seneschal … constable … chamberlain: the ‘seneschal of England’ was responsible for the management of the king’s own estates and for the running of the royal household; the constable was commander-in-chief after the king himself, and substituted for the king in his absence (as Baudwin does when Arthur goes overseas to pursue his war against the Emperor Lucius); the chamberlain controlled access to the king and therefore held a key position of political power.
receive no gifts of a beardless boy that was come of low blood: the giving and receiving of gifts was fraught with social and political significance in the Middle Ages. The kings’ refusal to accept those Arthur sends them indicates not only their rejection of his status as fellow sovereign, but that they will not acknowledge him even as part of their own ‘community of honour’ on account of his low birth.
well victualled: i.e. had food-supplies sufficient to withstand a long siege. Starvation was as likely a reason as military defeat for a castle or town to surrender.
he is no bastard: if Igraine’s husband had still been alive, Arthur would have been begotten in adultery, and would therefore, according to canon law, necessarily be illegitimate. As he is begotten after she is widowed, and born after her marriage to his father, he is Uther’s legitimate child.
witch: witches were defined as being servants of the devil and able to make use of diabolical powers; Merlin himself was supposedly the son of a devil and a mortal woman. The term was applied to men as well as women; charges of witchcraft were indeed more likely to be brought against men. Such charges were, however, rare in the Middle Ages; witch-hunting on a large scale, predominantly aimed against women, was just beginning to get under way in continental Europe in Malory’s time, but it did not have a significant impact in England until well into the sixteenth century. It was a Renaissance phenomenon, not a medieval one.
his sword Excalibur: there is a confusion here: Excalibur is the name of the sword Arthur receives from the lake later in the book.
come and see: the first surviving leaf of the manuscript begins at this point.
that ever they heard or saw: a short section is omitted, in which twenty-one knights attack the eleven kings.
he did write all the battles … of Arthur’s court: the stress on there being early written authorities for the deeds of Arthur and his knights is intended to enhance the historical veracity of the work: it is not enough that they happened, action must also be recorded as text. Malory seems to have regarded himself as a chronicler in the same tradition.
Merlin: this is the first of many instances in the manuscript where Merlin (spelled ‘Merlion’ in Winchester: ‘Merlin’ is the form used by Caxton and generally elsewhere) is abbreviated to an initial M. Both the scribes who share the writing of the manuscript make the abbreviation, although no other name is so treated; it is sometimes, as here, associated with disguise on Merlin’s part, but by no means always. The use of initials was common for the most frequently used names in the French prose romances (G for ‘Gauvain’; T for ‘Tristan’ in the 1489 print of Tristan); and indeed a manuscript of Malory’s source, the Suite du Merlin, which was in England in the fifteenth century and may have been the one actually used by Malory, abbreviates Merlin similarly. It is extraordinary, however, that this abbreviation should have survived through Malory’s translation and one or more copyings, especially when Merlin appears too seldom for scribal speed and convenience to be the reason here: one wonders if it indicates a reluctance on the part of the scribes to write out in full the name of an enchanter who had some claim to continuing power—Merlin never actually dies, and his prophecies were still current as late as the seventeenth century.
always he was against him: a short passage is omitted, in which four knights are sent to protect Benwick.
as any was then living: a passage is omitted in which the eleven kings take protective measures against the Saracens.
in the beast’s belly … in the beast’s belly: this is the first example in the manuscript of an eyeskip error in the copying, where the scribe omits the words between the two occurrences of ‘belly’. Caxton’s own exemplar contained the missing words, which are supplied from his print.
here is my glove … will say the contrary: the offer of a glove as a challenge, for any opponent to take up, is an indication of the seriousness of the issue: it was especially associated in the later Middle Ages with political issues and charges of treason, as here.
recreant: ‘recreant’ need mean no more than ‘overcome’, but it was also recognized as being one of the most opprobrious terms in Middle English: Malory uses it to indicate everything that is the opposite of knightliness, with connotations of falsehood, cowardice, and giving up on the challenge of adventure and quest. Pellinore is inviting Arthur not just to yield, but to accept defamation.
as it rehearseth afterwards … Morte Arthur: the story of Mordred’s coming to court is in fact never told, either by Malory or any of his sources. Malory does, in any case, change the story significantly: in the particular French source he is using here, Arthur orders all the children born in May to be sent to him, and it is the ship sent by King Lot containing Mordred that is lost with all lives except the baby’s. His name is known because of an inscription on the cradle in which he is washed ashore, and he is brought up as Sagramore’s foster-brother. Arthur considers killing all the remaining children, but instead has them set adrift in a pilotless boat for God to determine their fate, and they come ashore safely. It is not uncommon in medieval literature and legend for a child of incest to be cast to sea in a small vessel (it was prescribed in early Irish law), for God to determine whether it should survive; one of the most widely known of such legends concerned Gregorius, the future Pope Gregory. Not every such child was preserved on account of its potential sanctity, however: a similar legend also existed about Judas, the betrayer of Christ, who is the more appropriate comparison here. It seems to be Malory’s own unique variant on the motif that the fairly born children should die in the course of such an episode while the incestuous child and future traitor survives.
The Tale of Balin and Balan
The title is taken from the explicit at the end of the tale. An opening summary of the story so far is omitted.
This section has a double purpose, to complete the story of King Roince, and to act as a kind of Book of Prophecies, in rather the way that the Old Testament was read in the Middle Ages and later as prefiguring the New. This makes for a number of digressive episodes that have little logic so far as the main narrative of Balin and Balan is concerned, and the lack of logic is compounded by the fact that not all the prophecies are consistent with Malory’s later narratives. I have accordingly omitted some material, indicated in the notes below.
Then the King buried her richly: a passage is omitted in which Merlin denounces the damosel; this is followed by a subsidiary story in which Balin is pursued by a knight named Lanceor and kills him in combat, whereupon his lady Colombe kills herself with Lanceor’s sword. The continuation of the story after the meeting of Balin with Balan (below, Caxton chapters 6 and 7) is also omitted, where King Mark and Merlin, who happen to be passing, make a tomb for the dead lovers. Merlin predicts Lancelot and Tristram’s combat at the tomb, Tristram’s adultery with Isode, and Balin’s wounding of King Pellam.
and wept for joy and pity: the following passage is slightly abbreviated.
till Nero and his people were destroyed: some details of the battle are omitted.
others were buried in a great rock: details of the burial are omitted, along with some rather perfunctory prophecies of Merlin’s; a further item of explication is omitted from the end of the chapter.
now it sticketh in thy body: short omission.
which Joseph of Arimathea brought into this land: it was believed that Joseph of Arimathea had first brought Christianity to England; the legend is summarized in the course of the Tale of the Sangrail, below, where Galahad’s healing of King Pellam, the Maimed King, is also recounted (t
hough an alternative account of his maiming is given at XVII.5). The title of ‘the Haut [high] Prince’ strictly speaking belongs to a character named Galahalt, but it is frequently given to the Galahad of the Grail.
which Longius smote Our Lord with to the heart: the reference is to a legend that grew up around the Biblical account of the piercing of the side of the crucified Christ (John 19:34): the soldier in question, named Longius or Longinus, was blind, and had his hand guided by another soldier. The blood flowing from Christ’s side healed his blindness.
he was passing fain: there follows an episode, here omitted, in which Balin attempts to help a lover named Garnish, with disastrous results.
[17]: from here until Merlin takes Balin’s sword is supplied from Caxton, as a leaf is missing from the Winchester MS.
that unhappy sword: ‘unhappy’ is a strong word in Malory, meaning ‘doomed’ or ‘doom-bearing’, almost ‘accursed’. Used here about Balin’s sword, it suggests that the whole history of the sword recounted earlier in the Tale has been leading up to this moment.
the dolorous stroke: other activities of Merlin are omitted.
Camelot, that is in English called Winchester: the identification was due to the presence of the Round Table at Winchester, the existence of which Caxton notes in his Preface (for the history of its construction, see note on p. 565 below).
The Wedding of King Arthur
This section is divided off from the previous one in the manuscript by a line of space and a large capital. The heading is taken from the explicit at the end.
a lean mare: no knight would ever ride a mare. Their status is indicated by the fact that one is ridden by the Ploughman in the General Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
milk my kine … half by force he had my maidenhood: Andreas Capellanus, in his late-twelfth-century treatise on love, notoriously recommended the use of a modicum of force to overcome a peasant girl’s modesty. The figure in such stories in French is commonly a shepherdess; that she should be a milkmaid is a distinctively English variation, which makes its first recorded appearance here. Later versions of the motif include the lyric ‘Hey trolly lolly lo, maid, whither go you?’, from the court of Henry VIII, and the nursery rhyme (bowdlerized from an earlier ballad), ‘Where are you going to, my pretty maid?—I’m going a milking, sir, she said.’
bring again the white hart: Tor and Pellinore are also given charges to recover the brachet and the lady. The adventures of Gawain that follow arc framed by two further encounters omitted here. Winchester erroneously omits Gawain’s release of the greyhounds at the start of chapter 7; this is supplied from Caxton.
thus endeth the adventure of Sir Gawain … at the marriage of Arthur: this injunction to Gawain has little consequence in the rest of Malory’s work until Arthur’s vision of the dead Gawain at the very end (XXI.3), though it bears an obvious relation to the reputation of the French Gawain as a ladies’ man and a less obvious relationship to the English Gawain’s reputation as the exemplar of courtesy. The adventures of Tor and Pellinore, omitted here, interpose at this point between Gawain’s return and the oath of knighthood.
both old and young: the oath sworn by the knights of the Round Table is closely similar to the charge given the new knights in the fifteenth-century ceremonial for creating knights of the Order of the Bath. The ‘certain points that longeth unto this high and worshipful order of knighthood’ there include, after injunctions to be faithful to God and the king: ‘Ye shall sustain widows in their right at every time they will require you, and maidens in their virginity, and help them and soccour them with your goods … Also ye shall sit in no place where that any judgement should be given wrongfully against anybody to your knowledge. Also ye shall not suffer no murderers nor extortioners of the king’s people in the country where ye dwell, but with your power ye shall let do take them [have them captured] and put them into the hands of justice.’ (From Viscount Dillon, ‘A Manuscript Collection of Ordinances of Chivalry of the Fifteenth Century’, Archaeologia, 57:1 (1900), 27–70 (67–8).)
Of Nenive and Morgan le Fay
There is no heading in the manuscript, although this section starts a new folio after a gap of half a page; and the explicit at the end concludes the whole series of episodes so far. Caxton’s summary runs, ‘How Merlin was besotted, and of war made to King Arthur’, which covers only the first three of his twenty-nine chapters. The present heading is editorial, based on the main events of the abbreviated narrative given here.
he was a devil’s son: according to the story first recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain, Merlin was the son of an incubus (a devil who copulates with mortal women in their sleep).
rode long in a forest: short omission.
he drew blood on Arthur: it is very hard to make a knight appear heroic when he has supernatural help. That Arthur is given Excalibur marks him out as special; that he should prove his heroism fighting against the magic sword with nothing but his own courage and strength proves his prowess as no magic could. The wonder that one expects to attach to the supernatural is therefore transferred to Arthur himself.
a palfrey … a courser: a palfrey is a horse used for recreational riding; a courser is a war-horse.
now may we go where we will: Morgan’s capture of a knight named Manessen is omitted.
Gawain and Uwain decide to go separate ways: Malory provides a larger frame story for the episode that follows. Gawain and Uwain meet up with Sir Marhalt, and the three of them find three damosels, of 60, 30, and 15 years of age. They decide to separate to seek adventures, each accompanied by one of the damosels (Gawain, to his delight, gets the ‘youngest and the fairest’), and to meet again in a year and a day. The damosels play little part in the adventures. Malory recounts Marhalt’s and Uwain’s adventures, which follow Gawain’s, more perfunctorily than his; I give only Gawain’s.
[19/20]: Caxton’s numbering gets confused at chapters 18/19; this chapter is accordingly numbered 19 or 20 in different editions, and so on to the end of Caxton’s Book IV.
he maketh no resistance: a short interruption to the main narrative is omitted here.
so it rehearseth in the book of the French: there follow a few sentences of somewhat misleading summary of later events.
That God send him good recovery, amen!: this is the first mention of Malory’s being a prisoner. The invitation to the reader to seek further adventures in other books suggests that Malory started with this part of the work and without any intention of continuing; but his chronological cross-referencing to Lancelot and Tristram would seem to indicate that he already had the structure of the whole work in mind, as the Suite du Merlin does not contain such a reference.
THE NOBLE TALE BETWIXT KING ARTHUR AND LUCIUS THE EMPEROR OF ROME
The title is taken from the colophon at the end of the section, p. 94. Malory is here using an English source, the alliterative Morte Arthure, composed c. 1400; his version still preserves many of the alliterating lines—see note to p. 86 below. The poem survives in a single manuscript, in which Arthur’s epitaph, in the same form that Malory gives, is copied immediately following the end of the poem itself; but Malory appears to have been working from a different copy, since his version incorporates some alliterative lines not found in the extant manuscript. The dialect in which the poem is written is both earlier and more northern than Malory’s own, and it incorporates a good deal of specialist alliterative vocabulary. As Malory’s rewriting preserves many of these features, this section requires heavier glossing than the rest of his text, and modernization presents particular problems. I have modernized word order on a handful of occasions where the original presents particular difficulty, and more rarely excised a phrase where the meaning is especially obscure.
Caxton’s print offers a rather different version of this section, substantially shorter than the one given in the manuscript. He may himself have rewritten Malory’s text; or he may have had a copy that was already substantial
ly abbreviated, possibly even a revision made by Malory himself. The version I give here is also much abbreviated, but by cutting whole sections rather than through the sentence-by-sentence slimming that characterizes Caxton.
Although chapter numbers are given as a rough finding guide, the wide differences between the texts of the manuscript and the print make them less precisely helpful here than elsewhere.
Helena’s son of England was Emperor of Rome: Geoffrey of Monmouth had popularized an earlier legend that Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine and supposed finder of the True Cross, was British by birth. The capture of Rome by Belinus and Brennius (’Sir Belinc and Sir Brine’) is largely Geoffrey’s invention.
Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript (Oxford World's Classics) Page 68