm servants, thinking that thieves were breaking in, stole to the door, and on looking in, beheld a tall naked woman, with thick brown hair, busily engaged in preparing food. The poor fellow was so frightened that he fled back to his bed, quaking like an aspen leaf. In another moment the nude figure stalked into the hall, bearing victuals in both hands, and these she placed on the table. By the dim light the bearers recognised Thorgunna, and they understood now that she resented the churlishness of the host, and had left her coffin to provide food for them. The farmer and his wife were now speedily brought to terms, and leaving their beds they displayed the utmost alacrity in supplying the necessities of their guests. A fire was lighted; the wet clothes were taken off the travellers; curd and beer, and a stew of Iceland-moss were set before them.

Hist!—a little noise in the outhouse! It is only Thorgunna stepping back into her coffin.

Nothing transpired of any moment during the rest of the journey. The bearers had but to narrate the story of the preceding night’s events, and they were sure of a ready welcome wherever they halted.

[Pg 81]At Skalholt all went well; the clerks accepted the gold ring, and chanted over the body: they buried her deep, and put green turf over her. So, their errand accomplished, the servants of Thorodd returned home.

At Frod river there was a large hall, with a closed bedroom at one end of it. On each side of the hall were closets; in one of these closets dried fish were stacked up, and flour was kept in the other. Every evening, about meal-time, a great fire was lighted in the hall, and men used to sit before it ere they adjourned to supper. The same night that the funeral party returned the men were sitting chatting round the fire, when suddenly they perceived a phosphorescent half-moon grow into brilliancy on the wall of the apartment, and travel slowly round the hall against the sun. The appearance continued all the while the men sat by the fire, and was visible every evening after. Thorodd asked Thorir Stumpleg, his bailiff, what this portended; and the man replied that it boded death to some one, but to whom he could not say.

One day a shepherd came in, gloomy, and muttering to himself in a strange manner. When addressed, he answered wildly, and they thought he must have lost his wits. The man remained in this state for some little while. One night he went to bed as usual, but in the morning when the men came to wake him, they found him lying dead in his place.

[Pg 82]He was buried in the church.

A few nights after, strange sounds were heard outside the house; and one night when Thorir Stumpleg went outside the door, he saw the shepherd stride past him. Thorir attempted to slip indoors again, but the shepherd grasped him, and after a short tussle cast him in, so that he fell upon the hall floor bruised and severely injured. He succeeded in crawling to his bed, but he never rose from it again. His body was purple and swollen. After a few days he died, and was buried in the churchyard. Immediately after, his spectre was seen to walk in company with that of the shepherd.

A servant of Thorir now sickened, and after three days’ illness died. Within a few days five more died. The fast preceding Christmas approached, though in those days the fashion of fasting was not introduced. In the closet containing dried fish, the stack was so big that the door could not be closed, and when fish were wanted, a ladder was placed against the pile and the top fish were taken away for use. In the evening, as men sat over the fire, the stack of dried fish was suddenly upset, and when people went to examine it, they could discover no cause. Just before Yule, also, Thorodd, the bonder, went out in a long boat with seven men to Ness, after some fish, and they were out all night. The same evening, the fires having been kindled in the hall at Frod river, a seal’s head was seen to rise out of the floor of the apartment. A servant girl, who[Pg 83] first saw it, rushed to the door, and catching up a bludgeon which lay beside it, struck at the seal’s head. The blow made the head rise higher out of the floor, and it turned its eyes towards the bed-curtains of Thorgunna. A house-churl now took the stick and beat at the apparition, but he fared no better, for the head rose higher at each stroke till its forefins appeared, and the fellow was so frightened that he fainted away. Then up came Kiartan, the bonder’s son, a lad of twelve, and snatching up a large iron mallet for beating the fish, he brought it down with a crash on the seal’s head. He struck again and again, till he drove it into the floor, much as one might drive a pile; he then beat down the earth over it.

It was noticed by all that on every occasion the lad Kiartan was the only one who had any power over the apparitions.

Next morning it was ascertained that Thorodd and his men had been lost, for the boat was driven ashore near Enni; but the bodies were never recovered.

Thurida, and her son Kiartan, immediately invited all their kindred and neighbours to a funeral feast. They had brewed for Yule, and now they kept the banquet in commemoration of the dead. When all the company had arrived, and had taken their places—the seats of the dead men being, as customary, left vacant—the hall door was darkened, and the guests beheld Thorodd and his servants[Pg 84] enter, dripping with water. All were gratified, for at that time it was considered a token of favourable acceptance with the goddess Ran if the dead men came to the wake; “and,” says the Saga writer, “though we are Christian men, and baptized, we have faith in the same token still.” The spectres walked through the hall without greeting any one, and sat down before the fire. The servants fled in all directions, and the dead men sat silently round the flames till the fire died out, then they left the house as they had entered it. This happened every evening as long as the feast continued, and some deemed that at the conclusion of the festivities the apparition would cease. The wake terminated, and the visitors dispersed. The fire was lighted as usual towards dusk, and in, as before, came Thorodd and his retinue, dripping with water; they sat down before the hearth, and began to wring out their clothes. Next came in the spectres of Thorir Stumpleg and the six who had died in bed after him, and had been buried; they were covered with mould, and they proceeded to shake the mould off their clothes upon Thorodd and his men.

The inmates of the house deserted the room, and remained without light and heat in another apartment. Next day the fire was not lighted in the hall but in the other room; the farm-people reckoning upon the ghosts keeping to the hall. But no! in came the spectral train, and upon the living men vacating their seats, the ghosts occupied them, and[Pg 85] sat looking grimly into the red fire till it died out, whilst the terrified servants spent the evening in the hall.

On the third day two fires were kindled—one in the hall for the ghosts, and another in the small chamber for the living men; and so it had to be done throughout the whole of Yule.

Fresh disturbances now began in the fish closet, and it seemed as though a bull were among the fish, tossing them about; and this went on night and day. A man set the ladder against the stack and climbed to the top. He observed emerging from the pile of stockfish a tail like that of a cow which had been singed, but soft and covered with hair like that of a seal. The fellow caught the tail and pulled at it, calling lustily for help. Up ran men and women, and all dragged at the tail, but none of them could pull it out; it seemed stiff and dead, yet suddenly it was whisked out of their hands, and rasped the skin off their palms. The stack was now taken down, but no traces of the tail could be found, only it was discovered that the skin had been peeled off the fish, and at the bottom of the stack not a bit of flesh was left upon them.

Thorgrima, the widow of Thorir Stumpleg, fell ill shortly after this; on the evening of her burial she was seen in company with Thorir and his party. All those who had seen the tail were now attacked, and died—men and women. In the autumn there had been thirty household servants at Frod river, of[Pg 86] these now eighteen were dead, the ghosts had frightened five away, and at the beginning of the month of May there remained but seven.

Things had come to such a pass as to render ruin imminent, unless some decisive measure were pursued to rid the house of the spectres that haunted it. Kiartan, accordingly, determined on consulting Snorri, the Lawman, his mother’s brother, and one of the shrewdest men Iceland ever produced. Kiartan reached his uncle’s house at Helgafell at the same time that a priest arrived from Gizor White, the apostle of Iceland. Snorri advised Kiartan to take the priest with him to Frod river, to burn all the bed-furniture of Thorgunna, to hold a court at his door, and bring a formal action at law against the spectres, and then to get the priest to sprinkle the house with holy water, and to shrive the survivors on the farm. Along with him Snorri sent his son Thord Kausi, with six men, that he might summons Kiartan’s father, considering that there might be a little delicacy in the son bringing an action against the ghost of his own father.

So it was settled, and Kiartan rode home. On his way he called at neighbours’ houses and asked help: so that by the time he reached Frod river his party was considerably swelled. It was Candlemas day, and they drew up at the farm door just after the fires had been lighted and the ghosts had assumed their customary places. Kiartan found his mother in bed, with all the premonitory symptoms[Pg 87] of the same complaint which had carried off so many others in the house. The lad passed the spectres, and going up to the bed of Thorgunna, removed the quilt and curtains and every article which had belonged to her. Then he pushed boldly up to the fire past the ghosts, and took a brand from it.

In a few minutes he had made a pile of brushwood, and had thrown the bed-furniture on the top. The flames roared up around the luckless articles and consumed them. A court was next constituted at the door, according to proper legal forms, and Kiartan summoned Thorir Stumpleg, whilst Thord Kausi summoned Thorodd for entering a gentleman’s house without permission, and bringing mischief and death among his retainers.

Every spectre there present was summoned by name in due and legal form. The plaintiffs argued their case, and witnesses were called and examined. The defendants were asked what exceptions they had to plead, and upon their remaining silent, sentence was pronounced. Each case was taken separately, and the court sat long. The first action disposed of was that against Thorir. He was ordered to leave the house forthwith. Upon hearing this decree of the court, Stumpleg rose from his chair and said—

“I sat whilst sit I might,” and hobbled out of the hall by the door opposite to that before which the court was held.

[Pg 88]The case of the shepherd was next disposed of. On hearing the sentence he rose,—

“I go; better had I been dismissed before,” he vanished through the door.

When Thorgrima was ordered to depart, she followed the others, saying,—

“I remained whilst to remain was lawful.”

Each who left said a few words which evinced a disinclination to desert the fireside for the grave and sea depths.

The last to go was Thorodd, and he said,—

“There is now no peace for us here; we are flitting one by one.”

After this Kiartan went in, and the priest took holy water and sprinkled the walls of the house; then he sang mass, and performed many ceremonies.

So the spectres haunted Frod river no more; Thurida got better rapidly, and the prospects of the farm mended.

This is a sort of ghost story from 1907. It’s also how I intend to cheat slightly for the 30 monsters in May thing on the Atlas Games Forum. Bwahahahah.

***

Our cat Thomas was very sensitive. I never knew such a sensitive cat as Thomas was. The slightest harsh word seemed to hurt his feelings and put him into a fit of the dumps. And if anybody scolded him he would sob once or twice, then burst into tears. My wife and I tried to be gentle and kind to Thomas, but when a cat has such abnormally sensitive feelings as that, one is almost every minute doing something inadvertently to wound them, and Thomas seemed to be everlastingly looking for something to take to heart. It got so that he wandered about the house from one week’s end to another, with a downcast, mournful expression, and it began to get on our nerves.

Time and again I made up my mind to speak to my wife about it, and then I would remember how kind and loving and faithful Thomas had been when he was a kitten, and I would try to soothe my nerves by playing on my violin; but whether it was the material of which the violin strings were made, or something else, this would hurt Thomas’ feelings, too, and he would sit and look at me, oh, so sadly! until I would have to weep also, and then my wife would come in, and seeing both her darlings in tears, would fall to crying. We were very, very unhappy, and all because Thomas was so ridiculously sensitive.

I stood it until one day when he had been more than usually moody. He had taken offense at some fancied slight early in the morning, and all day he had sat with a frown on his brow, not saying a word to me, nor answering me when I spoke to him, I said nothing until evening, and then, being sure that Thomas had fallen asleep on our best silk damask chair, I spoke to my wife about it. I told her plainly that I was becoming a nervous wreck on account of that cat’s feelings. I said that either I would move out and leave the house to Thomas, or that Thomas must move out and leave the house to me; that his moods were too moody, and that his permanent melancholy was beginning to tinge my writing, and that if I lost any more of the blithe joyousness that was my principal hold on the public, I would lose my popularity, and no one would want my writings, and we should all starve.

I can see now that I was a little too vehement. My mind was very much wrought up over the matter, and I may have spoken louder than I had intended. At any rate, Thomas suddenly jumped from the chair and walked dejectedly from the room. At the door he stopped and gave me one reproachful glance, and then we heard him push open the screen door and go out onto the kitchen porch.

My wife and I sat for a minute in silence. The awful significance of what I had done came upon me. Never before had I outspokenly told my feelings regarding Thomas in his hearing.

“Edward,” said my wife, “I fear you have mortally offended Thomas.”

I pretended I was indifferent about what Thomas thought of what I had said, but at heart I was worried and ashamed. I knew I had said more than I had intended. In the heat of my words I had gone further than I should otherwise have gone. However. I doggedly set my mouth into firm lines, and scowled.

“Edward,” said my wife anxiously, a few minutes later, “Thomas is very quiet out there. Don’t you — don’t you think you had better go and coax him in? Hadn’t you — hadn’t you better go to the door and say a kind word to him? You know how sensitive he is, and –“

She did not say the awful words, but we both understood what she meant. Thomas was in the exact condition of melancholy in which suicide suggests itself to the hypochondriac mind. I moved uneasily in my chair. I hated to beg the cat’s pardon, for I felt that I was right in the quality of what I had said, even if I had made the quantity too large. I hesitated, and then I rose.

At that moment my wife screamed, and I — strong man though I be — jumped nervously, for our straining ears caught the sound of a heavy body splashing into our rain barrel. For one terror-stricken moment Mary and I stood looking at each other aghast; the next moment I was dashing from the room. Wildly, impetuously, I ran to the rain barrel. Our worst fears had been realized. Thomas had committed suicide!

My garden rake was standing near, and with it I hastily raked all that remained of poor, misguided Thomas out of the rain barrel, and laid his dank body on the back porch. Poor Thomas!

Mary came and stood beside me, and I threw my arms around her, and together we looked down at that dripping, lifeless form. When her first strong paroxysms of grief were over I took her hand, and then, as we looked, Thomas quivered, staggered to his feet, and tottered into the kitchen. You may be sure that Mary and I were joyful. We got a huckaback towel and rubbed him dry. We dosed him with hot catnip. We stroked him gently, and tickled him under the chin, where a cat loves best to be tickled. He revived quickly, and, strange to say, he seemed to bear me no resentment. In fact, he seemed to be a new cat. He had no recollection of what had passed between us, nor of his awful act. He was happy and blithe, as he had been when we first made his acquaintance, and he purred and smiled at us good-naturedly. We left him asleep by the kitchen fire, and Mary and I went into the parlor to talk the matter over.

We decided we would be very good to Thomas in the future, for his suicide had been a lesson to us, and we knew that Thomas had only eight lives more. No cat has more than nine lives at the best, and we agreed that we must do all we could to cherish those eight remaining lives. We sat in the parlor planning pleasant little surprises and gifts for Thomas, and evolving new ways of making him contented and happy, for we felt that our little home must be dull for a cat of Thomas’ parts, with no children to amuse him, and we saw that we had been wrong to blame him for his melancholy. We should have made his life pleasanter and brighter, and should have tried to draw him out of himself more. So interested did we become that we were surprised to hear the clock strike midnight, for time goes so quickly when one is conspiring good deeds.

As the last stroke of twelve sounded Thomas bounded into the parlor. His eyes were glaring wildly. His limbs were trembling. Every hair on his body was standing erect. He backed between my feet, and stared with horror at what seemed to us to be but the vacant air. He alternated between pitiful mewing and frantic spitting and clawing at the air before him. I supposed that he had awakened suddenly out of a bad dream, but when I bade him go to his usual bed in the kitchen he plead so piteously to be allowed to sleep in our bedroom that Mary begged me to remember how near we had come to losing him. and I agreed to let him come with us.

The permission seemed to give him pleasure, but all the way up the stairs he kept close to my feet, now and then looking back with evident terror, and while I was disrobing he did not move an inch away from me.

When I turned off the gas and moved toward my bed. I stopped short in amazement. In the black darkness of the room I could distinguish Thomas by his two huge, terror-stricken eyes, but that was not what made me pause and tremble. Perched on the foot of my bed was a thin, phosphorescent form. It was a pale blue, transparent cat, and its face was contorted into a diabolical grin. Through it I could see the frightened face of my wife. In every feature the ghost cat was identical with Thomas. It was, indeed, the ghost of Thomas’ first life returned to haunt him. I do not — or did not then — believe very much in ghosts. I have always been willing to admit that there were ghosts, but that a man of any stamina should be afraid of them seemed to me the utmost folly, and I took a hairbrush and tried to brush the blue cat ghost off the footboard of my bed, but the ghost cat would not vanish; the brush passed through it as it would have passed through a moonbeam. I blew at the ghost, and it flickered, as a flame flickers in a draft, but it remained where it had been. If anything, it glowed with a brighter blue.

Thomas had jumped upon the bed and was cowering in my wife’s arms. My own hair and my mustache were standing erect, and the hairs of my mustache tickled my nose and made me sneeze repeatedly. I sneezed right through the cat ghost each time, and this bent him into odd curves, twisting his infernal grin into horrible caricatures of Thomas’ sweet face.

I tried every antidote for ghosts of which I had ever read, but without the least success; and finally I lighted the gas again, which dissipated the cat ghost so far as Mary and I were concerned. I thought I could see a thin blue haze above the footboard, just where the cat ghost had been.

To Thomas, however, the blue ghost remained perfectly visible, as we knew by the manner in which he trembled all night as he lay between Mary and me. I was very thankful that he was a cat instead of a pig. for his hair remained permanently erect, and if he had been a pig his bristles would have stuck out like those on a hairbrush, and would have made sleep impossible for us.

I hoped that the ghost cat would depart with the rising of the sun, but although to Mary and me it was quite invisible, the actions of Thomas told us as plainly as possible that the ghost of himself was still haunting him. All that morning Thomas walked sideways, spitting and scratching at the thin air where we knew the ghost cat must be walking beside him, and occasionally he would make wild dashes around the room, or seek to climb the smooth side of the hall, or hide his head under a hassock. As the day wore on he became exhausted, and he finally fell into a troubled sleep. He slept several hours, until about nine o’clock in the evening, and then he awoke with a blood-curdling scream, and dashed madly up the stairs.

My wife and I darted after him, but we were too late to save the rash creature from the consequences of his folly. As we panted into the attic we saw him dash madly through a pane of glass in the window under the eaves, and a moment later we heard him strike on the brick walk below. Poor, poor Thomas! Once more he had been driven to that last resort of unfortunates, and had killed himself. I threw my arms around Mary, and when her first strong paroxysms of grief were over I took her hand and together we wended our way downstairs and opened the door.

There was a dogged look as Thomas entered the hall — a look of hopeless, spiritless woe that was only broken when he sprang, striking out viciously, at the ghost, now to one side and now to the other.

I thought it best then to speak to Thomas as one man should speak to another. I told him that he was not playing the part of a man; that he should bear up and be brave; that men had been haunted by ghosts before, and had lived to be happy, and that he should try to conquer his hatred and fear of the blue ghost, and bear with it; but Thomas only crept closer to Mary’s skirts, and refused to be comforted or to have his fears allayed.

That night a second ghost of Thomas took its place on my footboard beside the first. There was no question then that Thomas had lost the second of his nine lives, and that he had but seven left, and before I got into bed I gave him a good lecture on the necessity of taking good care of the few precious lives he had left. But his attention was not on what I was saying; and that can hardly be wondered at, for the second ghost on my bed was as like the first as one pin is like another, and both were as like Thomas as could be, but the second ghost was, instead of being blue, a rich, vivid red.

The two ghosts prowled back and forth, walking through each other, and if I had not been possessed by a shuddering chill I should have been highly amused, for when the two ghosts walked through each other, and the red and blue combined, they formed a rich purple. I might with honesty say that I had never seen a blue cat ghost before, nor even a red cat ghost, but I can take my oath that neither I nor my wife nor Thomas had ever seen a purple cat ghost. It was trying for me and for Mary, but think what it must have been for Thomas, considering that these were ghosts of himself.

I will not extend this story needlessly. Any one who wishes to read the complete details will find them in the report I wrote for the Society for Psychical Research. I cannot, I fear, make the story as amusing as it would be if it were a work of fiction. It would be amusing, no doubt, were I to go on to say that each night a new ghost of Thomas was added to the line of ghost cats that prowled about on the footboard of my bed, until nine ghosts of various hues were gathered there. Mr. John Kendrick Bangs would doubtless have sacrificed the truth in order to create just such a comical situation, for he is a humorist, and if a few vari-colored cat ghosts had happened to roost on his bed, he would have seen something funny in them, and would have exaggerated the facts in order to have a little fun with the subject; but I have a reputation as a family man and as secretary of the Bowne Park Improvement Association to maintain, and I cannot bring myself to pander to your love of amusement by any such mendacity. I must stick to the facts.

Of course I cannot deny that poor, dear Thomas committed suicide every day for nine consecutive days; for that is the truth. In spite of all our efforts to prevent him, he managed each day to accomplish his fell purpose.

I cannot deny that on the third day he ate an abnormally large portion of rat poison, driven to desperation by the care that kills cats, nor that when, after Mary’s first strong paroxysms of grief were over, Thomas staggered up our stairs with only six lives remaining in him, there was a new ghost on the footboard to greet him. Neither can I deny that when, on the fourth day, melancholy seized him, and he jumped into the oven of our gas stove, when the heat there was as great as is obtainable from our suburban gas, and perished miserably, my Mary was seized with a paroxysm of grief, for we loved Thomas, and it pained us to see him get into the dying habit.

Nor shall I deny that he died by his own act on the fifth day, when he allowed our heavy front door to slam shut on his neck, extinguishing himself and causing my wife strong paroxysms of grief. And it would not be the truth if I did not say that on the sixth day Thomas, to the paroxysmal grief of my wife, chewed up and swallowed a lamp chimney, and died a wicked death. I trust, too, that my wife is as tender hearted as any other woman, but I cannot deny that when, on the seventh day, we found Thomas hanged by the neck in our lovely three-dollar-ninety-eight-marked-down-from-five-dollar rope portieres, and dead. Mary’s paroxysms of grief were less strong than Thomas had, perhaps, come to expect on such occasions. I claim that no woman can be expected, by any reasonable cat, to keep up a high standard of paroxysms of grief day after day without falling off a little in energy from time to time.

But Thomas was not a reasonable cat, and what he thought was Mary’s indifference so affected him that on the eighth day he gnawed the rubber coating off an electric-light wire, and perished miserably. My wife hardly paroxysmed at all. But it was another matter when, on the ninth day, poor, dear Thomas snuffed out his last life by crawling under the sofa pillows of our almost Oriental cozy corner, and there suffocated. Then we knew poor Thomas was indeed lost to us. While six or four lives are left there is still, as the proverb says, hope; but when the ninth life of a cat is gone, it is a dead cat. Our sweet, suffering Thomas had left us, and I cannot deny that when Mary had recovered somewhat from her paroxysms of grief we hoped we had seen the last of Thomas. These things I cannot deny; but at no time was our bedroom full of multi-colored ghost cats, walking through each other and perching all around the room. We had no such vision of a woe-begone Thomas mournfully moving about the house followed by his eight ghosts of himself in a long, prismatic row.

What really happened was this: On the third night a third cat ghost of Thomas appeared, of a rich yellow color, and perched on my footboard, but the red and blue ghosts of the night before had permanently merged into one ghost of a rich purple. I do not try to account for this. I merely state it as a fact, and say that any one who knows anything about color knows that red and blue combined make purple. On the fourth night the purple ghost and the yellow ghost were joined by a new blue ghost, of a rather stronger shade than the first blue ghost had been; but when a red ghost appeared on the fifth night we found that the yellow and blue ghosts had combined to form one green one, and then this red ghost and the green ghost amalgamated into one brown one.

Thus it continued, a new yellow cat ghost materializing on the sixth night, only to mingle with a new red one on the seventh night, making a lovely orange-colored one; while on the eighth night a most peculiar cat ghost appeared that was what might be called a tortoise-shell cat ghost of all hues. We went to our room on the ninth night with considerable anxiety, not knowing what the last ghost of Thomas would be like; but we found that all the ghosts had combined to form one single ghost of spotless purity — a white iridescent ghost with a white iridescent grin that faded away into the air and disappeared entirely.

Perhaps truth is stranger than fiction. Perhaps you may consider this blending of the ghosts stranger than the congregating of nine prismatic cat ghosts would have been. I can only say it is more logical.

For several days after Thomas for the last time left us so abruptly — cut down for the ninth time in his prime — my wife and I discussed the matter, but we could make nothing of it, and it was at her suggestion that I wrote out the whole story and laid it before the Society for Psychical Research. The conclusion that the society reached was that in this the laws of ghosts was happily illustrated; for if every cat was allowed to send nine distinct ghosts into the ghost realm the population there would soon be too cattv.

It was also pointed out that if each ghost of poor, dear Thomas had been white, each would have been complete in itself, but that by being colored they could only reach perfection and harmony by combining to form one white ghost. The society also asked us to let it know if we were haunted by Thomas in his new and white form; but we have had nothing to report. Occasionally we awake at night to hear a soft patter of feet, or a weird rattle of plaster in the walls, or unearthly squeakings, but while I am persuaded that these are due to the death of Thomas, I do not believe they are ghostly manifestations. I know they are rats.

This little-commented story by HG Wells lets us reuse some of the statistics already published in Ars Magica Monsters Volume 1. It’s about a group of social, amphibious octopi that generally dwell in the depths, but might not always. Thanks to Mike Pelton and his Librivox production team. Statistics eventually, but obviously based on the squid in AMM1.

***

I

Until the extraordinary affair at Sidmouth, the peculiar species Haploteuthis ferox was known to science only generically, on the strength of a half-digested tentacle obtained near the Azores, and a decaying body pecked by birds and nibbled by fish, found early in 1896 by Mr. Jennings, near Land’s End.

In no department of zoological science, indeed, are we quite so much in the dark as with regard to the deep-sea cephalopods. A mere accident, for instance, it was that led to the Prince of Monaco’s discovery of nearly a dozen new forms in the summer of 1895, a discovery in which the before-mentioned tentacle was included. It chanced that a cachalot was killed off Terceira by some sperm whalers, and in its last struggles charged almost to the Prince’s yacht, missed it, rolled under, and died within twenty yards of his rudder. And in its agony it threw up a number of large objects, which the Prince, dimly perceiving they were strange and important, was, by a happy expedient, able to secure before they sank. He set[127] his screws in motion, and kept them circling in the vortices thus created until a boat could be lowered. And these specimens were whole cephalopods and fragments of cephalopods, some of gigantic proportions, and almost all of them unknown to science!

It would seem, indeed, that these large and agile creatures, living in the middle depths of the sea, must, to a large extent, for ever remain unknown to us, since under water they are too nimble for nets, and it is only by such rare unlooked-for accidents that specimens can be obtained. In the case of Haploteuthis ferox, for instance, we are still altogether ignorant of its habitat, as ignorant as we are of the breeding-ground of the herring or the sea-ways of the salmon. And zoologists are altogether at a loss to account for its sudden appearance on our coast. Possibly it was the stress of a hunger migration that drove it hither out of the deep. But it will be, perhaps, better to avoid necessarily inconclusive discussion, and to proceed at once with our narrative.

The first human being to set eyes upon a living Haploteuthis—the first human being to survive, that is, for there can be little doubt now that the wave of bathing fatalities and boating accidents that travelled along the coast of Cornwall and Devon in early May was due to this cause—was a retired tea-dealer of the name of Fison, who was stopping at a Sidmouth boarding-house. It was in the afternoon, and he was walking along the cliff path between Sidmouth and Ladram Bay. The cliffs in this direction are very high, but down the red face of them in one[128] place a kind of ladder staircase has been made. He was near this when his attention was attracted by what at first he thought to be a cluster of birds struggling over a fragment of food that caught the sunlight, and glistened pinkish-white. The tide was right out, and this object was not only far below him, but remote across a broad waste of rock reefs covered with dark seaweed and interspersed with silvery shining tidal pools. And he was, moreover, dazzled by the brightness of the further water.

In a minute, regarding this again, he perceived that his judgment was in fault, for over this struggle circled a number of birds, jackdaws and gulls for the most part, the latter gleaming blindingly when the sunlight smote their wings, and they seemed minute in comparison with it. And his curiosity was, perhaps, aroused all the more strongly because of his first insufficient explanations.

As he had nothing better to do than amuse himself, he decided to make this object, whatever it was, the goal of his afternoon walk, instead of Ladram Bay, conceiving it might perhaps be a great fish of some sort, stranded by some chance, and flapping about in its distress. And so he hurried down the long steep ladder, stopping at intervals of thirty feet or so to take breath and scan the mysterious movement.

At the foot of the cliff he was, of course, nearer his object than he had been; but, on the other hand, it now came up against the incandescent sky, beneath the sun, so as to seem dark and indistinct. Whatever was pinkish of it was now hidden by a skerry of[129] weedy boulders. But he perceived that it was made up of seven rounded bodies, distinct or connected, and that the birds kept up a constant croaking and screaming, but seemed afraid to approach it too closely.

Mr. Fison, torn by curiosity, began picking his way across the wave-worn rocks, and, finding the wet seaweed that covered them thickly rendered them extremely slippery, he stopped, removed his shoes and socks, and coiled his trousers above his knees. His object was, of course, merely to avoid stumbling into the rocky pools about him, and perhaps he was rather glad, as all men are, of an excuse to resume, even for a moment, the sensations of his boyhood. At anyrate, it is to this, no doubt, that he owes his life.

He approached his mark with all the assurance which the absolute security of this country against all forms of animal life gives its inhabitants. The round bodies moved to and fro, but it was only when he surmounted the skerry of boulders I have mentioned that he realised the horrible nature of the discovery. It came upon him with some suddenness.

The rounded bodies fell apart as he came into sight over the ridge, and displayed the pinkish object to be the partially devoured body of a human being, but whether of a man or woman he was unable to say. And the rounded bodies were new and ghastly-looking creatures, in shape somewhat resembling an octopus, and with huge and very long and flexible tentacles, coiled copiously on the ground. The skin[130] had a glistening texture, unpleasant to see, like shiny leather. The downward bend of the tentacle-surrounded mouth, the curious excrescence at the bend, the tentacles, and the large intelligent eyes, gave the creatures a grotesque suggestion of a face. They were the size of a fair-sized swine about the body, and the tentacles seemed to him to be many feet in length. There were, he thinks, seven or eight at least of the creatures. Twenty yards beyond them, amid the surf of the now returning tide, two others were emerging from the sea.

Their bodies lay flatly on the rocks, and their eyes regarded him with evil interest; but it does not appear that Mr. Fison was afraid, or that he realised that he was in any danger. Possibly his confidence is to be ascribed to the limpness of their attitudes. But he was horrified, of course, and intensely excited and indignant at such revolting creatures preying upon human flesh. He thought they had chanced upon a drowned body. He shouted to them, with the idea of driving them off, and, finding they did not budge, cast about him, picked up a big rounded lump of rock, and flung it at one.

And then, slowly uncoiling their tentacles, they all began moving towards him—creeping at first deliberately, and making a soft purring sound to each other.

In a moment Mr. Fison realised that he was in danger. He shouted again, threw both his boots, and started off, with a leap, forthwith. Twenty yards off he stopped and faced about, judging them slow, and behold! the tentacles of their leader were[131] already pouring over the rocky ridge on which he had just been standing!

At that he shouted again, but this time not threatening, but a cry of dismay, and began jumping, striding, slipping, wading across the uneven expanse between him and the beach. The tall red cliffs seemed suddenly at a vast distance, and he saw, as though they were creatures in another world, two minute workmen engaged in the repair of the ladder-way, and little suspecting the race for life that was beginning below them. At one time he could hear the creatures splashing in the pools not a dozen feet behind him, and once he slipped and almost fell.

They chased him to the very foot of the cliffs, and desisted only when he had been joined by the workmen at the foot of the ladder-way up the cliff. All three of the men pelted them with stones for a time, and then hurried to the cliff top and along the path towards Sidmouth, to secure assistance and a boat, and to rescue the desecrated body from the clutches of these abominable creatures.

And, as if he had not already been in sufficient peril that day, Mr. Fison went with the boat to point out the exact spot of his adventure.

As the tide was down, it required a considerable detour to reach the spot, and when at last they came off the ladder-way, the mangled body had[132] disappeared. The water was now running in, submerging first one slab of slimy rock and then another, and the four men in the boat—the workmen, that is, the boatman, and Mr. Fison—now turned their attention from the bearings off shore to the water beneath the keel.

At first they could see little below them, save a dark jungle of laminaria, with an occasional darting fish. Their minds were set on adventure, and they expressed their disappointment freely. But presently they saw one of the monsters swimming through the water seaward, with a curious rolling motion that suggested to Mr. Fison the spinning roll of a captive balloon. Almost immediately after, the waving streamers of laminaria were extraordinarily perturbed, parted for a moment, and three of these beasts became darkly visible, struggling for what was probably some fragment of the drowned man. In a moment the copious olive-green ribbons had poured again over this writhing group.

At that all four men, greatly excited, began beating the water with oars and shouting, and immediately they saw a tumultuous movement among the weeds. They desisted to see more clearly, and as soon as the water was smooth, they saw, as it seemed to them, the whole sea bottom among the weeds set with eyes.

“Ugly swine!” cried one of the men. “Why, there’s dozens!”

And forthwith the things began to rise through the water about them. Mr. Fison has since described to the writer this startling eruption out of[133] the waving laminaria meadows. To him it seemed to occupy a considerable time, but it is probable that really it was an affair of a few seconds only. For a time nothing but eyes, and then he speaks of tentacles streaming out and parting the weed fronds this way and that. Then these things, growing larger, until at last the bottom was hidden by their intercoiling forms, and the tips of tentacles rose darkly here and there into the air above the swell of the waters.

One came up boldly to the side of the boat, and, clinging to this with three of its sucker-set tentacles, threw four others over the gunwale, as if with an intention either of oversetting the boat or of clambering into it. Mr. Fison at once caught up the boathook, and, jabbing furiously at the soft tentacles, forced it to desist. He was struck in the back and almost pitched overboard by the boatman, who was using his oar to resist a similar attack on the other side of the boat. But the tentacles on either side at once relaxed their hold at this, slid out of sight, and splashed into the water.

“We’d better get out of this,” said Mr. Fison, who was trembling violently. He went to the tiller, while the boatman and one of the workmen seated themselves and began rowing. The other workman stood up in the fore part of the boat, with the boathook, ready to strike any more tentacles that might appear. Nothing else seems to have been said. Mr. Fison had expressed the common feeling beyond amendment. In a hushed, scared mood, with faces white and drawn, they set about escaping from[134] the position into which they had so recklessly blundered.

But the oars had scarcely dropped into the water before dark, tapering, serpentine ropes had bound them, and were about the rudder; and creeping up the sides of the boat with a looping motion came the suckers again. The men gripped their oars and pulled, but it was like trying to move a boat in a floating raft of weeds. “Help here!” cried the boatman, and Mr. Fison and the second workman rushed to help lug at the oar.

Then the man with the boathook—his name was Ewan, or Ewen—sprang up with a curse, and began striking downward over the side, as far as he could reach, at the bank of tentacles that now clustered along the boat’s bottom. And, at the same time, the two rowers stood up to get a better purchase for the recovery of their oars. The boatman handed his to Mr. Fison, who lugged desperately, and, meanwhile, the boatman opened a big clasp-knife, and, leaning over the side of the boat, began hacking at the spiring arms upon the oar shaft.

Mr. Fison, staggering with the quivering rocking of the boat, his teeth set, his breath coming short, and the veins starting on his hands as he pulled at his oar, suddenly cast his eyes seaward. And there, not fifty yards off, across the long rollers of the incoming tide, was a large boat standing in towards them, with three women and a little child in it. A boatman was rowing, and a little man in a pink-ribboned straw hat and whites stood in the stern, hailing them. For a moment, of course, Mr. Fison[135] thought of help, and then he thought of the child. He abandoned his oar forthwith, threw up his arms in a frantic gesture, and screamed to the party in the boat to keep away “for God’s sake!” It says much for the modesty and courage of Mr. Fison that he does not seem to be aware that there was any quality of heroism in his action at this juncture. The oar he had abandoned was at once drawn under, and presently reappeared floating about twenty yards away.

At the same moment Mr. Fison felt the boat under him lurch violently, and a hoarse scream, a prolonged cry of terror from Hill, the boatman, caused him to forget the party of excursionists altogether. He turned, and saw Hill crouching by the forward rowlock, his face convulsed with terror, and his right arm over the side and drawn tightly down. He gave now a succession of short, sharp cries, “Oh! oh! oh!—oh!” Mr. Fison believes that he must have been hacking at the tentacles below the water-line, and have been grasped by them, but, of course, it is quite impossible to say now certainly what had happened. The boat was heeling over, so that the gunwale was within ten inches of the water, and both Ewan and the other labourer were striking down into the water, with oar and boathook, on either side of Hill’s arm. Mr. Fison instinctively placed himself to counterpoise them.

Then Hill, who was a burly, powerful man, made a strenuous effort, and rose almost to a standing position. He lifted his arm, indeed, clean out of the water. Hanging to it was a complicated tangle of[136] brown ropes; and the eyes of one of the brutes that had hold of him, glaring straight and resolute, showed momentarily above the surface. The boat heeled more and more, and the green-brown water came pouring in a cascade over the side. Then Hill slipped and fell with his ribs across the side, and his arm and the mass of tentacles about it splashed back into the water. He rolled over; his boot kicked Mr. Fison’s knee as that gentleman rushed forward to seize him, and in another moment fresh tentacles had whipped about his waist and neck, and after a brief, convulsive struggle, in which the boat was nearly capsized, Hill was lugged overboard. The boat righted with a violent jerk that all but sent Mr. Fison over the other side, and hid the struggle in the water from his eyes.

He stood staggering to recover his balance for a moment, and as he did so, he became aware that the struggle and the inflowing tide had carried them close upon the weedy rocks again. Not four yards off a table of rock still rose in rhythmic movements above the in-wash of the tide. In a moment Mr. Fison seized the oar from Ewan, gave one vigorous stroke, then, dropping it, ran to the bows and leapt. He felt his feet slide over the rock, and, by a frantic effort, leapt again towards a further mass. He stumbled over this, came to his knees, and rose again.

“Look out!” cried someone, and a large drab body struck him. He was knocked flat into a tidal pool by one of the workmen, and as he went down he heard smothered, choking cries, that he believed[137] at the time came from Hill. Then he found himself marvelling at the shrillness and variety of Hill’s voice. Someone jumped over him, and a curving rush of foamy water poured over him, and passed. He scrambled to his feet dripping, and, without looking seaward, ran as fast as his terror would let him shoreward. Before him, over the flat space of scattered rocks, stumbled the two workmen—one a dozen yards in front of the other.

He looked over his shoulder at last, and, seeing that he was not pursued, faced about. He was astonished. From the moment of the rising of the cephalopods out of the water, he had been acting too swiftly to fully comprehend his actions. Now it seemed to him as if he had suddenly jumped out of an evil dream.

For there were the sky, cloudless and blazing with the afternoon sun, the sea weltering under its pitiless brightness, the soft creamy foam of the breaking water, and the low, long, dark ridges of rock. The righted boat floated, rising and falling gently on the swell about a dozen yards from shore. Hill and the monsters, all the stress and tumult of that fierce fight for life, had vanished as though they had never been.

Mr. Fison’s heart was beating violently; he was throbbing to the finger-tips, and his breath came deep.

There was something missing. For some seconds he could not think clearly enough what this might be. Sun, sky, sea, rocks—what was it? Then he remembered the boatload of excursionists. It had vanished. He wondered whether he had imagined[138] it. He turned, and saw the two workmen standing side by side under the projecting masses of the tall pink cliffs. He hesitated whether he should make one last attempt to save the man Hill. His physical excitement seemed to desert him suddenly, and leave him aimless and helpless. He turned shoreward, stumbling and wading towards his two companions.

He looked back again, and there were now two boats floating, and the one farthest out at sea pitched clumsily, bottom upward.

So it was Haploteuthis ferox made its appearance upon the Devonshire coast. So far, this has been its most serious aggression. Mr. Fison’s account, taken together with the wave of boating and bathing casualties to which I have already alluded, and the absence of fish from the Cornish coasts that year, points clearly to a shoal of these voracious deep-sea monsters prowling slowly along the sub-tidal coastline. Hunger migration has, I know, been suggested as the force that drove them hither; but, for my own part, I prefer to believe the alternative theory of Hemsley. Hemsley holds that a pack or shoal of these creatures may have become enamoured of human flesh by the accident of a foundered ship sinking among them, and have wandered in search of it out of their accustomed zone; first waylaying and following ships, and so coming to our shores in the wake of the Atlantic traffic. But to discuss[139] Hemsley’s cogent and admirably-stated arguments would be out of place here.

It would seem that the appetites of the shoal were satisfied by the catch of eleven people—for so far as can be ascertained, there were ten people in the second boat, and certainly these creatures gave no further signs of their presence off Sidmouth that day. The coast between Seaton and Budleigh Salterton was patrolled all that evening and night by four Preventive Service boats, the men in which were armed with harpoons and cutlasses, and as the evening advanced, a number of more or less similarly equipped expeditions, organised by private individuals, joined them. Mr. Fison took no part in any of these expeditions.

About midnight excited hails were heard from a boat about a couple of miles out at sea to the south-east of Sidmouth, and a lantern was seen waving in a strange manner to and fro and up and down. The nearer boats at once hurried towards the alarm. The venturesome occupants of the boat, a seaman, a curate, and two schoolboys, had actually seen the monsters passing under their boat. The creatures, it seems, like most deep-sea organisms, were phosphorescent, and they had been floating, five fathoms deep or so, like creatures of moonshine through the blackness of the water, their tentacles retracted and as if asleep, rolling over and over, and moving slowly in a wedge-like formation towards the south-east.

These people told their story in gesticulated fragments, as first one boat drew alongside and then another. At last there was a little fleet of eight or[140] nine boats collected together, and from them a tumult, like the chatter of a marketplace, rose into the stillness of the night. There was little or no disposition to pursue the shoal, the people had neither weapons nor experience for such a dubious chase, and presently—even with a certain relief, it may be—the boats turned shoreward.

And now to tell what is perhaps the most astonishing fact in this whole astonishing raid. We have not the slightest knowledge of the subsequent movements of the shoal, although the whole south-west coast was now alert for it. But it may, perhaps, be significant that a cachalot was stranded off Sark on June 3. Two weeks and three days after this Sidmouth affair, a living Haploteuthis came ashore on Calais sands. It was alive, because several witnesses saw its tentacles moving in a convulsive way. But it is probable that it was dying. A gentleman named Pouchet obtained a rifle and shot it.

That was the last appearance of a living Haploteuthis. No others were seen on the French coast. On the 15th of June a dead body, almost complete, was washed ashore near Torquay, and a few days later a boat from the Marine Biological station, engaged in dredging off Plymouth, picked up a rotting specimen, slashed deeply with a cutlass wound. How the former specimen had come by its death it is impossible to say. And on the last day of June, Mr. Egbert Caine, an artist, bathing near Newlyn, threw up his arms, shrieked, and was drawn under. A friend bathing with him made no attempt to save him, but swam at once for the shore. This[141] is the last fact to tell of this extraordinary raid from the deeper sea. Whether it is really the last of these horrible creatures it is, as yet, premature to say. But it is believed, and certainly it is to be hoped, that they have returned now, and returned for good, to the sunless depths of the middle seas, out of which they have so strangely and so mysteriously arisen.

Sanctuary of Ice had had two covenants cut from it, to give troupes space to write their own. Rough drafts of them were produces, and I published them several web pages ago. Shadow of the Moon used a similar system to the Dreamlands supplement for Call of Cthulhu, where each character had two sheets, and they became increasingly disconnected as the version from inside the covenant’s aura became more powerful than the mundane alternative. Labyrinth of Lanes was an urban Bjornaer covenant, made up of the kinds of marginal creatures that no longer fit inside the house with its demand that Heartbeats be noble. As an Australian I’m a bad choice to write this, because, like most of my countryfolk, I admire the resilience of urban species. I can’t see why a Bjornaer couldn’t be a “bin chicken”. To explain, in Australia we do have pigeons, but that niche is also held by something about four times the size that looks like a Sacred Ibis that’s had a rough morning. We put our cities on their wetlands and in response they’ve decided we owe them hot chips. So, to replace Labyrinth, Alvearium.

Alvearium is a covenant I designed for the Greater Alps as the frame story for what eventually became Mythic Europe Magazine. I even had a logo for it and was going to use it instead of “Dames From Folktales” as my URL.
Eventually I decided to make things obvious, and to not use a narrative frame. The magazine wouldn’t be an in-universe document. I wanted, instead, for the magazine to be a simple tool for storyguides. That requires modern English and a layout like a cookbook or instruction manual. There’s a little useful material here though, which I should eventually write up as a complete covenant. Here’s that residue.

Alvearium is Latin for “apiary”. It’s the Mercere covenant for the Alps. It collects the folklore of the Order, collates it, and produces The Book of Places You Must Not Go. That’s an old hook: it’s a list of dangerous places the Mercere keep so that redcaps know what supernatural threats to avoid. Magi from more militant Houses, however, may use The Book as a handy list of dangerous places to test their skills within.

By coincidence after I decided not to finish working on Alvearium, I was listening to an author who read the following text from Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum. Novum Organum is, loosely, what we’d crib from if we wanted a book to stand in for Bonisagus’s The Art of Magic. It’s a very early attempt to create what we now call the scientific method and favours empirical experimentation as a way to increase knowledge, followed by publication and peer acceptance. The piece that’s of main use here is:

“Those who have handled sciences have either been men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course; it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy.”

Bacon’s point is that it is not enough to collect knowledge and hoard it (like the ant), nor to create elaborate networks of theory not tested by experience (like the spider) but that testing theory and finding evidence are symbiotic processes. Hermetic magi have always been oddly modern because we like the idea of them have weird laboratories full of glass vials and potential explosions, which is why I say Bacon is a useful model for Bonisagus.

At the core of Alvearium is a character of mine from decades ago, a redcap called Rosa de Marco who leads the covenant. Rosa’s secret is that’s she not human: she a faerie horror that was tempted to give away her hordes of warriors and become the grand-daughter of a Hermetic storyweaver. She’s now an adult, and acts as the collator of the Book. The constant flow of stories through Alvearium, and the incessant need for the Book, grant her so much vitality that it buttresses her against attempts to change her nature further. Small amounts of her previous focus slip through. The covenant’s name, which means “beehive” and its symbol, the gold hexagon, are remnants of what she once was. If annoyed sufficiently she might command swarms of bees without noticing she’s doing it, or even spawn new Apian Warriors. These are Gigeresque monstrosities she once threatened a piece of the Rhineland with. Rosa doesn’t want to become a monster again, and the parts of her that slumber are willing to do terrible things to remain asleep.

Thanks again to Thomas Copeland and his Librivox team.

The editor of the version which Copeland is reading for us has a footnote here which is of value to us: In part it reads: “The account of each day’s hunting contains a number of obsolete terms and details of woodcraft, not given in full. The meaning of some has been lost, and the minute description of skinning and dismembering the game would be distinctly repulsive to the general reader. They are valuable for a student of the history of the English sport, but interfere with the progress of the story. The fact that the author devotes so much space to them seems to indicate that he lived in the country and was keenly interested in field sports.”

Full early, ere daylight, the folk rose up; the guests who would depart called their grooms, and they made them ready, and saddled the steeds, tightened up the girths, and trussed up their mails. The knights, all arrayed for riding, leapt up lightly, and took their bridles, and each rode his way as pleased him best.
   The lord of the land was not the last. Ready for the chase, with many of his men, he ate a sop hastily when he had heard Mass, and then with blast of the bugle fared forth to the field.10 He and his nobles were to horse ere daylight glimmered upon the earth.

A sop is a piece of bread dipped in something. Wine and gravy are popular.

   Then the huntsmen coupled their hounds, unclosed the kennel door, and called them out. They blew three blasts gaily on the bugles, the hounds bayed fiercely, and they that would go a-hunting checked and chastised them. A hundred hunters there were of the best, so I have heard tell. Then the trackers gat them to the trysting-place and uncoupled the hounds, and forest rang again with their gay blasts.

A lot of people who comment on this passage seem to suggest that the hounds are coupled in the sense of being put in teams of two, like gunhounds. I’d like to suggest that they are “coupled” in the sense that they are put on a leash, because later they are “uncoupled” before the hunt begins. This translation later calls them greyhounds. There are greyhounds in Britain after the Romans, so…perhaps.

The modern English word “tryst” comes from a Scots Gaelic word which means “meeting place for hunting”.

   At the first sound of the hunt the game quaked for fear, and fled, trembling, along the vale. They betook them to the heights, but the liers in wait turned them back with loud cries; the harts they let pass them, and the stags with their spreading antlers, for the lord had forbidden that they should be slain, but the hinds and the does they turned back, and drave down into the valleys. Then might ye see much shooting of arrows. As the deer fled under the boughs a broad whistling shaft smote and wounded each sorely, so that, wounded and bleeding, they fell dying on the banks. The hounds followed swiftly on their tracks, and hunters, blowing the horn, sped after them with ringing shouts as if the cliffs burst asunder. What game escaped those that shot was run down at the outer ring. Thus were they driven on the hills, and harassed at the waters, so well did the men know their work, and the greyhounds were so great and swift that they ran them down as fast as the hunters could slay them. Thus the lord passed the day in mirth and joyfulness, even to nightfall.

The style of hunting here, which I thought was called “driving” but apparently that’s an Americanism, is just called “hunting” and differentiated by calling personal pursuit “stalking”. The drivers push the herd through a narrow gorge that acts as a kill zone. In the US this sometimes was deliberately into a river or lake, and the hunters were in boats, because swimming stags can’t kick you or stab with their horns properly. Then again, the Americans were hunting for food and profit. That’s considered not quite the thing among the European nobility, who instead use peasants and dogs.

This is a winter hunt, to reduce the herd to prevent starvation by spring, and top up supplies over the Christmas season. Here they let the males go and shoot the females This seems an odd way to manage a herd and I’m not sure why you’d do this. I’ve heard of kings saying only they or their honoured guests are allowed to kill stags with prongs above a certain number. There may be something symbolic I’m missing here, but why you’d kill the lighter females, with less meat and fat, and capable of calving, and spare the harts, mature males that are not stags, is a mystery to me. Comments on the blog very welcome.

   So the lord roamed the woods, and Gawain, that good night, lay ever a-bed, curtained about, under the costly coverlet, while the daylight gleamed on the walls. And as he lay half slumbering, he heard a little sound at the door, and he raised his head, and caught back a corner of the curtain, and waited to see what it might be. It was the lovely lady, the lord’s wife; she shut the door softly behind her, and turned towards the bed; and Gawain was shamed, laid him down softly and made as if he slept. And she came lightly to the bedside, within the curtain, and sat herself down beside him, to wait till he wakened. The knight lay there awhile, and marvelled within himself what her coming might betoken; and he said to himself, “‘Twere more seemly if I asked her what hath brought her hither.” Then he made feint to waken, and turned towards her, and opened his eyes as one astonished, and crossed himself; and she looked on him laughing, with her cheeks red and white, lovely to behold, and small smiling lips.
   “Good morrow, Sir Gawain,” said that fair lady; “ye are but a careless sleeper, since one can enter thus. Now are ye taken unawares, and lest ye escape me I shall bind you in your bed; of that be ye assured!” Laughing, she spake these words.

As a modern reader, may I note that the seduction scene begins with an offer of light bondage? How clear was that to readers near the time of writing? I have no idea. The notes I’ve read about this scene, oddly, don’t much mention the lady offering to tie the underdressed Gawain to his bed for her pleasure.

   “Good morrow, fair lady,” quoth Gawain blithely. “I will do your will, as it likes me well. For I yield me readily, and pray your grace, and that is best, by my faith, since I needs must do so.” Thus he jested again, laughing. “But an ye would, fair lady, grant me this grace that ye pray your prisoner to rise. I would get me from bed, and array me better, then could I talk with ye in more comfort.”
   “Nay, forsooth, fair sir,” quoth the lady, “ye shall not rise, I will rede ye better.

“Rede” here, R E D E, means “advise”. It also means to interpret a puzzle or dream: take note Criamon magi.

I shall keep ye here, since ye can do no other, and talk with my knight whom I have captured. For I know well that ye are Sir Gawain, whom all the world worships, wheresoever ye may ride. Your honour and your courtesy are praised by lords and ladies, by all who live. Now ye are here and we are alone, my lord and his men are afield; the serving men in their beds, and my maidens also, and the door shut upon us. And since in this hour I have him that all men love, I shall use my time well with speech, while it lasts. Ye are welcome to my company, for it behoves me in sooth to be your servant.”
   “In good faith,” quoth Gawain, “I think me that I am not him of whom ye speak, for unworthy am I of such service as ye here proffer. In sooth, I were glad if I might set myself by word or service to your pleasure; a pure joy would it be to me!”
   “In good faith, Sir Gawain,” quoth the gay lady, “the praise and the prowess that pleases all ladies I lack them not, nor hold them light; yet are there ladies enough who would liever now have the knight in their hold, as I have ye here, to dally with your courteous words, to bring them comfort and to ease their cares, than much of the treasure and the gold that are theirs. And now, through the grace of Him who upholds the heavens, I have wholly in my power that which they all desire!”
   Thus the lady, fair to look upon, made him great cheer, and Sir Gawain, with modest words, answered her again: “Madam,” he quoth, “may Mary requite ye, for in good faith I have found in ye a noble frankness. Much courtesy have other folk shown me, but the honour they have done me is naught to the worship of yourself, who knoweth but good.”
   “By Mary,” quoth the lady, “I think otherwise; for were I worth all the women alive, and had I the wealth of the world in my hand, and might choose me a lord to my liking, then, for all that I have seen in ye, Sir Knight, of beauty and courtesy and blithe semblance, and for all that I have hearkened and hold for true, there should be no knight on earth to be chosen before ye!”
   “Well I wot,” quoth Sir Gawain, “that ye have chosen a better; but I am proud that ye should so prize me, and as your servant do I hold ye my sovereign, and your knight am I, and may Christ reward ye.”
   So they talked of many matters till mid-morn was past, and ever the lady made as though she loved him, and the knight turned her speech aside. For though she were the brightest of maidens, yet had he forborne to shew her love for the danger that awaited him, and the blow that must be given without delay.
   Then the lady prayed her leave from him, and he granted it readily. And she gave [the text reads “have”] him good-day, with laughing glance, but he must needs marvel at her words:
   “Now He that speeds fair speech reward ye this disport; but that ye be Gawain my mind misdoubts me greatly.”
   “Wherefore?” quoth the knight quickly, fearing lest he had lacked in some courtesy.

A reminder that “wherefore?” means “why?” not “where?”.

   And the lady spake: “So true a knight as Gawain is holden, and one so perfect in courtesy, would never have tarried so long with a lady but he would of his courtesy have craved a kiss at parting.”
   Then quoth Gawain, “I wot I will do even as it may please ye, and kiss at your commandment, as a true knight should who forbears to ask for fear of displeasure.”
   At that she came near and bent down and kissed the knight, and each commended the other to Christ, and she went forth from the chamber softly.
   Then Sir Gawain arose and called his chamberlain and chose his garments, and when he was ready he gat him forth to Mass, and then went to meat, and made merry all day till the rising of the moon, and never had a knight fairer lodging than had he with those two noble ladies, the elder and the younger.
   And even the lord of the land chased the hinds through holt and heath till eventide, and then with much blowing of bugles and baying of hounds they bore the game homeward; and by the time daylight was done all the folk had returned to that fair castle. And when the lord and Sir Gawain met together, then were they both well pleased. The lord commanded them all to assemble in the great hall, and the ladies to descend with their maidens, and there, before them all, he bade the men fetch in the spoil of the day’s hunting, and he called unto Gawain, and counted the tale of the beasts, and showed them unto him, and said, “What think ye of this game, Sir Knight? Have I deserved of ye thanks for my woodcraft?”
   “Yea, I wis,” quoth the other, “here is the fairest spoil I have seen this seven year in the winter season.”
   “And all this do I give ye, Gawain,” quoth the host, “for by accord of covenant ye may claim it as your own.”
   “That is sooth,” quoth the other, “I grant you that same; and I have fairly won this within walls, and with as good will do I yield it to ye.” With that he clasped his hands round the lord’s neck and kissed him as courteously as he might. “Take ye here my spoils, no more have I won; ye should have it freely, though it were greater than this.”
   “‘Tis good,” said the host, “gramercy thereof. Yet were I fain to know where ye won this same favour, and if it were by your own wit?”
   “Nay,” answered Gawain, “that was not in the bond. Ask me no more: ye have taken what was yours by right, be content with that.”
   They laughed and jested together, and sat them down to supper, where they were served with many dainties; and after supper they sat by the hearth, and wine was served out to them; and oft in their jesting they promised to observe on the morrow the same covenant that they had made before, and whatever chance might betide to exchange their spoil, be it much or little, when they met at night. Thus they renewed their bargain before the whole court, and then the night-drink was served, and each courteously took leave of the other and gat him to bed.
   By the time the cock had crowed thrice the lord of the castle had left his bed; Mass was sung and meat fitly served. The folk were forth to the wood ere the day broke, with hound and horn they rode over the plain, and uncoupled their dogs among the thorns. Soon they struck on the scent, and the hunt cheered on the hounds who were first to seize it, urging them with shouts. The others hastened to the cry, forty at once, and there rose such a clamour from the pack that the rocks rang again. The huntsmen spurred them on with shouting and blasts of the horn; and the hounds drew together to a thicket betwixt the water and a high crag in the cliff beneath the hillside. There where the rough rock fell ruggedly they, the huntsmen, fared to the finding, and cast about round the hill and the thicket behind them. The knights wist well what beast was within, and would drive him forth with the bloodhounds.

Yesterday the lord had greyhounds, which are sighthounds. Now he has bloodhounds, which are scent hounds and from later than the game period. Its ancestral breed, for Saint Hubert, is in period, as are Norman hounds, a breed that is now extinct because they were too slow when hunting that they were bred to extinction. Bloodhounds aren’t so much used as hunting packs. They are used as lead dogs, to find quarry before a pack of scenthounds, often called raches in older documents, are set upon the prey.

And as they beat the bushes, suddenly over the beaters there rushed forth a wondrous great and fierce boar, long since had he left the herd to roam by himself. Grunting, he cast many to the ground, and fled forth at his best speed, without more mischief. The men hallooed loudly and cried, “Hay! Hay!” and blew the horns to urge on the hounds, and rode swiftly after the boar. Many a time did he turn to bay and tare the hounds, and they yelped, and howled shrilly. Then the men made ready their arrows and shot at him, but the points were turned on his thick hide, and the barbs would not bite upon him, for the shafts shivered in pieces, and the head but leapt again wherever it hit.
   But when the boar felt the stroke of the arrows he waxed mad with rage, and turned on the hunters and tare many, so that, affrightened, they fled before him. But the lord on a swift steed pursued him, blowing his bugle; as a gallant knight he rode through the woodland chasing the boar till the sun grew low.
   So did the hunters this day, while Sir Gawain lay in his bed lapped in rich gear; and the lady forgat not to salute him, for early was she at his side, to cheer his mood.
   She came to the bedside and looked on the knight, and Gawain gave her fit greeting, and she greeted him again with ready words, and sat her by his side and laughed, and with a sweet look she spoke to him:
   “Sir, if ye be Gawain, I think it a wonder that ye be so stern and cold, and care not for the courtesies of friendship, but if one teach ye to know them ye cast the lesson out of your mind. Ye have soon forgotten what I taught ye yesterday, by all the truest tokens that I knew!”
   “What is that?” quoth the knight. “I trow I know not. If it be sooth that ye say, then is the blame mine own.”
   “But I taught ye of kissing, ” quoth the fair lady. “Wherever a fair countenance is shown him, it behoves a courteous knight quickly to claim a kiss.”
   “Nay, my dear,” said Sir Gawain, “cease that speech; that durst I not do lest I were denied, for if I were forbidden I wot I were wrong did I further entreat.”
   “I’ faith,” quoth the lady merrily, “ye may not be forbid, ye are strong enough to constrain by strength an ye will, were any so discourteous as to give ye denial.”
   “Yea, by Heaven,” said Gawain, “ye speak well; but threats profit little in the land where I dwell, and so with a gift that is given not of good will! I am at your commandment to kiss when ye like, to take or to leave as ye list.”
   Then the lady bent her down and kissed him courteously.
   And as they spake together she said, “I would learn somewhat from ye, an ye would not be wroth, for young ye bare and fair, and so courteous and knightly as ye are known to be, the head of all chivalry, and versed in all wisdom of love and war–’tis ever told of true knights how they adventured their lives for their true love, and endured hardships for her favours, and avenged her with valour, and eased her sorrows, and brought joy to her bower; and ye are the fairest knight of your time, and your fame and your honour are everywhere, yet I have sat by ye here twice, and never a word have I heard of love! Ye who are so courteous and skilled in such love ought surely to teach one so young and unskilled some little craft of true love! Why are ye so unlearned who art otherwise so famous? Or is it that ye deemed me unworthy to hearken to your teaching? For shame, Sir Knight! I come hither alone and sit at your side to learn of ye some skill; teach me of your wit, while my lord is from home.”
   “In good faith,” quoth Gawain, “great is my joy and my profit that so fair a lady as ye are should deign to come hither, and trouble ye with so poor a man, and make sport with your knight with kindly countenance, it pleaseth me much. But that I, in my turn, should take it upon me to tell of love and such like matters to ye who know more by half, or a hundred fold, of such craft than I do, or ever shall in all my lifetime, by my troth ’twere folly indeed! I will work your will to the best of my might as I am bounden, and evermore will I be your servant, so help me Christ!”
   Then often with guile she questioned that knight that she might win him to woo her, but he defended himself so fairly that none might in any wise blame him, and naught but bliss and harmless jesting was there between them. They laughed and talked together till at last she kissed him, and craved her leave of him, and went her way.
   Then the knight arose and went forth to Mass, and afterward dinner was served and he sat and spake with the ladies all day. But the lord of the castle rode ever over the land chasing the wild boar, that fled through the thickets, slaying the best of his hounds and breaking their backs in sunder; till at last he was so weary he might run no longer, but made for a hole in a mound by a rock. He got the mound at his back and faced the hounds, whetting his white tusks and foaming at the mouth. The huntsmen stood aloof, fearing to draw nigh him; so many of them had been already wounded that they were loth to be torn with his tusks, so fierce he was and mad with rage. At length the lord himself came up, and saw the beast at bay, and the men standing aloof. Then quickly he sprang to the ground and drew out a bright blade, and waded through the stream to the boar.
   When the beast was aware of the knight with weapon in hand, he set up his bristles and snorted loudly, and many feared for their lord lest he should be slain. Then the boar leapt upon the knight so that beast and man were one atop of the other in the water; but the boar had the worst of it, for the man had marked, even as he sprang, and set the point of his brand to the beast’s chest, and drove it up to the hilt, so that the heart was split in twain, and the boar fell snarling, and was swept down by the water to where a hundred hounds seized on him, and the men drew him to shore for the dogs to slay.
   Then was there loud blowing of horns and baying of hounds, the huntsmen smote off the boar’s head, and hung the carcase by the four feet to a stout pole, and so went on their way homewards. The head they bore before the lord himself, who had slain the beast at the ford by force of his strong hand.
   It seemed him o’er long ere he saw Sir Gawain in the hall, and he called, and the guest came to take that which fell to his share. And when he saw Gawain the lord laughed aloud, and bade them call the ladies and the household together, and he showed them the game, and told them the tale, how they hunted the wild boar through the woods, and of his length and breadth and height; and Sir Gawain commended his deeds and praised him for his valour, well proven, for so mighty a beast had he never seen before.
   Then they handled the huge head, and the lord said aloud, “Now, Gawain, this game is your own by sure covenant, as ye right well know.”
   “‘Tis sooth,” quoth the knight, “and as truly will I give ye all I have gained.” He took the host round the neck, and kissed him courteously twice. “Now are we quits,” he said, “this eventide, of all the covenants that we made since I came hither.”

There’s quite a bit of writing about the homoerotic elements of the story. I’m not an expert in that discourse. I’d like to note that men kiss each other a lot more in medieval documents than in modern culture. Still, you’re the reader and the death of the author is particularly apt for documents this old, so if you can see a use for this line of thinking, go for it. There’s also the point that there’s no real need for this Oscar Wilde style obfuscation. Geoffrey of Monmouth, a recent author in the game period, has the fourth king after Arthur, High King Malgo, have a version of the Round Table who are all gay, such that the women of the court flee to France for the lack of husbands. Malgo is a fictionised version of High King Maelgwn Gwynedd, who folkloristic ally died of the Yellow Plague, which in Ars Magica is likely a demonic plague I’ve been meaning to stat up.

   And the lord answered, “By S. Giles, ye are the best I know; ye will be rich in a short space if ye drive such bargains!”

Saint Giles is the patron of the poor, lepers, and cancer patients. I’m not seeing the connection.

   Then they set up the tables on trestles, and covered them with fair cloths, and lit waxen tapers on the walls.

A reminder that wax tapers, all light sources really, but wax candles in particular, are luxuries.

The knights sat and were served in the hall, and much game and glee was there round the hearth, with many songs, both at supper and after; song of Christmas, and new carols, with all the mirth one may think of. And ever that lovely lady sat by the knight, and with still stolen looks made such feint of pleasing him, that Gawain marvelled much, and was wroth with himself, but he could not for his courtesy return her fair glances, but dealt with her cunningly, however she might strive to wrest the thing.
   When they had tarried in the hall so long as it seemed them good, they turned to the inner chamber and the wide hearthplace, and there they drank wine, and the host proffered to renew the covenant for New Year’s Eve; but the knight craved leave to depart on the morrow, for it was nigh to the term when he must fulfil his pledge. But the lord would withhold him from so doing, and prayed him to tarry, and said,
   “As I am a true knight I swear my troth that ye shall come to the Green Chapel to achieve your task on New Year’s morn, long before prime. Therefore abide ye in your bed, and I will hunt in this wood, and hold ye to the covenant to exchange with me against all the spoil I may bring hither. For twice have I tried ye, and found ye true, and the morrow shall be the third time and the best. Make we merry now while we may, and think on joy, for misfortune may take a man whensoever it wills.”
   Then Gawain granted his request, and they brought them drink, and they gat them with lights to bed.
   Sir Gawain lay and slept softly, but the lord, who was keen on woodcraft, was afoot early. After Mass he and his men ate a morsel, and he asked for his steed; all the knights who should ride with him were already mounted before the hall gates.
   ‘Twas a fair frosty morning, for the sun rose red in ruddy vapour, and the welkin was clear of clouds. The hunters scattered them by a forest side, and the rocks rang again with the blast of their horns. Some came on the scent of a fox, and a hound gave tongue; the huntsmen shouted, and the pack followed in a crowd on the trail. The fox ran before them, and when they saw him they pursued him with noise and much shouting, and he wound and turned through many a thick grove, often cowering and hearkening in a hedge. At last by a little ditch he leapt out of a spinney, stole away slily by a copse path, and so out of the wood and away from the hounds. But he went, ere he wist, to a chosen tryst, and three started forth on him at once, so he must needs double back, and betake him to the wood again.
   Then was it joyful to hearken to the hounds; when all the pack had met together and had sight of their game they made as loud a din as if all the lofty cliffs had fallen clattering together. The huntsmen shouted and threatened, and followed close upon him so that he might scarce escape, but Reynard was wily, and he turned and doubled upon them, and led the lord and his men over the hills, now on the slopes, now in the vales, while the knight at home slept through the cold morning beneath his costly curtains.

Reynard the Fox is a folklore character known for his cunning.

   But the fair lady of the castle rose betimes, and clad herself in a rich mantle that reached even to the ground, left her throat and her fair neck bare, and was bordered and lined with costly furs. On her head she wore no golden circlet, but a network of precious stones, that gleamed and shone through her tresses in clusters of twenty together. Thus she came into the chamber, closed the door after her, and set open a window, and called to him gaily, “Sir Knight, how may ye sleep? The morning is so fair.”

Gawain, lock your damn door.

   Sir Gawain was deep in slumber, and in his dream he vexed him much for the destiny that should befall him on the morrow, when he should meet the knight at the Green Chapel, and abide his blow; but when the lady spake he heard her, and came to himself, and roused from his dream and answered swiftly. The lady came laughing, and kissed him courteously, and he welcomed her fittingly with a cheerful countenance. He saw her so glorious and gaily dressed, so faultless of features and complexion, that it warmed his heart to look upon her.
   They spake to each other smiling, and all was bliss and good cheer between them. They exchanged fair words, and much happiness was therein, yet was there a gulf between them, and she might win no more of her knight, for that gallant prince watched well his words–he would neither take her love, nor frankly refuse it. He cared for his courtesy, lest he be deemed churlish, and yet more for his honour lest he be traitor to his host. “God forbid,” quoth he to himself, “that it should so befall.” Thus with courteous words did he set aside all the special speeches that came from her lips.
   Then spake the lady to the knight, “Ye deserve blame if ye hold not that lady who sits beside ye above all else in the world, if ye have not already a love whom ye hold dearer, and like better, and have sworn such firm faith to that lady that ye care not to loose it–and that am I now fain to believe. And now I pray ye straitly that ye tell me that in truth, and hide it not.”
   And the knight answered, “By S. John” (and he smiled as he spake) “no such love have I, nor do I think to have yet awhile.”

There are several Sts John, but I assume they mean the patron saint of hospitality here.

   “That is the worst word I may hear,” quoth the lady, “but in sooth I have mine answer; kiss me now courteously, and I will go hence; I can but mourn as a maiden that loves much.”
   Sighing, she stooped down and kissed him, and then she rose up and spake as she stood, “Now, dear, at our parting do me this grace: give me some gift, if it were but thy glove, that I may bethink me of my knight, and lessen my mourning.”

This is the inverse of the usual granting of favours.

   “Now, I wis,” quoth the knight, “I would that I had here the most precious thing that I possess on earth that I might leave ye as love-token, great or small, for ye have deserved forsooth more reward than I might give ye. But it is not to your honour to have at this time a glove for reward as gift from Gawain, and I am here on a strange errand, and have no man with me, nor mails with goodly things–that mislikes me much, lady, at this time; but each man must fare as he is taken, if for sorrow and ill.”
   “Nay, knight highly honoured,” quoth that lovesome lady, “though I have naught of yours, yet shall ye have somewhat of mine.” With that she reached him a ring of red gold with a sparkling stone therein, that shone even as the sun (wit ye well, it was worth many marks); but the knight refused it, and spake readily,
   “I will take no gift, lady, at this time. I have none to give, and none will I take.”

Reciprocity of gifts is very important in this culture.

   She prayed him to take it, but he refused her prayer, and sware in sooth that he would not have it.
   The lady was sorely vexed, and said, “If ye refuse my ring as too costly, that ye will not be so highly beholden to me, I will give you my girdle 11 as a lesser gift.” With that she loosened a lace that was fastened at her side, knit upon her kirtle under her mantle. It was wrought of green silk, and gold, only braided by the fingers, and that she offered to the knight, and besought him though it were of little worth that he would take it, and he said nay, he would touch neither gold nor gear ere God give him grace to achieve the adventure for which he had come hither. “And therefore, I pray ye, displease ye not, and ask me no longer, for I may not grant it. I am dearly beholden to ye for the favour ye have shown me, and ever, in heat and cold, will I be your true servant.”
   “Now,” said the lady, “ye refuse this silk, for it is simple in itself, and so it seems, indeed; lo, it is small to look upon and less in cost, but whoso knew the virtue that is knit therein he would, peradventure, value it more highly. For whatever knight is girded with this green lace, while he bears it knotted about him there is no man under heaven can overcome him, for he may not be slain for any magic on earth.”

This is untrue, but Gawain doesn’t know that. Also, it doesn’t make things easier for him in terms of reciprocity: taking a gift of no value is allowed. Taking an enchanted ribbon is not. This ribbon, by the way, is the ancestor of the sashes that are worn by hoplites in the Order of Hermes. When Gawain eventually recounts this adventure the Knights of the Round Table take a green sash as their symbol of membership, ands I stole the idea for Sanctuary of Ice.

   Then Gawain bethought him, and it came into his heart that this were a jewel for the jeopardy that awaited him when he came to the Green Chapel to seek the return blow–could he so order it that he should escape unslain, ’twere a craft worth trying. Then he bare with her chiding, and let her say her say, and she pressed the girdle on him and prayed him to take it, and he granted her prayer, and she gave it him with good will, and besought him for her sake never to reveal it but to hide it loyally from her lord; and the knight agreed that never should any man know it, save they two alone. He thanked her often and heartily, and she kissed him for the third time.

So, now he’s stuck between his promise to his host and his promise to a lady. If this were Lancelot you’d now get a heap of commentary about the male courts of power and the female courts of love and his need to choose between, and what that meant in terms of cultural development of chivalry. Gawain, himself, later judges this to have been an immoral promise.

   Then she took her leave of him, and when she was gone Sir Gawain arose, and clad him in rich attire, and took the girdle, and knotted it round him, and hid it beneath his robes. Then he took his way to the chapel, and sought out a priest privily and prayed him to teach him better how his soul might be saved when he should go hence; and there he shrived him, and showed his misdeeds, both great and small, and besought mercy and craved absolution; and the priest assoiled him, and set him as clean as if Doomsday had been on the morrow.

Which leads to the question of how he can have cleansed his soul on this particular point concerning his host.

And afterwards Sir Gawain made him merry with the ladies, with carols, and all kinds of joy, as never he did but that one day, even to nightfall; and all the men marvelled at him, and said that never since he came thither had he been so merry.
   Meanwhile the lord of the castle was abroad chasing the fox; awhile he lost him, and as he rode through a spinny he heard the hounds near at hand, and Reynard came creeping through a thick grove, with all the pack at his heels. Then the lord drew out his shining brand, and cast it at the beast, and the fox swerved aside for the sharp edge, and would have doubled back, but a hound was on him ere he might turn, and right before the horse’s feet they all fell on him, and worried him fiercely, snarling the while.

Chucking your sword at a fox is an unorthodox way of behaving.

   Then the lord leapt from his saddle, and caught the fox from the jaws, and held it aloft over his head, and hallooed loudly, and many brave hounds bayed as they beheld it; and the hunters hied them thither, blowing their horns; all that bare bugles blew them at once, and all the others shouted. ‘Twas the merriest meeting that ever men heard, the clamour that was raised at the death of the fox. They rewarded the hounds, stroking them and rubbing their heads, and took Reynard and stripped him of his coat; then blowing their horns, they turned them homewards, for it was nigh nightfall.
   The lord was gladsome at his return, and found a bright fire on the hearth, and the knight beside it, the good Sir Gawain, who was in joyous mood for the pleasure he had had with the ladies. He wore a robe of blue, that reached even to the ground, and a surcoat richly furred, that became him well. A hood like to the surcoat fell on his shoulders, and all alike were done about with fur. He met the host in the midst of the floor, and jesting, he greeted him, and said, “Now shall I be first to fulfil our covenant which we made together when there was no lack of wine.” Then he embraced the knight, and kissed him thrice, as solemnly as he might.
   “Of a sooth,” quoth the other, “ye have good luck in the matter of this covenant, if ye made a good exchange!”
   “Yea, it matters naught of the exchange,” quoth Gawain, “since what I owe is swiftly paid.”
   “Marry,” said the other, “mine is behind, for I have hunted all this day, and naught have I got but this foul fox-skin, and that is but poor payment for three such kisses as ye have here given me.”
   “Enough,” quoth Sir Gawain, “I thank ye, by the Rood.”

Deliberately hunting foxes is far later practice. They were considered beast s of the chase in period, but to hunt them specifically only became popular once other types of large game were extinguished in England. Modern foxhunting. Technically they are an agricultural pest but practically there’s no meat on a fox and their pelts are small, hence the lord here implying he’s not done so well for Gawain as on previous days.

The Rood here means the Cross. It’s an older word for a pole. It often refers specifically to the Christ Triumphant cross, which is the huge one you see as you walk down the aisle of many Catholic churches. Scotland has a related but separate tradition based on the Holy Rood which is a specific relic, believed to be part of the True Cross. Also, Presbyterianism is not so keen on Jesus statues.

   Then the lord told them of his hunting, and how the fox had been slain.
   With mirth and minstrelsy, and dainties at their will, they made them as merry as a folk well might till ’twas time for them to sever, for at last they must needs betake them to their beds. Then the knight took his leave of the lord, and thanked him fairly.

   “For the fair sojourn that I have had here at this high feast may the High King give ye honour. I give ye myself, as one of your servants, if ye so like; for I must needs, as you know, go hence with the morn, and ye will give me, as ye promised, a guide to show me the way to the Green Chapel, an God will suffer me on New Year’s Day to deal the doom of my weird.”
   “By my faith,” quoth the host, “all that ever I promised, that shall I keep with good will.” Then he gave him a servant to set him in the way, and lead him by the downs, that he should have no need to ford the stream, and should fare by the shortest road through the groves; and Gawain thanked the lord for the honour done him. Then he would take leave of the ladies, and courteously he kissed them, and spake, praying them to receive his thanks, and they made like reply; then with many sighs they commended him to Christ, and he departed courteously from that folk. Each man that he met he thanked him for his service and his solace, and the pains he had been at to do his will; and each found it as hard to part from the knight as if he had ever dwelt with him.
   Then they led him with torches to his chamber, and brought him to his bed to rest. That he slept soundly I may not say, for the morrow gave him much to think on. Let him rest awhile, for he was near that which he sought, and if ye will but listen to me I will tell ye how it fared with him thereafter.

We hit another cliffhanger.

This week a fragment of Irish folklore from Lady Jane Francesca Wilde. It comes from her book Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland. Her name, if slightly familiar, may be eclipsed a little by her more famous son, Oscar Wilde, whose writing took a rather different direction. Her book contains a lot of folklore that’s useful, but is neglected now because it has been so recycled in other works that it’d read as a primer for modern roleplaying readers. You know what a puca is, and what the leprechaun does. There are other stories which are worth a read, though, so I’ll return to her in future episodes. I’ve also, in seeking the text for this, realized there’s a second volume of which I was entirely unaware, so there’s a little box of treasure waiting for me to open.

In this story my core interest isn’t the witch of herself, although she could be a foe for the covenant that steals its resources. I’m more interested in the young men who have been turned into horses and, presumably, whipped so that the belong to the witch. She may be dead at the end: careful rituals have been observed to prevent her return. My question, however, is if the ownership passes to some sort of heir. This would be a Supernatural Flaw. In England, and this is not in England, they become possessions of the king because he claims everything not otherwise owned. I’m not sure how Irish inheritance works, but at its simplest, if the witch has a daughter, might not all of these young men have a compulsion to serve her? Does she even know who her mother was and why these men are behaving so strangely?

Statistics eventually. Thanks to Larissa Little and her Librivox production team. I’m surprised I’ve never bought you this one before: it’s in a very early Librivox ghost story collection right next to “Letter to Sura”, which was my third reading, and episode 10 of this podcast. Looking up that number I note Games From Folktales has its tenth anniversary in May. I must plan something.

***

ABOUT a hundred years ago there lived a woman in Joyce County, of whom all the neighbours were afraid , for she had always plenty of money , though no one knew how she came by it; and the best of eating and drinking went on at her house , chiefly at night-meat and fowls and Spanish wines in plenty for all comers . And when people asked how it all came , she laughed and said, ” I have paid for it,” but would tell them no more. So the word went through the county that she had sold herself to the Evil One, and could have everything she wanted by merely wishing and willing, and because of her riches they called her ” The Lady Witch .” She never went out but at night, and then always with a bridle and whip in her hand ; and the sound of a horse galloping was heard often far on in the night along the roads near her house.

Then a strange story was whispered about, that if a young man drank of her Spanish wines at supper and afterwards
fell asleep , she would throw the bridle over him and change him to a horse, and ride him all over the country, and whatever she touched with her whip became hers. Fowls, or butter, or wine, or the new -made cakes-she had but to wish and will and they were carried by spirit hands to her house, and laid in her larder. Then when the ride was done , and she had gathered enough through the country of all she wanted , she took the bridle off the young man , and he came back to his own shape and fell asleep; and when he awoke he had no knowledge of all that had happened , and the Lady Witch bade him come again and drink of her Spanish wines as often as it pleased him.

Now there was a fine brave young fellow in the neighbourhood, and he determined to make out the truth of the story. So he often went back and forwards, and made friends with the Lady Witch , and sat down to talk to her, but always on the watch . And she took a great fancy to him and told him he must come to supper some night, and she would give him the best of everything , and he must taste her Spanish wine.

So she named the night, and he went gladly, for he was. filled with curiosity. And when he arrived there was a beautiful supper laid, and plenty of wine to drink ; and he ate and drank, but was cautious about the wine, and spilled it on the ground from his glass when her head was turned away . Then he pretended to be very sleepy , and she said-
” My son, you are weary . Lie down there on the bench
and sleep , for the night is far spent , and you are far from
your home.”
So he lay down as if he were quite dead with sleep, and closed his eyes, but watched her all the time. And she came over in a little while and looked at him steadily, but he never stirred, only breathed the more heavily. Then she went softly and took the bridle from the wall, and stole over to fling it over his head ; but he started up, and, seizing the bridle, threw it over the woman , who was immediately changed into a spanking grey mare . And he led her out and jumped on her back and rode away as fast as the wind till he came to the forge.
” Ho, smith ,” he cried, ” rise up and shoe my mare, for she is weary after the journey.”

And the smith got up and did his work as he was bid, well and strong . Then the young man mounted again , and rode back like the wind to the house of the Witch ; and there he took off the bridle, and she immediately regained her own form, and sank down in a deep sleep .

But as the shoes had been put on at the forge without saying the proper form of words , they remained on her
hands and feet, and no power on earth could remove them . So she never rose from her bed again , and died not long after of grief and shame . And not one in the whole country would follow the coffin of the Lady Witch to the grave ; and the bridle was burned with fire , and of all her riches nothing was left but a handful of ashes , and this was flung to the four points of earth and the four winds of heaven ; so the enchantment was broken and the power of the Evil One ended .

A brief one here: a demon from Herrick that takes the form of a pagan god. It aids people who want to harm themselves by destroying their own capacity for love. Love, in medieval theology, being one of the forms of God, and that humans should love being one of the commands of God, this is a sort of damnation. On reading critics of Herrick there’s a statement that this really is Cupid and that the cup is a trick of the real Cupid to punish the poet for forsaking the cause of love. and that he will love regardless. I prefer my interpretation for Ars Magica purposes, but suit yourself. Stats for the impish version eventually.

***

A crystal vial Cupid brought,
Which had a juice in it:
Of which who drank, he said, no thought
Of Love he should admit. I, greedy of the prize, did drink,
And emptied soon the glass;
Which burnt me so, that I do think
The fire of hell it was.
Give me my earthen cups again,
The crystal I contemn,
Which, though enchased with pearls, contain
A deadly draught in them.
And thou, O Cupid! come not to
My threshold,—since I see,
For all I have, or else can do,
Thou still wilt cozen me.

This has a certain American feel, but can be easily transposed into feudal times. Statistics for the monsters eventually. Thanks to Tennishoes and his Librivox production team.

***

Towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and spacious valley. The difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the fugitives for so long, expanded to a broad slope, and with a common impulse the three men left the trail, and rode to a little eminence set with olive-dun trees, and there halted, the two others, as became them, a little behind the man with the silver-studded bridle.

For a space they scanned the great expanse below them with eager eyes. It spread remoter and remoter, with only a few clusters of sere thorn bushes here and there, and the dim suggestions of some now waterless ravine, to break its desolation of yellow grass. Its purple distances melted at last into the bluish slopes of the further hills—hills it might be of a greener kind—and above them invisibly supported, and seeming indeed to hang in the blue, were the snowclad summits of mountains that grew larger and bolder to the north-westward as the sides of the valley drew together. And westward the valley opened until a distant darkness under the sky told where the forests began. But the three men looked neither east nor west, but only steadfastly across the valley.

The gaunt man with the scarred lip was the first to speak. “Nowhere,” he said, with a sigh of disappointment in his voice. “But after all, they had a full day’s start.”

“They don’t know we are after them,” said the little man on the white horse.

“SHE would know,” said the leader bitterly, as if speaking to himself.

“Even then they can’t go fast. They’ve got no beast but the mule, and all to-day the girl’s foot has been bleeding—-”

The man with the silver bridle flashed a quick intensity of rage on him. “Do you think I haven’t seen that?” he snarled.

“It helps, anyhow,” whispered the little man to himself.

The gaunt man with the scarred lip stared impassively. “They can’t be over the valley,” he said. “If we ride hard—”

He glanced at the white horse and paused.

“Curse all white horses!” said the man with the silver bridle, and turned to scan the beast his curse included.

The little man looked down between the melancholy ears of his steed.

“I did my best,” he said.

The two others stared again across the valley for a space. The gaunt man passed the back of his hand across the scarred lip.

“Come up!” said the man who owned the silver bridle, suddenly. The little man started and jerked his rein, and the horse hoofs of the three made a multitudinous faint pattering upon the withered grass as they turned back towards the trail….

They rode cautiously down the long slope before them, and so came through a waste of prickly, twisted bushes and strange dry shapes of horny branches that grew amongst the rocks, into the levels below. And there the trail grew faint, for the soil was scanty, and the only herbage was this scorched dead straw that lay upon the ground. Still, by hard scanning, by leaning beside the horses’ necks and pausing ever and again, even these white men could contrive to follow after their prey.

There were trodden places, bent and broken blades of the coarse grass, and ever and again the sufficient intimation of a footmark. And once the leader saw a brown smear of blood where the half-caste girl may have trod. And at that under his breath he cursed her for a fool.

The gaunt man checked his leader’s tracking, and the little man on the white horse rode behind, a man lost in a dream. They rode one after another, the man with the silver bridle led the way, and they spoke never a word. After a time it came to the little man on the white horse that the world was very still. He started out of his dream. Besides the little noises of their horses and equipment, the whole great valley kept the brooding quiet of a painted scene.

Before him went his master and his fellow, each intently leaning forward to the left, each impassively moving with the paces of his horse; their shadows went before them—still, noiseless, tapering attendants; and nearer a crouched cool shape was his own. He looked about him. What was it had gone? Then he remembered the reverberation from the banks of the gorge and the perpetual accompaniment of shifting, jostling pebbles. And, moreover—? There was no breeze. That was it! What a vast, still place it was, a monotonous afternoon slumber. And the sky open and blank, except for a sombre veil of haze that had gathered in the upper valley.

He straightened his back, fretted with his bridle, puckered his lips to whistle, and simply sighed. He turned in his saddle for a time, and stared at the throat of the mountain gorge out of which they had come. Blank! Blank slopes on either side, with never a sign of a decent beast or tree—much less a man. What a land it was! What a wilderness! He dropped again into his former pose.

It filled him with a momentary pleasure to see a wry stick of purple black flash out into the form of a snake, and vanish amidst the brown. After all, the infernal valley WAS alive. And then, to rejoice him still more, came a little breath across his face, a whisper that came and went, the faintest inclination of a stiff black-antlered bush upon a little crest, the first intimations of a possible breeze. Idly he wetted his finger, and held it up.

He pulled up sharply to avoid a collision with the gaunt man, who had stopped at fault upon the trail. Just at that guilty moment he caught his master’s eye looking towards him.

For a time he forced an interest in the tracking. Then, as they rode on again, he studied his master’s shadow and hat and shoulder, appearing and disappearing behind the gaunt man’s nearer contours. They had ridden four days out of the very limits of the world into this desolate place, short of water, with nothing but a strip of dried meat under their saddles, over rocks and mountains, where surely none but these fugitives had ever been before—for THAT!

And all this was for a girl, a mere wilful child! And the man had whole cityfuls of people to do his basest bidding—girls, women! Why in the name of passionate folly THIS one in particular? asked the little man, and scowled at the world, and licked his parched lips with a blackened tongue. It was the way of the master, and that was all he knew. Just because she sought to evade him….

His eye caught a whole row of high plumed canes bending in unison, and then the tails of silk that hung before his neck flapped and fell. The breeze was growing stronger. Somehow it took the stiff stillness out of things—and that was well.

“Hullo!” said the gaunt man.

All three stopped abruptly.

“What?” asked the master. “What?”

“Over there,” said the gaunt man, pointing up the valley.

“What?”

“Something coming towards us.”

And as he spoke a yellow animal crested a rise and came bearing down upon them. It was a big wild dog, coming before the wind, tongue out, at a steady pace, and running with such an intensity of purpose that he did not seem to see the horsemen he approached. He ran with his nose up, following, it was plain, neither scent nor quarry. As he drew nearer the little man felt for his sword. “He’s mad,” said the gaunt rider.

“Shout!” said the little man, and shouted.

The dog came on. Then when the little man’s blade was already out, it swerved aside and went panting by them and past. The eyes of the little man followed its flight. “There was no foam,” he said. For a space the man with the silver-studded bridle stared up the valley. “Oh, come on!” he cried at last. “What does it matter?” and jerked his horse into movement again.

The little man left the insoluble mystery of a dog that fled from nothing but the wind, and lapsed into profound musings on human character. “Come on!” he whispered to himself. “Why should it be given to one man to say ‘Come on!’ with that stupendous violence of effect. Always, all his life, the man with the silver bridle has been saying that. If I said it—!” thought the little man. But people marvelled when the master was disobeyed even in the wildest things. This half-caste girl seemed to him, seemed to every one, mad—blasphemous almost. The little man, by way of comparison, reflected on the gaunt rider with the scarred lip, as stalwart as his master, as brave and, indeed, perhaps braver, and yet for him there was obedience, nothing but to give obedience duly and stoutly…

Certain sensations of the hands and knees called the little man back to more immediate things. He became aware of something. He rode up beside his gaunt fellow. “Do you notice the horses?” he said in an undertone.

The gaunt face looked interrogation.

“They don’t like this wind,” said the little man, and dropped behind as the man with the silver bridle turned upon him.

“It’s all right,” said the gaunt-faced man.

They rode on again for a space in silence. The foremost two rode downcast upon the trail, the hindmost man watched the haze that crept down the vastness of the valley, nearer and nearer, and noted how the wind grew in strength moment by moment. Far away on the left he saw a line of dark bulks—wild hog perhaps, galloping down the valley, but of that he said nothing, nor did he remark again upon the uneasiness of the horses.

And then he saw first one and then a second great white ball, a great shining white ball like a gigantic head of thistle-down, that drove before the wind athwart the path. These balls soared high in the air, and dropped and rose again and caught for a moment, and hurried on and passed, but at the sight of them the restlessness of the horses increased.

Then presently he saw that more of these drifting globes—and then soon very many more—were hurrying towards him down the valley.

They became aware of a squealing. Athwart the path a huge boar rushed, turning his head but for one instant to glance at them, and then hurling on down the valley again. And at that, all three stopped and sat in their saddles, staring into the thickening haze that was coming upon them.

“If it were not for this thistle-down—” began the leader.

But now a big globe came drifting past within a score of yards of them. It was really not an even sphere at all, but a vast, soft, ragged, filmy thing, a sheet gathered by the corners, an aerial jelly-fish, as it were, but rolling over and over as it advanced, and trailing long, cobwebby threads and streamers that floated in its wake.

“It isn’t thistle-down,” said the little man.

“I don’t like the stuff,” said the gaunt man.

And they looked at one another.

“Curse it!” cried the leader. “The air’s full of it up there. If it keeps on at this pace long, it will stop us altogether.”

An instinctive feeling, such as lines out a herd of deer at the approach of some ambiguous thing, prompted them to turn their horses to the wind, ride forward for a few paces, and stare at that advancing multitude of floating masses. They came on before the wind with a sort of smooth swiftness, rising and falling noiselessly, sinking to earth, rebounding high, soaring—all with a perfect unanimity, with a still, deliberate assurance.

Right and left of the horsemen the pioneers of this strange army passed. At one that rolled along the ground, breaking shapelessly and trailing out reluctantly into long grappling ribbons and bands, all three horses began to shy and dance. The master was seized with a sudden unreasonable impatience. He cursed the drifting globes roundly. “Get on!” he cried; “get on! What do these things matter? How CAN they matter? Back to the trail!” He fell swearing at his horse and sawed the bit across its mouth.

He shouted aloud with rage. “I will follow that trail, I tell you!” he cried. “Where is the trail?”

He gripped the bridle of his prancing horse and searched amidst the grass. A long and clinging thread fell across his face, a grey streamer dropped about his bridle-arm, some big, active thing with many legs ran down the back of his head. He looked up to discover one of those grey masses anchored as it were above him by these things and flapping out ends as a sail flaps when a boat comes, about—but noiselessly.

He had an impression of many eyes, of a dense crew of squat bodies, of long, many-jointed limbs hauling at their mooring ropes to bring the thing down upon him. For a space he stared up, reining in his prancing horse with the instinct born of years of horsemanship. Then the flat of a sword smote his back, and a blade flashed overhead and cut the drifting balloon of spider-web free, and the whole mass lifted softly and drove clear and away.

“Spiders!” cried the voice of the gaunt man. “The things are full of big spiders! Look, my lord!”

The man with the silver bridle still followed the mass that drove away.

“Look, my lord!”

The master found himself staring down at a red, smashed thing on the ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing legs. Then when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was like a fog bank torn to rags. He tried to grasp the situation.

“Ride for it!” the little man was shouting. “Ride for it down the valley.”

What happened then was like the confusion of a battle. The man with the silver bridle saw the little man go past him slashing furiously at imaginary cobwebs, saw him cannon into the horse of the gaunt man and hurl it and its rider to earth. His own horse went a dozen paces before he could rein it in. Then he looked up to avoid imaginary dangers, and then back again to see a horse rolling on the ground, the gaunt man standing and slashing over it at a rent and fluttering mass of grey that streamed and wrapped about them both. And thick and fast as thistle-down on waste land on a windy day in July, the cobweb masses were coming on.

The little man had dismounted, but he dared not release his horse. He was endeavouring to lug the struggling brute back with the strength of one arm, while with the other he slashed aimlessly, The tentacles of a second grey mass had entangled themselves with the struggle, and this second grey mass came to its moorings, and slowly sank.

The master set his teeth, gripped his bridle, lowered his head, and spurred his horse forward. The horse on the ground rolled over, there were blood and moving shapes upon the flanks, and the gaunt man, suddenly leaving it, ran forward towards his master, perhaps ten paces. His legs were swathed and encumbered with grey; he made ineffectual movements with his sword. Grey streamers waved from him; there was a thin veil of grey across his face. With his left hand he beat at something on his body, and suddenly he stumbled and fell. He struggled to rise, and fell again, and suddenly, horribly, began to howl, “Oh—ohoo, ohooh!”

The master could see the great spiders upon him, and others upon the ground.

As he strove to force his horse nearer to this gesticulating, screaming grey object that struggled up and down, there came a clatter of hoofs, and the little man, in act of mounting, swordless, balanced on his belly athwart the white horse, and clutching its mane, whirled past. And again a clinging thread of grey gossamer swept across the master’s face. All about him, and over him, it seemed this drifting, noiseless cobweb circled and drew nearer him….

To the day of his death he never knew just how the event of that moment happened. Did he, indeed, turn his horse, or did it really of its own accord stampede after its fellow? Suffice it that in another second he was galloping full tilt down the valley with his sword whirling furiously overhead. And all about him on the quickening breeze, the spiders’ airships, their air bundles and air sheets, seemed to him to hurry in a conscious pursuit.

Clatter, clatter, thud, thud—the man with the silver bridle rode, heedless of his direction, with his fearful face looking up now right, now left, and his sword arm ready to slash. And a few hundred yards ahead of him, with a tail of torn cobweb trailing behind him, rode the little man on the white horse, still but imperfectly in the saddle. The reeds bent before them, the wind blew fresh and strong, over his shoulder the master could see the webs hurrying to overtake….

He was so intent to escape the spiders’ webs that only as his horse gathered together for a leap did he realise the ravine ahead. And then he realised it only to misunderstand and interfere. He was leaning forward on his horse’s neck and sat up and back all too late.

But if in his excitement he had failed to leap, at any rate he had not forgotten how to fall. He was horseman again in mid-air. He came off clear with a mere bruise upon his shoulder, and his horse rolled, kicking spasmodic legs, and lay still. But the master’s sword drove its point into the hard soil, and snapped clean across, as though Chance refused him any longer as her Knight, and the splintered end missed his face by an inch or so.

He was on his feet in a moment, breathlessly scanning the onrushing spider-webs. For a moment he was minded to run, and then thought of the ravine, and turned back. He ran aside once to dodge one drifting terror, and then he was swiftly clambering down the precipitous sides, and out of the touch of the gale.

There under the lee of the dry torrent’s steeper banks he might crouch, and watch these strange, grey masses pass and pass in safety till the wind fell, and it became possible to escape. And there for a long time he crouched, watching the strange, grey, ragged masses trail their streamers across his narrowed sky.

Once a stray spider fell into the ravine close beside him—a full foot it measured from leg to leg, and its body was half a man’s hand—and after he had watched its monstrous alacrity of search and escape for a little while, and tempted it to bite his broken sword, he lifted up his iron-heeled boot and smashed it into a pulp. He swore as he did so, and for a time sought up and down for another.

Then presently, when he was surer these spider swarms could not drop into the ravine, he found a place where he could sit down, and sat and fell into deep thought and began after his manner to gnaw his knuckles and bite his nails. And from this he was moved by the coming of the man with the white horse.

He heard him long before he saw him, as a clattering of hoofs, stumbling footsteps, and a reassuring voice. Then the little man appeared, a rueful figure, still with a tail of white cobweb trailing behind him. They approached each other without speaking, without a salutation. The little man was fatigued and shamed to the pitch of hopeless bitterness, and came to a stop at last, face to face with his seated master. The latter winced a little under his dependant’s eye. “Well?” he said at last, with no pretence of authority.

“You left him?”

“My horse bolted.”

“I know. So did mine.”

He laughed at his master mirthlessly.

“I say my horse bolted,” said the man who once had a silver-studded bridle.

“Cowards both,” said the little man.

The other gnawed his knuckle through some meditative moments, with his eye on his inferior.

“Don’t call me a coward,” he said at length.

“You are a coward like myself.”

“A coward possibly. There is a limit beyond which every man must fear. That I have learnt at last. But not like yourself. That is where the difference comes in.”

“I never could have dreamt you would have left him. He saved your life two minutes before…. Why are you our lord?”

The master gnawed his knuckles again, and his countenance was dark.

“No man calls me a coward,” he said. “No. A broken sword is better than none…. One spavined white horse cannot be expected to carry two men a four days’ journey. I hate white horses, but this time it cannot be helped. You begin to understand me?… I perceive that you are minded, on the strength of what you have seen and fancy, to taint my reputation. It is men of your sort who unmake kings. Besides which—I never liked you.”

“My lord!” said the little man.

“No,” said the master. “NO!”

He stood up sharply as the little man moved. For a minute perhaps they faced one another. Overhead the spiders’ balls went driving. There was a quick movement among the pebbles; a running of feet, a cry of despair, a gasp and a blow….

Towards nightfall the wind fell. The sun set in a calm serenity, and the man who had once possessed the silver bridle came at last very cautiously and by an easy slope out of the ravine again; but now he led the white horse that once belonged to the little man. He would have gone back to his horse to get his silver-mounted bridle again, but he feared night and a quickening breeze might still find him in the valley, and besides he disliked greatly to think he might discover his horse all swathed in cobwebs and perhaps unpleasantly eaten.

And as he thought of those cobwebs and of all the dangers he had been through, and the manner in which he had been preserved that day, his hand sought a little reliquary that hung about his neck, and he clasped it for a moment with heartfelt gratitude. As he did so his eyes went across the valley.

“I was hot with passion,” he said, “and now she has met her reward. They also, no doubt—”

And behold! Far away out of the wooded slopes across the valley, but in the clearness of the sunset distinct and unmistakable, he saw a little spire of smoke.

At that his expression of serene resignation changed to an amazed anger. Smoke? He turned the head of the white horse about, and hesitated. And as he did so a little rustle of air went through the grass about him. Far away upon some reeds swayed a tattered sheet of grey. He looked at the cobwebs; he looked at the smoke.

“Perhaps, after all, it is not them,” he said at last.

But he knew better.

After he had stared at the smoke for some time, he mounted the white horse.

As he rode, he picked his way amidst stranded masses of web. For some reason there were many dead spiders on the ground, and those that lived feasted guiltily on their fellows. At the sound of his horse’s hoofs they fled.

Their time had passed. From the ground without either a wind to carry them or a winding sheet ready, these things, for all their poison, could do him little evil. He flicked with his belt at those he fancied came too near. Once, where a number ran together over a bare place, he was minded to dismount and trample them with his boots, but this impulse he overcame. Ever and again he turned in his saddle, and looked back at the smoke.

“Spiders,” he muttered over and over again. “Spiders! Well, well…. The next time I must spin a web.”

This second part of the the story starts with a lengthy piece that sets the tone.

  This beginning of adventures had Arthur at the New Year; for he yearned to hear gallant tales, though his words were few when he sat at the feast. But now had they stern work on hand. Gawain was glad to begin the jest in the hall, but ye need have no marvel if the end be heavy. For though a man be merry in mind when he has well drunk, yet a year runs full swiftly, and the beginning but rarely matches the end.
   For Yule was now over-past, and the year after, each season in its turn following the other. For after Christmas comes crabbed Lent, that will have fish for flesh and simpler cheer. But then the weather of the world chides with winter; the cold withdraws itself, the clouds uplift, and the rain falls in warm showers on the fair plains. Then the flowers come forth, meadows and grove are clad in green, the birds make ready to build, and sing sweetly for solace of the soft summer that follows thereafter. The blossoms bud and blow in the hedgerows rich and rank, and noble notes enough are heard in the fair woods.
   After the season of summer, with the soft winds, when zephyr breathes lightly on seeds and herbs, joyous indeed is the growth that waxes thereout when the dew drips from the leaves beneath the blissful glance of the bright sun. But then comes harvest and hardens the grain, warning it to wax ripe ere the winter. The drought drives the dust on high, flying over the face of the land; the angry wind of the welkin wrestles with the sun; the leaves fall from the trees and light upon the ground, and all brown are the groves that but now were green, and ripe is the fruit that once was flower. So the year passes into many yesterdays, and winter comes again, as it needs no sage to tell us.

   When the Michaelmas moon was come in with warnings of winter, Sir Gawain bethought him full oft of his perilous journey. Yet till All Hallows Day he lingered with Arthur, and on that day they made a great feast for the hero’s sake, with much revel and richness of the Round Table. Courteous knights and comely ladies, all were in sorrow for the love of that knight, and though they spake no word of it, many were joyless for his sake.

Michelmas is in late September. You’ll note that Gawan needs to find the Green Chapel by Christmas or forfeit his honour. He doesn’t even bother to start looking until November. This is, as noted in an earlier episode, England is tiny to US and Australian readers. In some later versions of this story his leave-taking is placed earlier so that the author can put detailed adventures into the quest.

   And after meat, sadly Sir Gawain turned to his uncle, and spake of his journey, and said, “Liege lord of my life, leave from you I crave. Ye know well how the matter stands without more words, to-morrow am I bound to set forth in search of the Green Knight.”

He needs permission to leave: it’s a cultural value that persists to the game period.

   Then came together all the noblest knights, Ywain and Erec, and many another. Sir Dodinel le Sauvage, the Duke of Clarence, Launcelot and Lionel, and Lucan the Good, Sir Bors and Sir Bedivere, valiant knights both, and many another hero, with Sir Mador de la Porte, and they all drew near, heavy at heart, to take counsel with Sir Gawain.

A lot of these characters are later to the corpus of Arthurian stories than Gawain. Mentioning them here is meant to make this author’s young Gawain heroic, much as young characters in Marvel get a scene or two with the Avengers or X-Men. It’s a bit odd, because Gawain is the hero of a lot of English stories. It’s a bit Brand New Day, for Spider-man fans.

Much sorrow and weeping was there in the hall to think that so worthy a knight as Gawain should wend his way to seek a deadly blow, and should no more wield his sword in fight. But the knight made ever good cheer, and said, “Nay, wherefore should I shrink? What may a man do but prove his fate?”

Allow me to etymology nerd for a second. Go is an irregular verb in English. A regular verb, say “jump” works like this: I jump, I jumped, I have jumped. Go is weird: I go, I went, I have gone. That “went” has replaced an older form “goed” and actually it’s a chunk of the verb “wend”. At the time it was used it meant to travel, now it means to go a specified destination by an indirect route. This is perhaps due to its similarity to the only distantly related word “wind” which means to turn around an axis. “Went”, the past tense of “wend” replaced it sometime after 1200 so it’s a new word in the game period. It might be because English drops out a heap of formal context and becomes a more practical language when the Normans arrive and say “We’ll speak it, but we won’t do

   He dwelt there all that day, and on the morn he arose and asked betimes for his armour; and they brought it unto him on this wise: first, a rich carpet was stretched on the floor (and brightly did the gold gear glitter upon it), then the knight stepped on to it, and handled the steel; clad he was in a doublet of silk, with a close hood, lined fairly throughout. Then they set the steel shoes upon his feet, and wrapped his legs with greaves, with polished knee-caps, fastened with knots of gold. Then they cased his thighs in cuisses closed with thongs, and brought him the byrny of bright steel rings sewn upon a fair stuff. Well burnished braces they set on each arm with good elbow-pieces, and gloves of mail, and all the goodly gear that should shield him in his need. And they cast over all a rich surcoat, and set the golden spurs on his heels, and girt him with a trusty sword fastened with a silken bawdrick. When he was thus clad his harness was costly, for the least loop or latchet gleamed with gold. So armed as he was he hearkened Mass and made his offering at the high altar. Then he came to the king, and the knights of his court, and courteously took leave of lords and ladies, and they kissed him, and commended him to Christ.

To a modern reader this seems to take a lot of time for assumed action. This scene is the preparation for his quest. It suits a gentrified audience because they know this system and it calls out how they, as crusaders for example, are meant to start that process, with armed vigil. More generally, though, it is meant to be similar to the sanctification that occurs before religious trials. You’ll note he has multiple assistants in this process of dressing ,and that’s not how he would behave as a knight errant, because he doesn’t even take a squire. His community is preparing him.

   With that was Gringalet ready, girt with a saddle that gleamed gaily with many golden fringes, enriched and decked anew for the venture. The bridle was all barred about with bright gold buttons, and all the covertures and trappings of the steed, the crupper and the rich skirts, accorded with the saddle; spread fair with the rich red gold that glittered and gleamed in the rays of the sun.
   Then the knight called for his helmet, which was well lined throughout, and set it high on his head, and hasped it behind. He wore a light kerchief over the vintail, that was broidered and studded with fair gems on a broad silken ribbon, with birds of gay colour, and many a turtle and true-lover’s knot interlaced thickly, even as many a maiden had wrought diligently for seven winter long.

A vintail, or more commonly ventail, is a flap of mail that covers the lower face. He wears a handkerchief over this so that it doesn’t heat up.

But the circlet which crowned his helmet was yet more precious, being adorned with a device in diamonds.

Part of this opulence is protective. If you find a knight wearing a circlet of diamond, and you kill him, there are bound to be brutally-efficient men in far less decorative garb sent to make you suffer. In those parts of Britain that accept a blood-price for death, which does include Gawain’s family in some stories, a man coated in gold and treasure has the sort of price that only a king could pay. That he is covered in gems advertises that his ransom is likely huge and that he will honour the ransom system. Keeping a defeated Gawain alive is lucrative enough for robber knights to not kill him, if they realize who he is and decide that a vengeful high king is not worth the hassle.

Then they brought him his shield, which was of bright red, with the pentangle painted thereon in gleaming gold.

This is not the traditional coat of arms for Gawain’s family. The author has worked to put this symbol into the work, so that the following digression makes sense.

And why that noble prince bare the pentangle I am minded to tell you, though my tale tarry thereby. It is a sign that Solomon set ere-while, as betokening truth; for it is a figure with five points and each line overlaps the other, and nowhere hath it beginning or end, so that in English it is called “the endless knot.” And therefore was it well suiting to this knight and to his arms, since Gawain was faithful in five and five-fold, for pure was he as gold, void of all villainy and endowed with all virtues. Therefore he bare the pentangle on shield and surcoat as truest of heroes and gentlest of knights.
   For first he was faultless in his five senses; and his five fingers never failed him; and all his trust upon earth was in the five wounds that Christ bare on the cross, as the Creed tells. And wherever this knight found himself in stress of battle he deemed well that he drew his strength from the five joys which the Queen of Heaven had of her Child. And for this cause did he bear an image of Our Lady on the one half of his shield, that whenever he looked upon it he might not lack for aid.

To pop in here, the half of the shield he is talking about is likely the inner half: he has an image of the Madonna on the inner part of his shield to make it easier for him to venerate her and request intercession. This is also a time marker for the story: Mary has a far smaller role in folk Catholicism before the 13th Century.

And the fifth five that the hero used were frankness and fellowship above all, purity and courtesy that never failed him, and compassion that surpasses all; and in these five virtues was that hero wrapped and clothed. And all these, five-fold, were linked one in the other, so that they had no end, and were fixed on five points that never failed, neither at any side were they joined or sundered, nor could ye find beginning or end. And therefore on his shield was the knot shapen, red-gold upon red, which is the pure pentangle. Now was Sir Gawain ready, and he took his lance in hand, and bade them all Farewell , he deemed it had been for ever.

   Then he smote the steed with his spurs, and sprang on his way, so that sparks flew from the stones after him.

I have not ridden a great deal, but this sort of jolt where you injure your horse so that it strikes sparks on the cobbles with its iron shoes, to me, looks like a teenager doing burnouts in a sports car, if the car was able to feel pain. It’s meant to look cool, but if you’re a Bjornaer magus, it must look very needy.

All that saw him were grieved at heart, and said one to the other, “By Christ, ’tis great pity that one of such noble life should be lost! I’faith, ’twere not easy to find his equal upon earth. The king had done better to have wrought more warily. Yonder knight should have been made a duke; a gallant leader of men is he, and such a fate had beseemed him better than to be hewn in pieces at the will of an elfish man, for mere pride. Who ever knew a king to take such counsel as to risk his knights on a Christmas jest?” Many were the tears that flowed from their eyes when that goodly knight rode from the hall. He made no delaying, but went his way swiftly, and rode many a wild road, as I heard say in the book.

I’m not sure which book the author means here. It might be a reference to Issiah in the Bible. This is the part where later authors pop new adventures in.

   So rode Sir Gawain through the realm of Logres, on an errand that he held for no jest. Often he lay companionless at night, and must lack the fare that he liked. No comrade had he save his steed, and none save God with whom to take counsel. At length he drew nigh to North Wales, and left the isles of Anglesey on his left hand, crossing over the fords by the foreland over at Holyhead, till he came into the wilderness of Wirral, where but few dwell who love God and man of true heart. And ever he asked, as he fared, of all whom he met, if they had heard any tidings of a Green Knight in the country thereabout, or of a Green Chapel? And all answered him, Nay, never in their lives had they seen any man of such a hue. And the knight wended his way by many a strange road and many a rugged path, and the fashion of his countenance changed full often ere he saw the Green Chapel.

Logres is the part of England Arthur controls as king, rather than via alliance or conquest. It’s loosely the southern and eastern bits of England. When Gawain is in Wales he’s out of Arthur’s land. In northern Wales he’s in the lands of one of Arthur’s great foes in the early wars of unification. The Wirral is in modern Cheshire.

   Many a cliff did he climb in that unknown land, where afar from his friends he rode as a stranger. Never did he come to a stream or a ford but he found a foe before him, and that one so marvellous, so foul and fell, that it behoved him to fight. So many wonders did that knight behold, that it were too long to tell the tenth part of them. Sometimes he fought with dragons and wolves; sometimes with wild men that dwelt in the rocks; another while with bulls, and bears, and wild boars, or with giants of the high moorland that drew near to him. Had he not been a doughty knight, enduring, and of well-proved valour, and a servant of God, doubtless he had been slain, for he was oft in danger of death.

Note that what the author is focused on is, by his definition, more important and interesting than fighting dragons. Also, fighting bulls was apparently a big deal in period.

Yet he cared not so much for the strife, what he deemed worse was when the cold clear water was shed from the clouds, and froze ere it fell on the fallow ground. More nights than enough he slept in his harness on the bare rocks, near slain with the sleet, while the stream leapt bubbling from the crest of the hills, and hung in hard icicles over his head.

Cold rain is worse than dragons to Gawain, which seems odd. I may be able to rescue this, but it needs some work. In some stories, like the Morte d’Arthur, Gawain is solar powered in the sense that he is stronger in the middle of the day. He is strong for a human at 9 am, and his strength gradually increases until it peaks at noon, such that it is tripled. It then fades over the following three hours. As a solar hero, cold rain may be a flaw that diminishes his characteristics uncomfortably.

   Thus in peril and pain, and many a hardship, the knight rode alone till Christmas Eve, and in that tide he made his prayer to the Blessed Virgin that she would guide his steps and lead him to some dwelling. On that morning he rode by a hill, and came into a thick forest, wild and drear; on each side were high hills, and thick woods below them of great hoar oaks, a hundred together, of hazel and hawthorn with their trailing boughs intertwined, and rough ragged moss spreading everywhere. On the bare twigs the birds chirped piteously, for pain of the cold. The knight upon Gringalet rode lonely beneath them, through marsh and mire, much troubled at heart lest he should fail to see the service of the Lord, who on that self-same night was born of a maiden for the cure of our grief; and therefore he said, sighing, “I beseech Thee, Lord, and Mary Thy gentle Mother, for some shelter where I may hear Mass, and Thy mattins at morn. This I ask meekly, and thereto I pray my Paternoster, Ave, and Credo.” Thus he rode praying, and lamenting his misdeeds, and he crossed himself, and said, “May the Cross of Christ speed me.”

We don’t know how long it has been since Gawain has taken Mass and performed reconciliation with God. This is important to him because he thinks he’s likely to die in the near future. Note that he doesn’t actually perform his prayers, he just says he devotes them to an outcome in this piece of text. He’s discussing elements of prayer that eventually evolve into the modern Rosary.

Making the Sign of the Cross begins and ends the praying of the Rosary which I think is being referenced here.

The “Ave” here is the prayer that in English is called “Hail Mary” after its first two words. It doesn’t appear in text until 1050, and the modern, intercessional ending (where Mary is asked to pray for sinners) dates from the 1450s. A character in 1220 likely doesn’t add the intercession, and this makes the Ave just four lines long. As part of the Rosary it is prayed in sets of ten, called decades, usually for five sets.

The Paternoster “Our Father” is often called the Lord’s Prayer in English. It’s said one per decade when praying the rosary and once in the preparatory prayers. Textually it doesn’t vary a lot because its a Biblical quotation from the Sermon on the Mount, but the final little hymn (the doxology) doesn’t appear in the early texts. The Book of Common Prayer translates this extra bit, which was an interpolation in to the book they translated, as
“For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.”
Gawain, as a Catholic who prays in Latin, would likely use the simpler Catholic form that doesn’t include the doxology. It enters Catholic liturgy in 1969 and doesn’t sit at the end of the Pater Noster, there’s a brief prayer between the two called the embolism. All of which is to say: Gawain likely doesn’t say it.

The Creed I assume to be the Apsotle’s Creed because it is used in the prayer to prepare for the decades of the Rosary. I’m making a definition here between the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed which is used in the Mass. The Nicene Creed says similar things but is longer and more detailed. Unlike the other texts this one gains additional clarification over time, by way of most extreme example, the Anglican Church has two official versions.

Now that knight had crossed himself but thrice ere he was aware in the wood of a dwelling within a moat, above a lawn, on a mound surrounded by many mighty trees that stood round the moat. ‘Twas the fairest castle that ever a knight owned; built in a meadow with a park all about it, and a spiked palisade, closely driven, that enclosed the trees for more than two miles. The knight was ware of the hold from the side, as it shone through the oaks. Then he lifted off his helmet, and thanked Christ and S. Julian that they had courteously granted his prayer, and hearkened to his cry. “Now,” quoth the knight, “I beseech ye, grant me fair hostel.” Then he pricked Gringalet with his golden spurs, and rode gaily towards the great gate, and came swiftly to the bridge end.

I’m guessing that’s St Julian the Hospitalier, patron of travelers, knights, hunters and, for reasons I’m not clear on, clowns.

   The bridge was drawn up and the gates close shut; the walls were strong and thick, so that they might fear no tempest. The knight on his charger abode on the bank of the deep double ditch that surrounded the castle. The walls were set deep in the water, and rose aloft to a wondrous height; they were of hard hewn stone up to the corbels, which were adorned beneath the battlements with fair carvings, and turrets set in between with many a loophole; a better barbican Sir Gawain had never looked upon. And within he beheld the high hall, with its tower and many windows with carven cornices, and chalk-white chimneys on the turreted roofs that shone fair in the sun. And everywhere, thickly scattered on the castle battlements, were pinnacles, so many that it seemed as if it were all wrought out of paper, so white was it.
   The knight on his steed deemed it fair enough, if he might come to be sheltered within it to lodge there while that the Holy-day lasted. He called aloud, and soon there came a porter of kindly countenance, who stood on the wall and greeted this knight and asked his errand.
   “Good sir,” quoth Gawain, “wilt thou go mine errand to the high lord of the castle, and crave for me lodging?”
   “Yea, by S. Peter,” quoth the porter. “In sooth I trow that ye be welcome to dwell here so long as it may like ye.”
   Then he went, and came again swiftly, and many folk with him to receive the knight. They let down the great drawbridge, and came forth and knelt on their knees on the cold earth to give him worthy welcome. They held wide open the great gates, and courteously he bid them rise, and rode over the bridge. Then men came to him and held his stirrup while he dismounted, and took and stabled his steed. There came down knights and squires to bring the guest with joy to the hall. When he raised his helmet there were many to take it from his hand, fain to serve him, and they took from him sword and shield.
   Sir Gawain gave good greeting to the noble and the mighty men who came to do him honour. Clad in his shining armour they led him to the hall, where a great fire burnt brightly on the floor; and the lord of the household came forth from his chamber to meet the hero fitly. He spake to the knight, and said: “Ye are welcome to do here as it likes ye. All that is here is your own to have at your will and disposal.”
   “Gramercy!” quote Gawain, “may Christ requite ye.”
   As friends that were fain each embraced the other; and Gawain looked on the knight who greeted him so kindly, and thought ’twas a bold warrior that owned that burg.
   Of mighty stature he was, and of high age; broad and flowing was his beard, and of a bright hue. He was stalwart of limb, and strong in his stride, his face fiery red, and his speech free: in sooth he seemed one well fitted to be a leader of valiant men.
   Then the lord led Sir Gawain to a chamber, and commanded folk to wait upon him, and at his bidding there came men enough who brought the guest to a fair bower. The bedding was noble, with curtains of pure silk wrought with gold, and wondrous coverings of fair cloth all embroidered. The curtains ran on ropes with rings of red gold, and the walls were hung with carpets of Orient, and the same spread on the floor. There with mirthful speeches they took from the guest his byrny and all his shining armour, and brought him rich robes of the choicest in its stead. They were long and flowing, and became him well, and when he was clad in them all who looked on the hero thought that surely God had never made a fairer knight: he seemed as if he might be a prince without peer in the field where men strive in battle.
   Then before the hearth-place, whereon the fire burned, they made ready a chair for Gawain, hung about with cloth and fair cushions; and there they cast around him a mantle of brown samite, richly embroidered and furred within with costly skins of ermine, with a hood of the same, and he seated himself in that rich seat, and warmed himself at the fire, and was cheered at heart. And while he sat thus the serving men set up a table on trestles, and covered it with a fair white cloth, and set thereon salt-cellar, and napkin, and silver spoons; and the knight washed at his will, and set him down to meat.

Samite is a heavy, woven silk from northern Italy. Note that he washes after dressing not after taking off his travel clothes.

   The folk served him courteously with many dishes seasoned of the best, a double portion. All kinds of fish were there, some baked in bread, some broiled on the embers, some sodden, some stewed and savoured with spices, with all sorts of cunning devices to his taste. And often he called it a feast, when they spake gaily to him all together, and said, “Now take ye this penance, and it shall be for your amendment.” Much mirth thereof did Sir Gawain make.

The joke about the penance here is that he’s eating only fish, and so he’s fasting technically, but the food is so opulent that it counts only in the most distant of senses.

   Then they questioned that prince courteously of whence he came; and he told them that he was of the court of Arthur, who is the rich royal King of the Round Table, and that it was Gawain himself who was within their walls, and would keep Christmas with them, as the chance had fallen out. And when the lord of the castle heard those tidings he laughed aloud for gladness, and all men in that keep were joyful that they should be in the company of him to whom belonged all fame, and valour, and courtesy, and whose honour was praised above that of all men on earth.

He’s a young knight of few accomplishments by his own account earlier, but not here. Isd this modesty on his part, or courtesy on his host’s?

Each said softly to his fellow, “Now shall we see courteous bearing, and the manner of speech befitting courts. What charm lieth in gentle speech shall we learn without asking, since here we have welcomed the fine father of courtesy. God has surely shewn us His grace since He sends us such a guest as Gawain! When men shall sit and sing, blithe for Christ’s birth, this knight shall bring us to the knowledge of fair manners, and it may be that hearing him we may learn the cunning speech of love.”
   By the time the knight had risen from dinner it was near nightfall. Then chaplains took their way to the chapel, and rang loudly, even as they should, for the solemn evensong of the high feast. Thither went the lord, and the lady also, and entered with her maidens into a comely closet, and thither also went Gawain. Then the lord took him by the sleeve and led him to a seat, and called him by his name, and told him he was of all men in the world the most welcome. And Sir Gawain thanked him truly, and each kissed the other, and they sat gravely together throughout the service.
   Then was the lady fain to look upon that knight; and she came forth from her closet with many fair maidens. The fairest of ladies was she in face, and figure, and colouring, fairer even than Guinevere, so the knight thought. She came through the chancel to greet the hero, another lady held her by the left hand, older than she, and seemingly of high estate, with many nobles about her. But unlike to look upon were those ladies, for if the younger were fair, the elder was yellow. Rich red were the cheeks of the one, rough and wrinkled those of the other; the kerchiefs of the one were broidered with many glistening pearls, her throat and neck bare, and whiter than the snow that lies on the hills; the neck of the other was swathed in a gorget, with a white wimple over her black chin. Her forehead was wrapped in silk with many folds, worked with knots, so that naught of her was seen save her black brows, her eyes, her nose and her lips, and those were bleared, and ill to look upon. A worshipful lady in sooth one might call her! In figure was she short and broad, and thickly made–far fairer to behold was she whom she led by the hand.

As a spoiler, the ugly lady is Morgana Le Fay. Is she hideous as a way to hide herself? She’s Gawain’s aunt, although the two of them low-key hate each other.

   When Gawain beheld that fair lady, who looked at him graciously, with leave of the lord he went towards them, and, bowing low, he greeted the elder, but the younger and fairer he took lightly in his arms, and kissed her courteously, and greeted her in knightly wise. Then she hailed him as friend, and he quickly prayed to be counted as her servant, if she so willed. Then they took him between them, and talking, led him to the chamber, to the hearth, and bade them bring spices, and they brought them in plenty with the good wine that was wont to be drunk at such seasons. Then the lord sprang to his feet and bade them make merry, and took off his hood, and hung it on a spear, and bade him win the worship thereof who should make most mirth that Christmas-tide. “And I shall try, by my faith, to fool it with the best, by the help of my friends, ere I lose my raiment.” Thus with gay words the lord made trial to gladden Gawain with jests that night, till it was time to bid them light the tapers, and Sir Gawain took leave of them and gat him to rest.

This character reminds me of the Ghost of Christmas Present from Dickens.

   In the morn when all men call to mind how Christ our Lord was born on earth to die for us, there is joy, for His sake, in all dwellings of the world; and so was there here on that day. For high feast was held, with many dainties and cunningly cooked messes.

A mess is a portion.

On the daïs sat gallant men, clad in their best. The ancient dame sat on the high seat, with the lord of the castle beside her. Gawain and the fair lady sat together, even in the midst of the board, when the feast was served; and so throughout all the hall each sat in his degree, and was served in order. There was meat, there was mirth, there was much joy, so that to tell thereof would take me too long, though peradventure I might strive to declare it. But Gawain and that fair lady had much joy of each other’s company through her sweet words and courteous converse. And there was music made before each prince, trumpets and drums, and merry piping; each man hearkened his minstrel, and they too hearkened theirs.

Every single man, or perhaps pair of feasters, has their own minstrel. That’s a huge number of minstrels, an enormous show of conspicuous consumption. Time for a lengthy bit that requires no interpolations.

   So they held high feast that day and the next, and the third day thereafter, and the joy on S. John’s Day was fair to hearken, for ’twas the last of the feast and the guests would depart in the grey of the morning. Therefore they awoke early, and drank wine, and danced fair carols, and at last, when it was late, each man took his leave to wend early on his way. Gawain would bid his host farewell, but the lord took him by the hand, and led him to his own chamber beside the hearth, and there he thanked him for the favour he had shown him in honouring his dwelling at that high season, and gladdening his castle with his fair countenance. “I wis, sir, that while I live I shall be held the worthier that Gawain has been my guest at God’s own feast.”
   “Gramercy, sir,” quoth Gawain, “in good faith, all the honour is yours, may the High King give it you, and I am but at your will to work your behest, inasmuch as I am beholden to you in great and small by rights.”
   Then the lord did his best to persuade the knight to tarry with him, but Gawain answered that he might in no wise do so. Then the host asked him courteously what stern behest had driven him at the holy season from the king’s court, to fare all alone, ere yet the feast was ended?
   “Forsooth,” quoth the knight, “ye say but the truth: ’tis a high quest and a pressing that hath brought me afield, for I am summoned myself to a certain place, and I know not whither in the world I may wend to find it; so help me Christ, I would give all the kingdom of Logres an I might find it by New Year’s morn. Therefore, sir, I make request of you that ye tell me truly if ye ever heard word of the Green Chapel, where it may be found, and the Green Knight that keeps it. For I am pledged by solemn compact sworn between us to meet that knight at the New Year if so I were on life; and of that same New Year it wants but little–I’faith, I would look on that hero more joyfully than on any other fair sight! Therefore, by your will, it behoves me to leave you, for I have but barely three days, and I would as fain fall dead as fail of mine errand.”
   Then the lord quoth, laughing, “Now must ye needs stay, for I will show you your goal, the Green Chapel, ere your term be at an end, have ye no fear! But ye can take your ease, friend, in your bed, till the fourth day, and go forth on the first of the year and come to that place at mid-morn to do as ye will. Dwell here till New Year’s Day, and then rise and set forth, and ye shall be set in the way; ’tis not two miles hence.”
   Then was Gawain glad, and he laughed gaily. “Now I thank you for this above all else. Now my quest is achieved I will dwell here at your will, and otherwise do as ye shall ask.”
   Then the lord took him, and set him beside him, and bade the ladies be fetched for their greater pleasure, tho’ between themselves they had solace. The lord, for gladness, made merry jest, even as one who wist not what to do for joy; and he cried aloud to the knight, “Ye have promised to do the thing I bid ye: will ye hold to this behest, here, at once?”
   “Yea, forsooth,” said that true knight, “while I abide in your burg I am bound by your behest.”
   “Ye have travelled from far,” said the host, “and since then ye have waked with me, ye are not well refreshed by rest and sleep, as I know. Ye shall therefore abide in your chamber, and lie at your ease tomorrow at Mass-tide, and go to meat when ye will with my wife, who shall sit with you, and comfort you with her company till I return; and I shall rise early and go forth to the chase.” And Gawain agreed to all this courteously.
   “Sir knight,” quoth the host, “we shall make a covenant. Whatsoever I win in the wood shall be yours, and whatever may fall to your share, that shall ye exchange for it. Let us swear, friend, to make this exchange, however our hap may be, for worse or for better.”
   “I grant ye your will,” quoth Gawain the good; “if ye list so to do, it liketh me well.”
   “Bring hither the wine-cup, the bargain is made,” so said the lord of that castle. They laughed each one, and drank of the wine, and made merry, these lords and ladies, as it pleased them. Then with gay talk and merry jest they arose, and stood, and spoke softly, and kissed courteously, and took leave of each other. With burning torches, and many a serving-man, was each led to his couch; yet ere they gat them to bed the old lord oft repeated their covenant, for he knew well how to make sport.

Gawain seems to know this game of exchanges. He does not call it out as unusual. Note that it’s the second game, after the beheading game, which Gawain agrees to, so if the beheading game is part of the mystery cult ordeal, so also should the game of exchanges.