Sir Isumbras is a medieval metrical romance written in Middle English and found in no fewer than nine manuscripts dating to the fifteenth century.Hudson, Harriet. 1996. Four Middle English Romances. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. This popular romance must have been circulating in England before 1320, because William of Nassyngton, in his work Speculum Vitae, which dates from this time, mentions feats of arms and other 'vanities', such as those found in stories of Sir Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, Octavian and Sir Isumbras.Hudson, Harriet. 1996.Hanna, Ralph. 2008. Speculum Vitae: A Reading Edition. Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society. Volume 1: lines 35 to 40. Unlike the other three stories, the Middle English Sir Isumbras is not a translation of an Old French original.
Sir Isumbras is a proud knight who is offered the choice of happiness in his youth or his old age.Laura A. Hibbard, Medieval Romance in England p7 New York Burt Franklin,1963 He chooses the latter, and falls from his high estate by the will of Providence. He is severely stricken; his possessions, his children and, lastly, his wife, are taken away; and he himself becomes a wanderer. After much privation he trains as a blacksmith, learning to forge anew his armour, and he rides into battle against a sultan. Later, he arrives at the court of the sultan's queen, who proves to be his long-lost wife. He attempts to Christianise the Islamic lands over which he now rules, provoking a rebellion which is then defeated when his children miraculously return to turn the tide of battle.
A popular tail-rhyme romance Sir Isumbras is a relatively short Middle English romance, less than eight hundred lines in length, in twelve-line tail-rhyme stanzas. This form of romance is parodied by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tale of Sir Thopas. Tail-rhyme verse, however, was very popular in late-medieval English for recording tales of adventure and romance,Mills, Maldwyn. 1973, reissued 1992. Six Middle English Romances. J M Dent and Sons Limited, Everyman's Library. and used in many Middle English romances, such as Emaré,Laskaya, Anne and Salisbury, Eve. 1995. The Middle English Breton Lays. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University for TEAMS. Sir Amadace,Mills, Maldwyn. 1973, reissued 1992. Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle,Hahn, Thomas (Ed). 1995. Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and tales. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University for TEAMS. IpomadonPurdie, Rhiannon. 2001. Ipomadon. Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society. and Sir Gowther. A typical verse begins with a group of three lines, such as this one describing the scene as Sir Isumbras arrives at his burnt-out manor, during his long slide into penury and loss: ”A doleful syghte thenne ganne he se, His wife and his chylderen thre Owte of the fyre were fled.”Hudson, Harriet. 1996, lines 97 to 99.
These lines are then expanded into a single stanza by stacking four similar triplets together, to rhyme AABCCBDDBEEB.
Manuscripts The story of Sir Isumbras is found in nine manuscript versions, mostly dating to the fifteenth century or earlier, as well as five sixteenth century printed versions (at least one was estimated to have been published perhaps as early as 1530Cox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2004, —see 1530 in poetry). In three of the manuscripts, only a fragment of the story survives: Oxford, University College, MS 142 Naples, MS 13 B 9 (dated to 1457) Gray's Inn, MS 20 (dated to 1350)
A complete or nearly complete version of Sir Isumbras is found in these manuscripts: Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 175 (mid-fifteenth century) Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91, the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript (c. 1440) British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A II (second half of the fifteenth century) National Library of Scotland, Advocates MS 19.3.1 (late-fifteenth century) Bodleian Library, MS. Ashmole 61 (late-fifteenth century) Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 261 (1564)
Plot (This plot summary is based upon the version of the poem found in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge MS 175, a missing folio supplied by British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A II.)
Sir Isumbras lives a comfortable life; he is a generous nobleman with a young family, a beautiful, loving wife, and enjoys a respected position in society. However, his failure to think about his Christian duties causes God to tell him that he grown too proud.
The message is delivered, curiously, by a speaking bird. (This resembles the way that Sigurd is warned by the birds to kill Regin in the Saga of the Volsungs when he is splashed by the juice from the dragon's heart as it cooks and can immediately understand their language.Byock, Jesse L. 1990, reprinted 1999. The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sugurd the Dragon Slayer. Translated from Old Norse with an introduction. Penguin Books Limited. 20: Sigurd Eats the Serpent's Heart. p 66. Similarly, Canace is able to understand the lament of a lady-falcon in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tale from the Squire.) Sir Isumbras is riding in his forest early one morning when a bird in the branches above him begins to talk. It tells him that one of two things must happen, and that he can choose his fate: either he can be wealthy in his youth and impoverished in his old age, or the other way around. Sir Isumbras, with no hesitation, chooses to have wealth in his old age, since:
“In yowthe I may ryde and go, I elde I may noght do so, My lymes wyll wex unwelde.”lines 55 to 57
("In youth I can run about and ride a horse, but in old age I won’t be able to do any of these things because my limbs will be crippled." )
Immediately, Sir Isumbras's horse falls down dead beneath him, his hawks and hounds flee away in startled fright and a boy comes running up to tell him that his manor house has just burnt to the ground. On the way to see for himself, he learns that all his cattle and sheep have been stolen during the night.
However, his wife and his children are safe. Sir Isumbras arrives at a scene of devastation to see them standing charred and naked before him, having run from their beds to escape the flames. He has lost everything except his wife and his three sons, and he quickly decides that he and his family must go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They set out with nothing except the torn clothes they are wearing, begging for food along the way. Soon they come to a great river and try to cross it. Quickly, Sir Isumbras loses two of his sons to wild animals. A lion and a leopard make off with the boys as he leaves each of them in turn on the far bank in order to return for the others.
When the depleted group arrives at last at the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, intending to find a ship to take them to the Holy Land, an invading sultan takes a liking to Sir Isumbras's wife and buys her from him, much to the knight's distress. She is packed away into a ship to sail to the sultan's kingdom to be made the sultan's queen. Before they part, Sir Isumbras's wife urges her husband to try to find her by any means he can, and gives him a ring by which she might know him. Very shortly afterwards, Sir Isumbras's remaining son is carried off by a unicorn, and the payment he received for the sale of his wife is carried off by a bird.
Sir Isumbras finds himself alone and destitute in a foreign land. The wheel of fortune has carried him to its lowest depths.
However, like the hero of the romance Sir Gowther,Laskaya, Anne and Salisbury, Eve. 1995. who may similarly have been punished for excessive pride,Blamires, Alcuin. 2004. The twin demons of aristocratic society in Sir Gowther. In: Pulp fictions of medieval England, edited by Nicola McDonald, pp 45–63. having reached this low point halfway through the tale, Sir Isumbras's climb now begins. He arrives at a working smithy and asks for food, but is made to work for it. Thus, he labours for his meals and after a while they take him on as an apprentice. For seven years he works in this smithy, and at the end of this time he is so proficient at metalwork that he is able to make himself a suit of armour. Meanwhile, the sultan has been campaigning throughout Europe and only now do the forces of Christendom feel able to commit an army to battle. The two sides face one another across a field of conflict.
Sir Isumbras, keen to avenge himself on the sultan who stole his wife, rides into battle on a horse used by the smithy for carrying coal, armed in his own armour (perhaps conjuring an image like that of Florent riding out against a giant wearing his father's rusty armour in the medieval romance OctavianHudson, Harriet. 1996. Octavian, lines 983 to 994. Florent, the hero of the romance, although the son of an emperor, lives as the son of a merchant in Paris. When a giant comes to besiege the city, he insists upon riding out in his father's old, rusty armour in order to challenge the fiend, and is met with howls of nervous laughter when he asks for the city gates to be opened to let him out.). Sir Isumbras performs magnificent deeds of valour and when his sorry horse is killed from under him, an earl rescues him from the battlefield, gives him a new horse and new arms and Sir Isumbras rides once again into the melee, managing at last to kill the sultan himself, winning the battle.
When the Christian king wishes to congratulate him, however, Sir Isumbras acknowledges himself simply as a blacksmith, much to the monarch's incredulity. He is sent to a convent to receive medical attention and convalescence and when he is fit again, rather than going to the king to claim the honours promised him, he makes his way once more towards the Holy Land as a beggar.
For many years Sir Isumbras lives in desperate poverty in the city of Acre, which was the last Crusader stronghold to fall to the Muslims (1291). Then he makes his way to Jerusalem, and outside the walls of this city an angel appears one night to tell Sir Isumbras that God has at last forgiven him his sins. Destitute still, however, Sir Isumbras wanders the eastern lands until he comes to a city that once belonged to a great sultan before he was killed on the battlefield. Now it is ruled by his former queen. This lady is accustomed to distributing alms to wandering paupers and to taking in the most needy to feed and to ask them about their travels; as though keen to hear news of somebody. He is brought into the castle, meets with her, tells her his news and is invited to live there and to serve at the table. Yet, like Sir Eglamour of Artois after his travels, he does not recognise his own wife. Like Sir Yvain's wife, the Lady of the Fountain, and the wife of the eponymous hero of the romance Guy of Warwick, she does not recognise him.Kibler, William W., and Carroll, Carleton W., 1991. Chrétien de Troyes: Arthurian Romances. Translated from Old French with an introduction. Penguin Books Limited.Zupitza, J, 1875, reprinted 1966. The Romance of Guy of Warwick: The second or 15th-century Version. Published for the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press. Guy's return to Warwick as a beggar and his death there, lines 10,480–678. "To the castell gate he came: that hym knewe, was there no man. Amonge the pore men he hym dudde: grete sorowe toke he in the stedde." – lines 10,483–486.