Sir Gawain
Middle English Reading 1
Chapter 7 · Sir Gawain
📜 Sir Gawain
Chaucer's London English is the Middle English most readers meet first. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in a different region and in a different verse form, and it looks harder on the page. This chapter reads the five lines that end one of its stanzas, plus a handful of phrases, from Wikipedia's article on the poem. It is a short passage, and the chapter says what it can and cannot tell us.
The text
1ful clene
2for wonder of his hwe men hade
3set in his semblaunt sene
4he ferde as freke were fade
5and oueral enker grene
The article's translation: "full clean. / Great wonder of the knight / Folk had in hall, I ween, / Full fierce he was to sight, / And over all bright green."
Source: Wikipedia, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the passage quoted there as lines 146 to 150, shown as a bob and wheel, with the translation printed beside it, as the page tool gave them. The tool split each into five pieces and joined them with slashes; I have set them as five lines. The article's translation rhymes, so it rearranges the original.
The five lines describe the Green Knight as he enters Arthur's hall. The article gives no word-for-word gloss. A word-for-word reading of mine would be unreliable here: the translation moves whole phrases, and I do not have a dictionary for this dialect, so I read from the printed translation and mark every word-level guess.
Reading the lines
- The form. Line 1 is the bob, one short line, and lines 2 to 5 are the wheel. The article names the bob and wheel; the rhyme of sene with grene and of hade with fade is my observation.
- Alliteration. Line 3 repeats s (set, semblaunt, sene) and line 4 repeats f (ferde, freke, fade). The article calls the poem alliterative verse; these two lines are my examples of what that means.
- Verbs. hade is the past of have (Middle English Grammar 1, Chapter 7 gave hadde, so this is a spelling variant, my reading). ferde ends in -de, a weak past ending of the kind in Chapter 6.
- were. In as freke were fade a singular subject takes were, which Chapter 7 gave as the past plural weren. Chapter 7 also listed were in an unlabeled extra row under be, possibly subjunctive; I cannot say if that is what is happening here.
- men. The translation renders men hade as "Folk had", so men seems to be "people". Chapter 2's source did not discuss plurals formed by a vowel change, so the sources give me nothing to say about its form.
- grene. It ends in -e, but it is not after the or a possessive, and I cannot tie it to Chapter 4's rule. enker, "bright" in the translation, I cannot analyse.
- Letters. The article's text uses u where we write v: oueral is "overall". The Middle English article lists u and v as used interchangeably in this period.
Phrases from elsewhere in the article
| Middle English | Gloss as printed |
|---|---|
| a syngne þat salamon set | a sign set by Solomon |
| þe endeles knot | the endless knot |
| two myle henne | two miles hence |
| þe boþem of þe brem valay | the bottom of a valley |
| bryȝt sunne | fiery sun |
| holy hede | Holy Head |
These are short fragments from the article's discussion, and the glosses are the article's own. They are not a passage you can analyse, but they show the same dialect spelling: þ and ȝ (Chapter 1 of Middle English Grammar 1), and y where Modern English has i, as in myle ("mile"). The article's version of þe endeles knot uses þe, the article of Chapter 3. Two more fragments, loke a littel on þe launde on þi lyfte honde and an olde caue / or a creuisse of an olde cragge, were printed with no translation, so I leave them out.
New words
| Middle English | Meaning | Modern English relative |
|---|---|---|
| clene | clean, fair (from the translation "clean") | clean |
| wonder | wonder | wonder |
| hwe | hue, colour (my reading) | hue |
| semblaunt | appearance (my reading) | semblance |
| freke | man, warrior (my reading from "fierce he was") | (none I know) |
| grene | green | green |
Try It Yourself
Say the answer first, then click to check.
1. In which manuscript does the poem survive, and in which century was it written?
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Cotton Nero A.x., in the British Library; the late 14th century.
2. Which dialect does the article give?
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"North / West Midlands" or "North West Midlands", as it words it in two places.
3. What are the bob and the wheel?
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The very short first line of the end of a stanza (the bob) and the rhyming group of four lines after it (the wheel).
4. Which sound does line 3 repeat, and in which words?
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s, in set, semblaunt, sene.
5. Which words rhyme at the ends of lines 3 and 5?
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sene and grene.
6. What is hade?
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The past of have, a spelling variant of hadde.
7. What does the article's translation tell us men means in line 2?
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"Folk", meaning people in general.
8. Why can't we explain the -e on grene from Chapter 4's rule?
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It follows no the, demonstrative or possessive and does not modify an obvious plural noun, so the rule does not predict it.
9. Translate þe endeles knot and two myle henne.
Show answer
"The endless knot" and "two miles hence".
10. Why does the chapter avoid a word-for-word gloss of the five lines?
Show answer
The printed translation rhymes and rearranges the original, and no dictionary or gloss for this dialect was available, so any such gloss would be guesswork.