Volume 6 Number 1 Article 11

12-15-1979

Sir Gawain's Missing Day

Joe Christopher

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Recommended Citation Christopher, Joe (1979) "Sir Gawain's Missing Day," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 6 : No. 1 , Article 11. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol6/iss1/11

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Abstract Notes a missing day in chronology of events at Morgan le Fay’s castle, and suggests a relation to themes of falseness in the poem.

Additional Keywords Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Bonnie GoodKnight

This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol6/iss1/11 Sir Gawain's Missing Day by Joe Christopher

That a day is lost in the account of Sir Gawain's that the poet has deliberately telescoped the days, so visit to the castle of Morgan le Fay in Sir Gawain and the that the three days of Christmas festivities are followed Green Knight is common knowledge. He arrives at the castle by, and balanced by, the three days of hunting. Watson on Christmas eve (or, at least, he seems to - the purpose also suggests a dual translation from one group of three of this note is to question that event); the poet describes days to the second, so that the audience's attention is not the Christmas celebration of the following day and then drawn to the missing day: first, an impression of two sums u p : days is given in the verse when St. John's Day is men­ tioned, by the use of an appositive (11. 1021-1022); and, Much dut watz per dryuen pat day and pat oper, second, the events of the evening of St. John's Day are And pe pryd as pro pronge in perafter; elaborated into a hundred and one lines, so that an impres­ pe ioye of sayn Jonez day watz gentyle to here, sion of the passage of time is given (11. 1024-1125).4 And watz pe last of p e layk, leudez per po3ten. per wer gestes to go vpon pe gray morne. . . 1 At this point, I wish to turn to another extremely (1020-1024) odd passage in the poem which mentions the passage of days - one which, so far as I am aware, no critic has pre­ [With much feasting they fared the first and the viously discussed - and one which w ill, ultim ately, n e x t d a y , provide a third explanation,, neither textual nor struc­ and as heartily the third came hastening after: tural, for Gawain's missing day. the gaiety of Saint John's day was glorious to hear; and that finished their revels, as folk there intended, Immediately before Gawain arrives at Morgan le Fay's for there were guests who must go in the grey morning. castle, he prays for a lodging in which to celebrate (42. 1-3, 5-6; p. 50)] Christmas. What critics ignore is that he does this twice; the first time is at the end of the thirty-first stanza: Since St. John's day gets the chronology to December 27, and the three days of the hunts before Gawain's meeting p in peryl and payne and plytes ful harde with the Green Knight on New Year's Day must occupy Bi contray caryes p is kny3t, tyl Krystmasse euen, December 29, 30, and 31, obviously something has happened a l o n e ; to December 28. That "pe gray morne" upon which the p e kny t wel pat tyde guests leave is actually the first day of the hunts, To Mary made his mone, thus skipping from St. John's day to the final sequence, pat ho him red to ryde is shown at the beginning of the third section of the poem: And w ysse hym to sum w one. (7 3 3 -7 3 9 )

Ful erly bifore pe day pe folk vprysen, [Thus in peril and pain and in passes grievous Gestes pat go wolde hor gromez ay calden, till Chrlstmas-eve that country he crossed all And pay busken vp bilyue blonkkez to sadel, alone in need. Tyffen her takles, trussen her males, The knight did at that tide Richen hem p e rychest, to tyde alle arayde, his plaint to Mary plead, Lepen vp ly tly, lachen her brydgles, her rider's road to guide Vche wy3e on his way per tym wel lyked. and to some lodging lead. (31. 21-27; p. 43)] pe leue lorde of pe londe watz not p e last Arayed for pe rydyng, with renkkez ful mony; After "Krystmasse euen" has been reached in this stanza, Ete a sop hastyly, when he hade herde masse, the next begins, "Bi a mounte on p e morne meryly he With bugle to bent-felde he buskez bylyue. rydes": I feel certain that almost all students trans­ (1126-1136) lating this poem in some Middle English course have at first thought that "on pe morne" indicates Christmas mor­ [Before the first daylight the folk uprose: ning after Christmas eve. But they have noticed the guests that were to go for their grooms they immediately that the stanza goes on to give a fuller, c a l l e d ; more dramatic prayer for shelter "to-morne" (1.756), to­ and they hurried up in haste horses to saddle, morrow morning. And probably most teachers of such to stow all their stuff and strap up their bags. classes, if the question came up at all, explained that The men of rank arrayed them, for riding got ready, the previous bob-and-wheel seems to have "not counted" - to saddle leaped sw iftly, seized then their bridles, the poet stuck the prayer in there, rather as preparation and went off on their ways where their wish was to go. fqr his full day-before-Christmas stanza. I have suggested The liege lord of the land was not last of them all this sort of thing myself. But I have come to be to be ready to ride with a rout of his men; doubtful of this anti-textual argument. If the poem says he ate a hurried mouthful after the hearing of Mass "on ^e morne", I hope it means "on^e morne". C. S. and with horn to the hunting field he hastened at Lewis, in his essay on Hamlet, comments that "A child is once. (46. 1-11; p. 53)] always thinking about those details in a story which a grown-up regards as indifferent"5; if I do not quite suggest that the reader should return to childhood, at Sir Israel Gollancz has suggested in his edition least I ask him to return to that first reaction as a that the first of these passages has an omitted line, men­ s tu d e n t. tioning Childermas, December 28 - inserted after the description of St. John's Day, it would become "pe last [day] of pe layk".2 Norman Davis, in his revised edition As I have said, I have not found any critic who o f Sir Gawain, has accepted this interpretation.3 discusses this passage.6 But I turned to the translators; J. R. R. Tolkien, in his translation of Sir Gawain, a c c e p ts they at least had to Indicate what the words meant. As G o lla nc z ' suggestion to the point of translating (in might be expected, several stick closely to the phrase in brackets) the additional line he suggested (42. 4, p.50), the original - specifically Brian Stone, Margaret Williams, as is explained at the end of the Tolkien introduction and J. R. R. Tolkien (32.1; p. 43), who use "in the mor­ (p. 24). But not all critics have agreed. Melvin R. ning", and Theodore Howard Banks, Jr., who uses "on the Watson has argued that accepting Gollancz' theory would m o rn " .7 One translator, John Gardner, translates the line, "destroy the tone of the passage". He suggests instead "By a mountain next morning merrily he rides"® - in which 39 I believe he is pushing for an ambiguity, so the time may Whether or not my readers w ill allow me this exten­ be the morning of Christmas eve. Very surprising to me sion of meaning, certainly one finds here the medieval was the fact that three translators use "next morning" - topos which Curtius calls "straying in a wood" - the most James L. Rosenberg, Burton Raffel, and Marie Borroff. famous example perhaps being the opening of the D i v i n e I found this surprising simply because the critics Comedy; a topos which Spenser also uses in the first canto ignore the passage, but I also found it encouraging - of the first book of The Faerie Q u e e n e . 1 2 The Error perhaps I am not w ilful (certainly I am not alone) in which Sir Gawain encounters, I suggest, begins with his my interpretation of the phrase. loss of awareness of it being Christmas.

But this assumption that stanza thirty-two describes Why do the people at Morgan le Fay's castle continue Sir Gawain's Christmas day raises more questions, of his delusion? Most literally , because Morgan le Fay course. Why does he not realize it is Christmas, praying caused it in the first place. But its more general effect again for some shelter in which to celebrate Christmas is to raise questions about the religion as practiced in the next day? Why do the people at Morgan le Fay's the castle: obviously, the masses attended by Sir Bertilak castle go along with his curious delusion about time, and his wife do not keep them from tempting Gawain and pretending his arrival is the fast time of Advent (st. 37)? being prepared to kill him if he fails the test. I would More generally, why should the poet lose a day (so far as suggest that this false Advent fast, and these false com­ Sir Gawain is concerned) at this point, only to bring the munions, are a piece with the false confession and protagonist back to the correct day in the latter part of absolution which one of Morgan le Fay's priests allows his stay at Morgan le Fay's castle? Sir Gawain after he has accepted the sash.13

To the first question, why Sir Gawain does not rea­ And, finally, at the most general level, the critic lize the new day is Christmas, I wish to propose a may fit this tim e-shifting into a thematic view of Sir magical answer: in brief, he does not realize it because Gawain and the Green Knight announced by Morton W. he rides into the enchanted forest around the castle of Bloomfield as: Morgan le Fay: Things. . . are not quite what they seem. Gawain, Bi a mounte on pe morne meryly he rydes the perfect knight, is also a human being, and the Into a forest ful dep, pat ferly watz wylde, Green Knight is really only a mask. His wife only Hi3e hillez on vche a halue, and holtwodez vnder seems to be unfaithful. The old harmless lady is Of hore okez ful hoge a hundreth togeder; really a witch. The court is silly and yet capable P e hasel and p e ha3porne were harled al samen, of honor. Nature is both horrid and benign. Life With ro3e raged mosse rayled aywhere. . . (740-745) is a tissue of contradictions, even in its most aristocratic and idealized form.14 [By a mount in the morning merrily he was riding into a forest that was deep and fearsomely wild, Of course, I realize that my explanation of Gawain's with high h ills at each hand, and hoar woods beneath missing day is no more strictly verifiable than the assum­ of huge aged oaks by the hundred together; ptions about a missing line which described December 28, or the hazel and the hawthorne were huddled and tangled the aesthetic argument about the balance of the three days with rough ragged moss around them trailing. . . of feasting and the three days of hunting;-^ my suggestion (32.1-6; p. 43)] is, however, as equally well founded as either of these other views, both in textual defense and in medieval I do not propose any particular significance to the oak, topoi, and therefore it is, I believe, equally deserving of hazel, and hawthorn trees, although anyone who has read serious consideration.16 through the two columns of m aterial on the oak in The Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend w ill realize the sacredness of this tree; the 1Norman Davis (ed.), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight other two also have their legends.10 But I would draw (Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, corrected edition of the attention of the poem's reader to the use of the word 1972), p. 29. All quotations from Sir Gawain i n t h i s ferly to describe the forst. Technically, this is just paper shall be from this edition, and all subsequent an adverb, wondrously; the forest "was woundrously wild". quotations shall be identified in the text only by line As a noun a ferly is a wonder also, but since it derives number. The translations (in brackets) which follow from the same root as fear, perhaps a better definition each of the block quotations are taken from J. R. R. would be awesome or (as a noun) "a fear-inspiring thing". Tolkien (trans.), "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", (Tolkien translates so the forest is "fearsomely wild".) "Pearl", and "Sir Orfeo" (Boston: Houghton M ifflin A check of Webster's Third New International Dictionary Company, 1975); since only stanza numbers are given in w ill also indicate a Scottish use as the sort of images this translation, reference is made by stanza and seen when drunk - but whether or not the d .t.'s are awe­ lines within the stanza; also the page reference to inspiring, I w ill leave others to debate. Perhaps more this edition of Tolkien's translation is given. to my point, the Middle English Dictionary lists as the first meaning of the verb form ferlien "to be frigh­ 2Sir Israel Gollancz (ed.), S i r Gawain and the Green tened".11 What I am pushing for in this adverb is a Knight (London: Oxford University Press, for the numinous quality to the forest: it is not just wondrously Early English Text Society, 1940), pp. 110-111 (for wild, it is frighteningly wild, it is magically wild. the suggestion of the missing line).

40 3Davis, p. 104. Davis' edition is, of course, a re­ 14Morton W. Bloomfield, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: vision of the Tolkien and Gordon text; cf. the citation An Appraisal", PMLA, 76 (1961), p. 19. of the earlier work in footnote 6. 15My view and the structural interpretation can be com­ 4Melvin R. Watson, "The Chronology of S ir Gawain and the bined, of course; neither can be reconciled with the Green Knight", Modern Language Notes, 64 (1949), pp. 85- missing line assumption. 86. A number of recent critics have mentioned both possibilities, an omitted line and a deliberate tele­ 16This paper was read, in a slightly different form, at a scoping of time, without passing judgment on them - for meeting of the South-Central Modern Language Association, example, James R. Kreuzer (ed.), Sir Gawain and the on 3 November 1973, in Fort Worth, Texas. Green Knight, t r a n s l a t e d by Jam es L. R o sen b erg (New Y ork: Rinehart and Company, 1959), p. xxiii; and J. A. Burrow, A Reading of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 96n.

5C. S. Lewis, "Hamlet: The Prince or The Poem?", They Asked for a Paper: Papers and Addresses (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1962), p. 70. Call for Papers 6Only one of the four modern editions of the poem indicate anything about this phrase. Norman Davis, in his glossary (p. 200), divides the meanings of m o r n (e ), The Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association is moroun into two groups: the first meaning simply m o rn in g , issuing a Call for Papers for the Seminar on Children's ai)d the second meaning n e x t d a y . He g iv e s th e l i n e Literature at the A ssociation's Conference in Albuquerque, number for this n o rn e with the first group, thus allowing New Mexico, October 18-20, 1979. The topic w ill be it to refer to the day before Christmas. J. R. R. "Children's Literature: The Possibilities of Criticism". Tolkien and E. V. Gordon (Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, corrected edition of 1930), A. C. Cawley (London: You are invited to submit papers on any aspect of J. M. Dent and Sons, in the Everyman's Library series, children's literature, but papers which deal with ap­ No. 346, 1962), and Sir Israel Gollancz do not indicate proaches to children's literature or papers which argue anything about this phrase. for a methodology through analysis of a specific work or works w ill be given preference. 7Brian Stone, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Classics L 92, revised edition of 1962) , p. 54. Margaret Williams, R.S.C.J., The P e a rl Does children's literature demand special status? Poet: His Complete Works (New Y ork: V in ta g e B ooks, Does it require a special methodology? How do we approach literature for children? Are classifications such as 1970), p. 71. Banks, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight "girl's books", "fantasies", "adolescent fiction", (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1929), p. 47. "fairy tale", "adventure story" useful as critical cate­ gories? The study of children's literature has yet to 8G a rd n e r, The Complete Works of the Gawain-Poet (Chicago: come of age. What, in fact, are we doing analysing these The University of Chicago, 1965), p. 254. My italics. simple books? 9Rosenberg (cited in note 4 under Kreuzer), p. 26. Deadline for submission of papers is April 15, 1979. R a f f e l. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New Y ork: New Papers should take no longer than 15 minutes to read in American Library: A Mentor Book, 1970), p. 71. order that we have time for discussion. Anyone who B o r r o f f , Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New V erse presents a paper at the conference must be a member of Translation (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1967), RMMLA. Each submission w ill be read by at least two p . 16. assessors. Send two copies of your paper to: 10Th e Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary o f Folklore, Professor Roderick McGillis Mythology, and Legend (New Y ork: Funk and W agnalls Department of English Company, 1950), pp. 860-807. For a less standard source, University of Calgary but one indicating the use of all three trees in British C a lg a ry , T2N 1N4 folklore, see Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Alberta, Canada H istorical Grammar o f Poetic Myth (New Y ork: V in ta g e Books, 1958), pp. 179-181 (hawthorn), 181-185 (oak), and 187-189 (hazel); the index indicates briefer references. A Christian reading of the later oaks, mentioned in the next stanza as in the actual park of Morgan's castle (1.722), is offered by Gardner in his introduction to his translation (p. 75). Errata 11Hans Kurath and Sherman M. Kuhn (eds.) Middle English Dictionary: Part F.2 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan A transposition of m aterial appears in the Inklings Press, 1954). In connection with the numinous quality Bibliography 7, M y th lo re 18, Page 45, first column, which I mention immediately following above, note f e r l i beginning line 25: "(n) Jack King, review of J. B. Post's (n) 1 .(b) a miracle; also, the result of a miracle. ..." to the end of the entry. This material should have 12 b e e n in The Eye No. 2 entry. Ernest Robert Curtlus, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages , translated by William R. Trask (New York: In the poem "The Quest" on page 40, the final "s" was Harper and Row [Harper Torchbooks: The Bolligen Library], inadvertently omitted from the word "universes" in the last 1963) , p. 362. Curtius is discussing Dante; he does not stanza, creating a metrical fault. mention Spenser. Our apologies to J. R. Christopher and Mary M. 13The best essay on the false confession is John Burrow's Stolzenbach. "The Two Confession Scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", Modern Philology, 57 (1959), 73-79; reprinted in Robert J. Blanch (ed.), "Sir Gawain" and "Pearl": Critical Essays (Bloomington; Indiana University Press, 1966), pp. 123-134. Burrows modifies his views slightly TYPIST'S note in the book listed in note 5, pp. 106-110, 127-133; in the latter, Burrows writes, "There is no question of the To all contributors: please be v e ry careful in the p r i e s t 's bona fides, of course. . ." (p. 110); I am sug­ spelling of all proper names and all materials quoted - gesting that a l l of the religious activity at Morgan le it w ill save a great deal of wasted time and much Fay's castle is suspect. exasperation. Thanks. 41