Page:Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien and Gordon - 1925.djvu/24

xii second and third divisions) of the temptation of Sir Gawain at the castle. These two adventures are found separately in other romances, in forms recognizably similar; they exist in the combined form only in Sir Gawain and two later English poems which are closely related to it. Both adventures derive ultimately from Celtic legend.

The Celtic form of the adventure of the challenge is exemplified in The Champion’s Bargain, an episode in the Middle Irish romance Bricriu’s Feast, preserved in a manuscript dating from about. The story itself must be at least a century older. In the Irish version the challenge has already a developed literary form and contains all the essential details of the later versions. An interesting feature which only the Irish story and Sir Gawain have in common is that three blows are aimed at the hero when it is the challenger’s turn to strike.

From a Celtic version of the story of the challenge passed into French, but through what channel is impossible to discover. There is nothing to show whether the immediate Celtic source was Welsh, Cornish, or Breton.