Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a poem in four “fits,” and the story is as follows:
King Arthur is holding his Christmas court at Camelot, with feasting and revelry. On New Year’s Day, just as dinner is being served, there enters, suddenly and unannounced, a green knight on a green horse. He rides straight up to the high table and, without dismounting, challenges the company to a Christmas game: he will take from anyone present a stroke with a huge axe which he carries, on condition that in a twelvemonth the striker submits to a return blow. After some parley Gawain accepts the challenge, and gives an undertaking to seek out the strange knight at his own place in a year’s time. Gawain now makes his stroke and cuts off the Green Knight’s head, so that it rolls along the floor; the decapitated man at once picks it up, leaps into his saddle, and, holding the head by the hair, adjures Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel on the appointed day; and so departs. (Fit I .)
A year quickly passes, and on All Saints’ Day Gawain rides to seek the Green Chapel. After many hardships and adventures, he comes into North Wales and then into the Wirral and the country beyond. On Christmas Eve he is still in the wilds, but his prayer that he may find some shelter for the holy tide is answered that day. He comes to a castle in a forest. Here he is welcomed and entertained until St. John’s Day by the lord and the two ladies of the castle, one of them the lord’s young wife, the other an ancient as hideous as the wife is beautiful. He now wishes to depart, but on being assured by the lord that the Green Chapel is not two miles distant and that he shall be escorted to it in good time, he consents to prolong his stay till New Year’s morning. The lord intends to hunt on the last three days of the year, while Gawain rests his weary