Sir Eglamour of Artois is a Middle English verse romance that was written sometime around 1350.Hudson, Harriet. 1996. Four Middle English Romances. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. It is a narrative poem of about 1300 lines, a tail-rhyme romance that was quite popular in its day, judging from the number of copies that have survived – four manuscripts from the 15th century or earlier and a manuscript and five printed editions from the 16th century. The poem tells a story that is constructed from a large number of elements found in other medieval romances. Modern scholarly opinion has been critical of it because of this, describing it as unimaginative and of poor quality.Tigges, Wim. 1988. Sir Eglamour: the knight who could not say no. Neophilologus, 72, pp 107–115. Medieval romance as a genre, however, concerns the reworking of "the archetypal images of romance"Brewer, Derek. 1983.History of Literature Series: English Gothic Literature 5. Adventure and love:romances in rhyme, p 72. Schocken Books, New York. and if this poem is viewed from a 15th-century perspective as well as from a modern standpointTigges, Wim. 1988. Sir Eglamour: the knight who could not say no. Neophilologus, 72, pp 107–115. – and it was obviously once very popular, even being adapted into a play in 1444 – one might find a "romance [that] is carefully structured, the action highly unified, the narration lively."Hudson, Harriet. 1996. Four Middle English Romances. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications.
The action of the story involves the hero fighting with a giant who is fifty feet tall, a ferocious boar and a dragon. His son is carried off as a baby by a griffin. The mother of his son, like Emaré and Geoffrey Chaucer's heroine Constance, is carried in an open boat to a distant land. There are scenes of non-recognition between the principal characters and a threat of incest; but after all these vicissitudes, father, son and mother are reunited at the end.Hudson, Harriet. 1996. Four Middle English Romances. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications.
Manuscripts The story of Sir Eglamour of Artois was written in around 1350 and is found in six manuscript versions, four of them dating to the 15th century or earlier, one to the 16th century and one, the Percy Folio, to the seventeenth. It is also found in five 16th-century printed versions. In one of the manuscripts, British Library Egerton 2862 (c. 1400), only a fragment of the story survives:Hudson, Harriet. 1996.
A complete or nearly complete version of Sir Eglamour of Artois is found in these manuscripts:Hudson, Harriet. 1996. Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript (c. 1440) Cambridge University Library Ff. 2.38 (c. 1460) British Library MS Cotton Caligula A ii (second half of the 15th century) Bodleian Library MS. Douce 261 (1564) British Library Add MS 27879, the Percy Folio (c. 1650)
Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, produced by Robert Thornton, preserves the Arthurian romance Sir Perceval of Galles and the popular romance Sir Isumbras. In Cotton Caligula A.ii is found the tale of Emaré. Like many other medieval English romances,Mills, Maldwyn. 1973, Six Middle English Romances. J M Dent and Sons Limited, Everyman's Library. Sir Eglamour of Artois is written in tail-rhyme verse; although it is somewhat irregular, written mostly in stanzas of the traditional twelve lines, rhyming AABCCBDDBEEB, although sometimes a stanza occurs of six or nine lines, sometimes of fifteen or more.
Plot (This plot summary is based upon the version of the story found in British Museum MS Cotton Caligula A.ii)
The medieval story of Sir Eglamour of Artois makes use of a number of themes and motifs that are found in other romances of the period. Near the very beginning of the tale the reader, or listener, is at once introduced to two of them. Sir Eglamour is in love with his overlord's daughter. She is the child and heir of an earl. Sir Eglamour, a relatively poor knight, declares his love for Christabel and is immediately given three impossible tasks to achieve by her angry father in order to win her hand in marriage; just as Culhwch is given an impossibly long list of impossible tasks by Chief Giant Ysbaddaden in the Old Welsh Mabinogion tale How Culhwch won Olwen, in order to win the hand in marriage of his daughter and heir.Gantz, Jeffrey, 1976. The Mabinogion. Translated from Old Welsh with an introduction. Penguin Books Limited. How Culhwch Won Olwen, pp 134–176. Sir Eglamour's first task is to take a deer from a forest far to the west, where the Celtic Otherworld is often located.Loomis, Roger Sherman, 1927, reprinted 1997. Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance. Academy Chicago Publishers, Illinois, US. Chapter XIX. Evalach, Avalon, and Morgan le Fay. pp 188–196. "The Britons were not unlike the Greeks in thus placing the enchanted abodes of the gods in islands of the sea. Beheld in the glamor of distance, surrounded above and below by an expanse of crimson and gold..." As sun deities, the old gods, according to Roger Sherman Loomis, were believed, by the Celts, to be found in the region of the setting sun. The Garden of the Hesperides that Hercules visited, in Greek myth, where apples of immortality grew, was to be found far to the west. The forest is surrounded by a stone wall and the deer are guarded by a giant who stands fifty feet tall. Despite these difficulties, Sir Eglamour manages to kill the principal stag of the giant's herd and then kills the giant himself. Having achieved this first trial, Sir Eglamour returns home triumphant, carrying the giant's head as well as that of the deer.
Annoyed at Sir Eglamour's success, the next task that the earl gives his daughter's suitor is to kill the Boar of Sidon, a dreadful beast that has laid waste to the area where it lives. Sir Eglamour spends a month travelling out to Sidon where he locates this boar by seeing all the bodies of dead men strewn about the ground. After a struggle with this boar that lasts for three days, Sir Eglamour kills the ferocious creature. His feat of bravery and skill-at-arms is noticed by the King of Sidon, who is riding nearby on the day that Sir Eglamour at last overcomes this beast. The king takes Sir Eglamour back to his castle where his daughter (beautiful, of course) is being threatened by a giant. This giant is demanding her hand in marriage and when he appears, Sir Eglamour kills him singlehandedly. The King of Sidon at once offers to confer onto Sir Eglamour all his titles and lands, as well as the hand of his daughter in marriage.
Sir Eglamour insists that he cannot stay – or in fact, it is Sir Adventurous who excuses himself in this way, since this is the name that Sir Eglamour has now assumed, without any explanation for doing so. As a departing gift, the king presents Sir Adventurous with a horse whose rider can never be toppled in any joust. His daughter, Organate, gives him a ring with the property that its wearer cannot be killed. "Then seyde Organate, the swete thing, 'I schal you gyfe a good gold ryng, Wyth a full ryche ston; Whethur ye be on watyr or on lond, And this ryng be on your hond Ther schall no dede you sclon.'"Hudson, Harriet. 1996. Four Middle English Romances. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. Sir Eglamour of Artois, lines 607–612. TEAMS Middle English text Sir Adventurous gratefully accepts these two gifts, Organate declares that she will wait for fifteen years for him to come for her. Sir Adventurous replies that he will have to see how things go. So he returns to Artois, reverts to his old name and presents to the earl, who is even less pleased than before to see him, the head of the boar and the head of the giant.
The third task that the earl gives Sir Eglamour is the kill a dragon that is terrorising Rome. Before leaving for this final test, Sir Eglamour asks for twelve weeks to recuperate and the earl's noblemen support him in this request, so it is granted. During this time, Sir Eglamour gives Christabel a child. He also gives her the magic ring that Organate of Sidon gave to him. Then he goes off to Rome, where the dragon is soon lying dead at his feet. But he has been badly injured himself in the struggle to overcome this creature and will require many months of rest and recuperation before he can return to Artois.
Meanwhile, Christabel gives birth to a baby boy. Her father is so angry that he swears to have her killed, so he puts her into a small boat with her new-born baby and they are set adrift without food or water, at the mercy of the winds and the currents, to share a fate that is suffered also by EmaréLaskaya, Anne and Salisbury, Eve (Eds). 1995. The Middle English Breton Lays. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. and by Geoffrey Chaucer's heroine Constance in his Canterbury tale from the Man of Law. Soon they are driven onto a rock, and mother and baby go ashore to sit with the seagulls. A griffin appears from out of nowhere and carries the baby off.
Now mother and father and son are all separated. But the reader or listener knows that they will be reunited at the end of the tale, for this is a romance; in essence a comedy, not a tragedy. The baby boy is carried to the kingdom of Israel, where the griffin is spotted landing, stork-like, with the baby. News of this is brought to the king, the child is named Degarébel and he is raised as the king's son. And his mother, in fact, suffers a curiously similar fate. Having set off again from the rock of seagulls, she is carried in the boat by wind and tide until she is washed ashore in Egypt where she is found by the king of that country. She tells him who she is and is informed by the King of Egypt that she is his niece. Quite quickly, as the tale proceeds, she becomes his daughter, in a plotting device that, although clearly inconsistent with the beginning of the tale, has similarities with a new identity, following separation, taken by Emare, and by Sir Degare,Laskaya, Anne and Salisbury, Eve (Eds). 1995. The Middle English Breton Lays. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. by the boy Florent in the romance Octavian and by the blacksmith Sir Isumbras.Hudson, Harriet (Ed). 1996. Four Middle English Romances. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University for TEAMS. Fifteen years pass before she is made the high-ranking prize at a tournament for would-be suitors.
Sir Eglamour has already recovered from the wound he received whilst slaying the dragon, returned home to Artois, been told the dreadful news about Christabel and after seizing control of Artois from the earl, has travelled to the Holy Land. But fifteen years have now passed and Sir Eglamour, at last, is making his way back home. Christabel is looking for a husband and is the prize at a tournament in Egypt. Her son Degarébel, in Israel, has just learned that a beautiful woman is available to wed. If he can prove his courage on the tournament field he can win her, so he is on his way to Egypt to take part in the fighting.
Of course, the inevitable happens. Just as in the Middle English Breton lai Sir Degare, Sir Degarébel marries his mother. Following recognition of the device on his shield, however, mother and son are quickly made aware of each other's true identity and another tournament is swiftly arranged. By chance, Sir Eglamour is passing and resolves to take part in this tournament. Father and son fight together, each unaware of the other's identity, but Sir Eglamour knocks Sir Degarébel from his horse with the flat of his sword, wins Christabel in marriage, the device on Sir Eglamour's shield gives away his identity and the romance concludes with recognition, celebration and reunion.