Chapter 5 - Page 2

King Arthur hastened to the grim baron's castle and told him one
by one all the answers which he had received from his various
advisers, except the last, and not one was admitted as the true one.
"Now yield thee, Arthur," the giant said, "for thou hast not paid
thy ransom, and thou and thy lands are forfeited to me." Then King
Arthur said:- "Yet hold thy hand, thou proud baron,
I pray thee hold thy hand.
And give me leave to speak once more,
In rescue of my land.
This morn, as I came over a moor,
I saw a lady set,
Between an oak and a green holly,
All clad in red scarlet.
She says all women would have their will,
This is their chief desire;
Now yield, as thou art a baron true,
That I have paid my hire." "It was my sister that told thee this," the churlish baron
exclaimed. "Vengeance light on her! I will some time or other do her
as ill a turn."
King Arthur rode homeward, but not light of heart; for he remembered
the promise he was under to the loathly lady to give her one of his
young and gallant knights for a husband. He told his grief to Sir
Gawain, his nephew, and he replied, "Be not sad, my lord, for I will
marry the loathly lady." King Arthur replied:- "Now nay, now nay, good Sir Gawaine,
My sister's son ye be;
The loathly lady's all too grim,
And all too foule for thee." But Gawain persisted, and the king at last, with sorrow of heart,
consented that Gawain should be his ransom. So, one day, the king
and his knights rode to the forest, met the loathly lady, and
brought her to the court. Sir Gawain stood the scoffs and jeers of his
companions as he best might, and the marriage was solemnized, but
not with the usual festivities, Chaucer tells us:- "There was no joye, ne feste at alle;
There n'as but hevinesse and mochel sorwe,
For prively he wed her on the morwe,
And all day after hid him as an owle,
So wo was him his wife loked so foule!"* * N'as is not was, contracted; in modern phrase, there was not.
Mockel sorwe is much sorrow: morwe is morrow. When night came, and they were alone together, Sir Gawain could
not conceal his aversion; and the lady asked him why he sighed so
heavily, and turned away his face. He candidly confessed it was on
account of three things, her age, her ugliness, and her low degree.
The lady, not at all offended, replied with excellent arguments to all
his objections. She showed him that with age is discretion, with
ugliness security from rivals, and that all true gentility depends,
not upon the accident of birth, but upon the character of the
individual.
Sir Gawain made no reply; but, turning his eyes on his bride, what
was his amazement to perceive that she wore no longer the unseemly
aspect that had so distressed him. She then