The Green Knight

It is New Year’s Day and Sir Gawain of Camelot is on time for his beheading. 

It’s a story that began exactly a year ago. Arthur, a ‘sumquat childgered’ king, is refusing to eat his Christmas dinner until he sees or hears something strange and wonderful. It is never a good idea to want a surprise at this threshold time of the year; things can blow in from the wild at any time. And so it proves.  A terrifying green knight shows up on a terrifying green horse. In his hands he holds a holly branch and an axe.  In a challenge to the court he offers any man the chance to take a swipe at him with the axe that he carries.  The only catch is that the Green Knight has to have his turn a year to the day later.  Knights know how weapons work, so Gawain offers his services confident that one blow will be enough to put an end to the Green Knight’s challenge. He takes up the axe and chops the intruder’s head off. Except the Green Knight doesn’t die, and, after locating his missing head, he leaps back on his horse holding his head by the hair.  See you in a year’s time, he says, and he gallops out of the mead hall.  

The year flies by and it is time for Gawain to receive his blow.  He sets off to meet his death. Adventures follow, including a spot of cheating on Gawain’s part. But the long and short of it is he doesn’t die either, the Green Knight turns out to be a decent bloke and Gawain goes home a little bit ashamed that he wasn’t quite as good as he thought he was. Back at court, everybody is pleased to see him and they gently tease him about his moral failing. For some reason they weren’t as surprised or bothered by his shortcomings as Gawain was.

In my poem, Gawain has an epiphany. After the axe had fallen and simply scratched his neck, he knows he will never go back to Camelot and its infantile codes of knightly behaviour.  Tired of axes and swords, he sets off into the green and the wild never to return.  

Bledhen Nowydh Da! Happy New Year!