Page:Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien and Gordon - 1925.djvu/25

Rh The existing French versions of the challenge are these:

(C) Le Livre de Caradoc, forming part of the first continuation (by Wauchier de Denain) of the unfinished Perceval of Chrestien de Troyes. It has been edited by Potvin in Perceval le Gallois, Mons,, vol. iii, pp. ff. There is a prose version also in the Old French prose Perceval, printed at Paris in

(M) La Mule sanz Frain, by Paien de Maisieres, ed. Orlowski, La Demoiselle à la Mule, Paris, ; and by R. T. Hill, Baltimore,

(P) In Perlesvaus, a prose romance, ed. Potvin, vol. i.

(H) Gawain et Humbaut, ed. Stürzinger and Breuer, Dresden,, Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, xxxv.

These romances all date from the thirteenth century. Only in M and H is Gawain the hero. They resemble the English Sir Gawain closely, especially C, but none of them is the immediate source. Professor Kittredge has assumed that the English poet found the story in a related French romance, now lost. The existence of such an original cannot be proved, and has been questioned: the Celtic legend might have passed into currency in the north-west of England without the assistance of a French version. But it was evident that the author of Sir Gawain was in some degree dependent on French romance; his insistence on the courtliness of his characters belongs to French