Button’s Reviews > Galahad and the Grail > Status Update

I love me a green knight, or foliate head, or green man, or whatever we're calling this fella:

"Then he beheld an elfin form,
a living woodland wight!
Green was his steed and green his greaves,
his chainmail linked of silver leaves.
He rode out from the forest eaves
and cried, 'Stand fast, false knight!'"

"We know not what shall be achieved,
but even if we fail,
this day will be remembered long,
your honour told in tale and song,
that unto Arthur's court belonged
the coming of the Grail."

There's a strange taunting in the appearance of the Grail. The court already recognizes Galahad as a knight nonpareil. The appearance and the resulting quest, therefore, seem intended to humble Arthur and his remaining knights.

"Then Arthur said to Galahad,
"Sir, you are not alone.
I too stood, with my life unmade,
and set my hand to hilt and blade.
I know the burden on us laid,
who draw a sword from stone!"

I love that Guite called attention to the fascinating throughline of Arthur pulling Caliburn and Galahad pulling Balin's Adventurous Sword from magical stones, thereby proving worthy of a task (kingship and grail quest, respectively).

The prelude ends with this stanza, in which Guite half-charges other pens with the same task he now undertakes:

"So I have taken up the tale
to tell it full and free.
The tale that makes the heart rejoice,
I tell it, for I have no choice—
I tell it till another voice
takes up the tale from me."