Thoughts on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

In our class, I have noted how Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is packed with interesting stuff in the original Middle English. Here are the opening lines:

Siþen þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye,
Þe borȝ brittened and brent to brondez and askez,
Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wroȝt
Watz tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe.
Hit watz Ennias þe athel and his highe kynde,
Þat siþen depreced prouinces, and patrounes bicome
Welneȝe of al þe wele in þe west iles.

And my crude translation:

Since the siege and assault were ceased at Troy, the city broken and burned to embers and ashes, since the soldier who there wrought the instrument of treason was tried for his treachery, the most loyal on earth. It was prince Aeneas and his great family, who then conquered many lands and became patrons of almost the whole West. (1–7)

Note the difficulty — to which I alluded on the first day of our discussion, in lines 3–5. It’s not at all clear which Trojan tulk betrayed the city, at least in this account. The close proximity of “Hit watz Ennias þe athel” suggests to me that the Gawain poet might share the same dim view of Aeneas that Ovid, Chaucer, and others hold. More importan than my own opinion about that textual conundrum, though is the frame’s interest in tricherie: a critical theme in almost every part of this poem, from the initial challenge, to the games with the lord and lady, to the mysterious old woman, to the dread climax.

We ended Thursday’s class at that climax. Gawain has arrived at the Green Chapel and notices the apparent wickedness of the place. As he approaches, he hears the sound of an axe being sharpened:

Þene herde he of þat hyȝe hil, in a harde roche
Biȝonde þe broke, in a bonk, a wonder breme noyse.
Quat! hit clatered in þe clyff as hit cleue schulde,
As one vpon a gryndelston hade grounded a syþe.
What! hit wharred and whette as water at a mulne;
What! hit rusched and ronge, rawþe to here.

Then he heard from that high hill — from a hard hillside, on the bank beyond the brook — a terrifying, cruel noise. Listen! it sounded as if the cliff were split in two, as if a grindstone had sharpened a scythe. Listen! it whirred and ground as water through a mill; listen! it rushed and rang, wicked to hear. (2199–2204)

Gawain recognizes that the sound is for him — a sign of his imminent doom. The poet does some incredible things with sounds here. Note the repeated onomatopoeia in quat and what: the qu or wh here would be sounded like a harsh hw. So many of the consonant combinations in this passage mimic the grinding of the axe against the sharpening wheel1 that we know Gawain will die when he meets the Green Knight.