Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

I'm on the trail of a 600-year-old poem.

As a piece of writing, it's got just about everything.

It's a ghost story. It's a whodunnit.

It's a love poem. It's a religious poem.

It's a 2,500 line tongue-twister and you could even say

it's one of the first ever eco poems.

"After Britain was built by this founding father,

"a bold race bred there.

"men causing trouble and torment in turbulent times."

And through history, more strangeness has happened here than anywhere else I know of on earth.

It's generally recognised as one of the jewels in the crown of

British poetry and we don't know who wrote it.

A few years ago, I made a translation of the poem and I completely fell

under its spell, but to a certain degree, it's still a mystery to me.

And it's crossed my mind that the only way of entering the mindset of the writer

and getting to grips with the meaning of the poem,

is to experience some of the landscape of the poem

and to feel the descriptions of nature and the wet winter weather.

The poem doesn't even have a title, but over the centuries,

it's come to be known as Sir Gawain And The Green Knight.

It was Christmas at Camelot, King Arthur's court,

where the great and the good of the land had gathered.

All the righteous lords of the ranks of the round table

quite properly carousing and revelling in pleasure.

It's Christmas at Camelot. It's not quite how it would have been in Arthur's day.

Santa's just arrived in a transit van.

But it's still a time of great excitement and it's not a coincidence

that the poem starts at Christmas, a time of great ritual and great passion.

The ideal moment for something dramatic to happen.

Sir Gawain And The Green Knight's the story of one of King Arthur's knights, Gawain,

who takes up a bizarre challenge to behead a giant Green Knight

and face the grizzly consequences.

It's a wonderful piece of storytelling which is split

into four distinct parts, or acts, as Gawain faces a series of death-defying adventures.

Nobody can say with any certainty whether there was a Camelot or even an Arthur

and there are many places across Britain that lay claim to Camelot.

Several castles in Wales, Winchester, Carlisle, but of all the contenders, this is my favourite.

This is Tintagel. It just seems to have everything.

Ancient castle, fortified island,

caves, epic landscape and coastline and the town's very much embraced it, as well.

Every little gift shop and bed and breakfast is Arthur this or Camelot that.

So here we are in King Arthur's court, Camelot.

Well, it's actually an imagined recreation of it.

So the knights are all assembled when suddenly the door bursts open and on horseback,

in comes a knight, a very strange creature.

He carries with him a piece of holly and the author, the poet,

keeps back one very special detail about this knight right to the end.

He says, "In fact, in all features, he was finely formed, it seemed.

"Amazement seized their minds.

"No soul had ever seen a knight of such a kind, entirely emerald green."

Those little rhymes at the end of each section are known as the bob and wheel.

They just draw each verse to a neat little bow.

And this extraordinary knight, this supernatural man,

lays down what must sound like an absurd challenge.

He says any man here can chop off my head if they like,

so long as in a year's time, I can chop off their head.

"So who has the gall, the gumption, the guts?

"Who'll spring from his seat and snatch this weapon? I offer the axe.

"Who'll have it as his own?"

So Gawain, the youngest knight of the round table and Arthur's nephew,

rises and says "Let this challenge be mine."

I think he basically sees an opportunity to prove himself.

And he takes up the axe and he chops off the head of the Green Knight

which rolls across the floor and the knights kick it as it goes past.

But the Green Knight goes after it, picks it up,

puts it back on his neck, gets back on his horse

and says, "I will see you in a year's time. Keep your promise."

"And then, well, with the green man gone, they laughed and grinned, again.

"And yet, such goings-on were magic to those men.

"And although King Arthur was awestruck at heart, no sign of it showed."

When it was written in about 1400, the King Arthur legend was already centuries old.

Whoever wrote the poem would have been a contemporary of Chaucer

and it's become one of the most celebrated poems in the whole of English literature.

I wouldn't really claim to be an expert at all in Middle English

but I do find it really fascinating.

It exists at that point in history

where the English language as we know it is just coming into view.

And it's a little bit like the poem is under a layer of frosted glass.

It's as if you just want to breathe a little warm air onto it

to try and get the language to come through.

So if you take the very first line of the poem,

"Sithen the segge and the assault was cessed at Troy" -

that's "After the siege and the assault was ceased at Troy."

You can hear the sibilance there, the S sound alliterating

through that line and that's how it is all the way through the poem.

It's the device which keeps the whole poem together.

And it must have made it great fun to read out as well, even to remember.

There are a lot of contemporary translations that don't follow the alliteration.

They're more interested in the meaning of the original words or medieval history,

but I'm a poet and what I've made is a poetic translation and for me

the alliteration is the warp and weft of this poem.

And without it, it's just so many fine threads.

A year goes by and Gawain must keep to the terms of the challenge

and go in search of the Green Knight.

"Now, lord of my life, I must ask for your leave.

"You were witness to my wager.

"I have no wish to retell you the terms. They're nothing but a trifle.

"I must set out tomorrow to receive that stroke

"From the knight in green And let God be my guide."

Gary Burbeck and Gandalph Strut are two latter day knights who've come

along to teach me a thing or two about fighting and chivalry.

What is chivalry? Because to a lot of people reading the Gawain poem,

it seems absurd that somebody would willingly just go along and have their head cut off.

In those days, chivalry meant everything.

The top knights were extremely loyal.

They had been risen to their knighthood by their lord, their liege. They owe everything to him.

What would happen to somebody who didn't keep their honour and their pledges as a knight?

I mean, for example, in the poem, if Gawain decided not to go and meet the Green Knight after a year.

What would that make him?

It would make him almost an outcast, really.

Almost outlawed, outside the law.

"First, a rig of rare cloth was unrolled on the floor,

"Heaped with gear which glimmered and gleamed.

"And on to it, he stepped, to receive his armoured suit."

The Gawain poet devotes long sections of the poem to Gawain's armour and apparel

and on the one hand, he stands there as heroic and a shining example of knighthood.

On the other hand, there's something quite funny about that passage.

It's overelaborated, almost to the point

where I think you can afford a little chuckle at Gawain stood there in his metal suit.

-It looked like hard work.

-Very hard work.

And how much of this is authentic in terms of what a knight would have worn at that time?

This is a replica of a 15th-century armour

-and it weighs a lot.

-Can I have a go? Can I put a bit on?

You certainly can. Absolutely.

"Then comes the suit of shimmering steel rings encasing his body and his costly clothes.

"Well-burnished braces to both of his arms.

"Good elbow guards and glinting metal gloves.

"All the trimmings and trappings of a knight tricked out to ride."

-I'm just going to give you a slight punch.

-OK.

-OK, that's just a little one.

-OK.

Yeah. How much did you feel?

I felt it. Yeah.

Well, thanks very much.

I really enjoyed that.

I'm not sure it goes well with my elasticated overtrousers. It's not really a good look, is it?

Before setting off on Gawain's epic journey, I head home to

West Yorkshire just to get my bearings and my walking boots.

This is the village of Marsden where I was born and brought up

and over there, just beyond that horizon,

that's the Peak District and that's the place where Gawain is set.

And I think as a project for me,

there was always something about bringing Gawain back into the north.

When I came to translate the poem, there was something Pennine or at least non-metropolitan

about its medieval language which I found intriguing and irresistible.

ALL: # So I lie in in the morning

# God save John. #

I can read and understand Middle English now or Middle English of this poem by looking at the page,

but I don't know how it's all pronounced, that's a very separate skill.

But on the occasions when I have tried to read it out loud, in private,

it's always sounded to me like the noise of a pub or a club.

A club like this where I used to come drinking

before I was old enough to come drinking and my dad and all his mates come here.

There's something about the noise that this poem makes in the original

that reminds me of the sort of chat that goes on in here.

Just have a look at that.

HE READS POEM IN MIDDLE ENGLISH

Sounds like he's local!

Tell you this, mate, it'll never sell.

I have to tell you, you're wrong.

"'Won't you slide from that saddle and stay awhile?

"And the business which brings you,

"we shall learn of later.'

"'No,' said the knight.

"'It's not in my nature to idle or alec about this evening."

In this translation I use the word "alec". You aleced about.

-Aleced about. Aye.

-Alecing about.

Alecing about.

-Laking.

-Laking?

Laking - cos laking's in the original.

The word "lake" is in there.

-Meaning "plain".

-Isn't it?

Yeah. There's another word in there, as well. Sam.

-Pick it up.

-Pick it up. Yeah.

You must have heard it. "Sam, Sam, pick up thy musket."

And that were all based on that "sam it up". Nay.

He knocked it down, he'll pick it up.

Part two of the poem takes place a year after the beheading of the Green Knight,

as Gawain heads off into the wilderness to meet his comeuppance.

"Now, through England's realm he rides and rides, Sir Gawain, God's servant on his grim quest,

"Passing long dark nights, unloved and alone, foraging to feed, finding little to call food,

"With no friend but his horse through forests and hills and only our Lord in heaven to hear him."

It's a journey through the wild borders between England and Wales

that few at the time would have been brave or foolhardy enough to take.

When the Green Knight bursts into Camelot, he isn't just

challenging Gawain to a beheading game, he's challenging him to get

outside the comfort and the warmth of the castle and to go out into the wide world.

And I think it's at that point that Sir Gawain And The Green Knight

becomes one of the great nature poems, perhaps the first ever great nature poem,

and nature at that time was as much an enemy as a friend.

And Gawain's got to go out there and strike a bargain with it.

"Hazel and hawthorn are interwoven, decked and draped in damp shaggy moss.

"And bedraggled birds on bare black branches pipe pitifully into the piercing cold.

"Under cover of the canopy, he guided Gringolet through mud and marshland, a most mournful man."

Nature's never far away in British poetry.

Sir Gawain is a very early and fine example of a nature poem.

It might be to do with the fact that nature in this country is very fickle, poets over time

have responded both to its generosity and to its cruelty.

As a poet, I recognise that situation.

I've always felt that it's when I get up into the heights

that the poetry starts, or the inspiration starts.

Places where you're on your own, generally.

There's a section in the poem which goes something along the lines of:

"Hard on his heels over the high ground come giants."

And it makes me wonder if this wasn't just some elaborate metaphor for weather fronts and black clouds

which I've never seen very far away in this part of the world, at this time of the year.

"So momentous are his travels among the mountains to tell just a tenth would be a tall order.

"He scraps with serpents and snarling wolves.

"He tangles with woodwose causing trouble on the crags, or with bulls and bears and the odd wild boar.

"Hard on his heels through the highlands come giants."

The poem makes wonderful use of British mythology

to bring to life the dangers posed by nature.

There are woodwose, those mysterious wild men of the woods.

And the ghostly Green Knight, himself, owes a great deal

to the pagan fertility spirit, the Green Man.

Every now and again, you get a view around here that probably won't have changed much for about 600 years.

As you are travelling through this landscape, it was uncertain,

you didn't really know who's territory you were walking into

or what was waiting for you down in the valley bottom, either,

and that's what Gawain was walking into the unknown.

"In a strange region, he scales steep slopes.

"Far from his friends he cuts a lonely figure.

"Where he bridges a brook or wades through a waterway,

"Ill-fortune brings him face-to-face with a foe so foul or fierce, he's bound to use force."

This is the River Dee near Llangollen and if Gawain had made a journey north through Wales,

at some point he would have had to have crossed this river and here would not have been the place.

This is nature in full flow and this is the kind of thing that

Gawain would have had to have contended with on his journey.

Looking for a place to cross the river, Gawain travels northwards to the village of Holywell.

It's an important place in Christian mythology.

The sacred well's said to have healing powers.

Lolita Laguy tells me she was cured of osteoporosis

after dipping in the well and came to live here soon after.

-So this is the actual wellspring, inside.

-Yes. It is. Yes.

Could you tell me about the legend at St Winifred?

The story of St Winifred goes back to the 7th century.

She was a young girl of 14 and born in Holywell.

A young prince from Hawarden called Caradoc wanted to marry her

and she refused him and he tried to rape her, but did not rape her.

And he beheads her to keep her quiet.

So her head rolled down from the hill, the same hill now, and ended up here, in this spot.

And St Beuno put her head back on. Christ gave her the power to live again.

She lived for another 15 years.

So, her head was replaced on her shoulders and she came alive again?

-Yes.

-You see, that's very interesting to me, because in Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, the Green Knight is

beheaded at Camelot, and he picks his own head up,

puts it back on his neck and lives again.

And I think it's very possible that whoever wrote that poem

knew about this story and used it as a motif.

Well, I'm too much of a coward to strip off and get in,

but my feet are quite weary from following Gawain.

If it's all right, I might take my shoes and socks off and dip my feet in.

By all means.

The Gawain poet toys with us all the way through the poem.

Gawain's a devout Christian, he's full of faith, but his world is full of superstitions, as well.

Witchcraft, magic and folklore.

Coming here and talking to Lolita makes me realise that Christian and Pagan beliefs existed side by side.

-That's pretty cold.

-Isn't it lovely, though?

It's lovely, in a sort of cold way.

Yeah. It's nice.

-To me, it's your faith. It's your faith that heals, actually.

-Not just the water?

Normally, I would ask someone to say Jesus, do a little prayer,

make the sign of the cross, or Hail Marys.

"He prayed with heavy heart.

"Father, hear me, and Lady Mary, our mother most mild,

"let me happen on some house where mass might be heard, and matins in the morning.

"Meekly, I ask, and here I utter my Pater, Ave and Creed."

See if that's done the trick, then.

Thank you.

So, Gawain makes his way through to the north of Wales and then leaves the Isles of Anglesey on his left,

and finally arrives at the banks of the River Dee.

And the poem implies that he crossed somewhere here and got to the other side into the Wirral.

It was probably a little bit more beautiful than this in its day.

Anyway, here we go.

-All right?

-Yeah.

-Yeah. Good.

I'm not much of a one for boats, myself. I'm a bit of a landlubber.

All right?

It's a wonderful moment when Gawain crosses the Dee. The poets

say something about the wayward people of the Wirral, who both God and good men have quite given up on.

It's funny as well, though, because it's a highly industrialised area.

The forests that Gawain might have been walking into

are now, basically, scrap yards, pylons, power stations.

A new kind of forest, a new kind of obstacle.

Can you just put us down over there and I'll hop off?

Cheers.

Gawain must have had some kind of internal compass, because even

though he's wandering through unmapped territories, very slowly he's homing in on his destiny.

Back in the 14th century, the world was an unexplained place,

and nobody really understood or knew what forces were driving things, you know, whether it was religion,

whether it was some other power or force, and you can imagine a man like Gawain out there, alone,

especially at night, when it starts dropping dark, which it does very quickly in the winter.

Long nights alone, unloved.

"With nerves frozen numb, he napped in his armour,

"bivouacked in the blackness amongst bare rocks."

When I started translating Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, I suppose I thought of it as

a big adventure story that would be about his tussles with giants, and green knights,

and woodwose, and fighting people in the crags.

But the more I went on, I came to think that a lot of it was about

his tussle with his conscience, a sort of fight with himself, really.

And sometimes fighting temptation and sometimes fighting fear.

I mean, there is something quite exciting about being out here.

It's quite romantic in some ways. On the other hand,

it's bloody terrifying.

"Next morning, he moves on. Skirts the mountainside, descends a deep forest,

"densely overgrown with ancient oaks in huddles of hundreds, and vaulting hills

"above each half of the valley."

The Gawain poet wasn't a prophet anticipating global warming, but he

knew full well that medieval society lived hand-in-hand with nature.

He recognised its brutality and ferocity as well as its captivating beauty.

The original poet might be anonymous to us,

but I'm sure he had particular places in mind when he was writing.

In my translation, the poem says, "Melt water streamed from the snowcapped summits,

"which froze as it fell to the frost-glazed earth, and high overhead hung chandeliers of ice."

You can imagine this completely covered over with ice, all sort of crystalline up there.

Absolutely fantastic.

The poem really brings this out.

"No sooner had he signed himself three times, than he became aware, in those woods, of high walls

"and a moat on a mound, boarded by the boughs of thick-trunked timber which trimmed the water.

"The most commanding castle a knight ever kept."

No-one knows for sure the castle where Gawain found refuge from the ravages of winter.

It could have been somewhere like Beeston Castle,

with its commanding views over the Cheshire Plain and beyond.

Today, only its ruins remain.

So, to get a taste of life inside the castle walls, I head to Haddon Hall in the Peak District.

This would have been a very welcome sight

to Gawain, after all those nights out on the tops, in the woods, in caves being chased by giants.

Finally gets himself invited into somewhere safe and secure,

bit of civilisation, promise of warmth, heat, something to eat.

It was too good to be true, really.

After all his trials and tribulations in the great outdoors,

I think Gawain probably must have thought that all his birthdays and Christmases had come at once.

He's taken to a room, they strip him of his armour, lighten his load and then clothe him in robes.

He's brought to a banquet, where he meets Bertilak for the first time, his host.

This man with a big, red, bushy beard.

And a fantastic spread, a banquet, is laid on.

"Staff came quickly and served him in style, with several soups all seasoned to taste.

"Double helpings, as was fitting, and a feast of fish."

It's a feature of the poem that, when people eat well, they really eat well.

In this particular meal, it's breads and soups...

..fish, cooked lots of different ways.

I've been looking forward to this bit.

The contrast couldn't be starker for Gawain.

One minute he's starving hungry, the next, he's tucking into a banquet fit for a king.

The poet isn't about to let Gawain or the reader relax in the warm glow of the hearth for long.

As with all masterful storytelling, nothing is as it seems.

"Once dinner was done, Gawain drew to his feet, and darkness neared as day became dusk.

"Chaplains went off to the castle's chapels to sound the bells hard,

"to signal the hour of Evensong, summoning each and every soul."

Up to this point, Gawain's been facing a test of his courage,

but now there's a new theme and a new character introduced.

And this time, the theme is temptation.

"The Lord goes alone, then his Lady arrives, concealing herself in a private pew.

"She was fairest amongst them, her face,

"her flesh, her complexion, her quality,

"her bearing, her body, more glorious than Guinevere,

"or so Gawain thought."

I suppose we can think of Gawain as somebody not

even out of adolescence.

He would be, at that stage in his life, sort of pumping with hormones,

and this time it's a challenge not to his head, but to his heart, and to some other body parts, as well.

He's a virile young man, is our Gawain.

Bertilak insists that Gawain must stay and rest in bed while he goes hunting with his men.

Before they retire to bed, Bertilak,

the host, makes a wager with Gawain. It's rather an odd wager.

He says, "Whatever I win out in the field while I'm hunting, I will give to you, so long as you give to me

"whatever you win in the house during my absence."

And Gawain agrees, it seems easy enough.

He's fought with woodwose and trolls and giants and bears, but a greater danger lies ahead.

We're now entering the third act of the poem, where the storytelling becomes infused with innuendo,

as it moves deftly between the bedroom and the hunt.

"So through a lime leaf border, the lord led the hunt,

"while snug in his sheets lay slumbering Gawain, dozing as

"the daylight dappled the walls, under a splendid cover enclosed by curtains.

"And while snoozing, he heard a slyly made sound, the sigh of a door swinging slowly aside.

"It was she, the Lady, looking her loveliest,

"most quietly and craftily closing the door, nearing the bed.

"The Lady comes close, cradles him in her arms,

"leans nearer and nearer, then kisses the knight."

It's very interesting, as well, in a poem like this, which seems on the surface to be a Christian poem

and have a moral message, and yet, what goes on in the bedroom here

is pretty saucy, really. It's pretty raunchy.

The seduction is heightened by the bloodlust in the fields.

"As the cry went up, the wild creatures quaked.

"The deer in the dale, quivering with dread, hurtled to high ground,

"but were headed off by the ring of beaters who bawled and roared."

The lord and all his men return from the hunt, and then, of course,

the terms of the contract must be kept to,

so Bertilak will give to Gawain all the venison that

have been shot and butchered out there in the woods,

and Gawain must give to Bertilak what he won in the house

during the day, which is, of course, more than he bargained for, really.

I think it must have been playing on his mind how he's going to deliver

this kiss to a man with a big, bushy, red beard.

# I've been trying to show you over and over

# Look at these, my child-bearing hips

# Look at these, my ruby-red ruby lips

# Look at these, my work-strong arms

# And you've got to see my bottle full of charms... #

The intercutting between the bedroom scenes and the hunting scenes is very cleverly done.

So instead of any description of any sort of sexual activity, what we get

is the hunt, all very sexually charged,

while in the bedroom, his wife is hunting down Gawain.

# I lay it all at your feet

# You turn around and say back to me

# He said

# Sheela-na-Gig, Sheela-na-Gig

# You exhibitionist

# Sheela-na-Gig, Sheela-na-Gig

# You exhibitionist! #

"She wore nothing on her face.

"Her neck was naked, and her shoulders were bare to both back and breast.

"And seeing her so lovely and alluringly dressed, a passionate heat takes hold in his heart."

These bedroom scenes are highly dramatic, even theatrical in their own way.

Over three days, the seduction gets more and more erotic, as the hunt gets more and more visceral.

It's the contrast that works so powerfully. This is where the Gawain poet's such a skilled writer.

He knows exactly what these counterpointed scenes can signify.

I guess that this sort of technique won't have changed for hundreds of years, will it?

I wouldn't have thought so.

'Farmer Peter Body helped me research some of the more bloodthirsty aspects of the poem.'

I don't think I'm going to like this bit!

'The poem goes into full, uncensored details as it devotes over 30 lines to the carving up of the deer.

'You can't but fear for poor Gawain as the knife slices through the flesh.'

There's another term in the poem, grollicking.

-We've just done it. We took the stomach out, all the organs.

-So, pulling out the innards?

Pulling out the innards. You pull out the innards,

you check all the glands, make sure it's a really healthy animal.

Then you can dispose of that, then.

"Then the beasts were prised apart at the breast,

"and they went to work on the grollicking again,

"writhing up on the front as far as the hindfork,

"fetching out the offal.

"Then, with further purpose,

"filleting the ribs in the recognised fashion."

See, that's fit for anyone.

Fit for a queen, it is!

"Its hind legs prised apart, they slit the fleshy flaps,

"then cleave and quickly start to break it down its back."

Just...snap.

Happy with that?

-Yeah. Thank you.

-You're welcome.

-Have you washed your hands?

-THEY CHUCKLE

On the third occasion, as well as giving him three kisses,

she offers him a ring, which he declines, but she then offers him a sash or a girdle.

A green girdle, which she takes off, and says to Gawain, "This is a magical girdle,

"and if you wear it, it will protect you against any evil."

And this is a young man who's about to have his head cut off.

And he looks at the sash and he thinks, "That might come in handy."

And he keeps it.

Sex, violence and death sit cheek by jowl in the poem.

You wonder what fate belies Gawain when Bertilak returns for one final time from the hunt.

He meets the master in the middle of the room, greets him graciously,

with Gawain saying, "I shall first fulfil our formal agreement,

"which we fixed in words when the drink flowed freely."

He clasps him tight and kisses him three times, with as much emotion as a man could muster.

Christmas is over. It's New Year's Eve.

It's time for Gawain to leave the comfort and safety of the castle,

to fulfil his promise with the Green Knight.

But he's broken his wager.

He's kept the green sash, and that sets up the fourth and final part of the poem.

Gawain now sets off in search of the mysterious green chapel

to confront his nemesis.

It's now that the poem's location can be identified

to an area of the Peak District

near the Staffordshire market town of Leek.

We know from dialect words in the poem that the author came from this part of the world.

And being here, in this locality, really brings the poem alive.

You get a keener sense of the poem from being among its place names

and its horizons and its landmarks, and also its people.

I want to find out how close I am to the language of the original poem,

and how much the language here differs from my own Pennine dialect.

So I've come to meet local farmers, Geoff Tunnicliffe and Ben Kid.

-Hi. Hiya. Is it Geoff?

-Yeah.

Hiya, Geoff. Simon. Nice to meet you.

-Ben, is it?

-Yeah. That's it.

Hiya. Nice to meet you.

One of the things about the poem is that it was written at the end of 14th century,

but they don't know who wrote it, but they think whoever it was came from this area.

-Aye.

-Because some of these old dialect words which might be from round here.

-Can I just read them to you?

-Yeah.

See if they mean anything to you? OK. What about the word "misey"?

That means "tight", in't it?

-Tight, like miserly?

-Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah.

-What about "mire"?

-Mire? A mire is a brook, in't it?

Yeah, like a mire.

You know, like a pool, really.

Yeah. Like a swamp?

Like a swamp. That's what a mire is.

-That's what it is in the poem.

-That's right.

What do you think, say in a couple of hundred years, what do you think will have happened to this dialect?

It'll be gone altogether, cos there's nobody, you know, there's no local left.

Your money men have come and bought these places,

and they just lose it, don't they? Cos there aren't many farms left now to what there used to be.

Last question. Aren't you cold?!

-No.

-I am!

-I am an' all!

-THEY CHUCKLE

-I'm all right.

-Where there's no sense, there's no feeling.

Yeah. He's dead right! Yeah.

I suppose it was too much to hope that they'd still be speaking fluent Middle English,

but there is another clue to the poem having its roots in North Staffordshire.

The area's very special landscape, dominated by rocky outcrops, known as the roaches.

"It looks a wild place, no sign of a settlement anywhere to be seen,

"but heady heights to both halves of the valley,

"and set with sabretooth stones of such sharpness,

"no cloud in the sky could escape unscratched."

Just across the valley from the roaches stand the ruins of the medieval Dieulacres Abbey.

As a centre of Christian learning, it could well be connected to the Gawain poem.

The author might even have been a monk here. Who knows?

A possible clue has been uncovered by local historians Doug Pickford and Father Michael Fisher.

The abbot was a considerable landowner in the community, and they

had bands of servants, retainers, some of whom got up to no good,

and they picked a quarrel, or they had a quarrel with a local man named John Walton, and he was killed.

Several of these abbots' retainers struck blows

and stuck swords in him,

but the coup de grace was when they beheaded him.

And this beheading, around about 1379, may or may not

have influenced the Gawain story, which has the beheading game as a centrepiece.

Absolutely. The poem is famously anonymous, and it's unlikely that an author will ever be named,

but if you were to try and build up a portrait or a profile of somebody from that

period of history who could have written such a poem,

what kind of man, what kind of person would that be?

I feel, first of all, that he was a local man to be able to

write it in the local dialect, so he was aware of the local dialect.

-Scholarly?

-Scholarly, undoubtedly.

-And as I said before, probably a bit of an impish man, I'd like to feel that he was, you know.

-In what sense?

Because I do think he's having a go, number one, at the abbot, somewhere in the beheading,

and there's so many little things, satirical things, that he brings into it.

And it would take a very clever person.

And of course, I think I'm correct, the monks were probably the only

educated people, weren't they, at that time?

Yes. I think that's right. Yes.

-Smart. Mischievous.

-Yes.

-And local.

-I would say so.

-Good qualities for a poet, I would say!

-Indeed!

I'm spending the last night of my Gawain odyssey

in a small climber's cottage hewn out of the roaches themselves.

A suitably odd and creepy place to stay the night before

going off to find the green chapel in the morning.

Being in this part of the world, retracing these steps,

leads you closer to the atmosphere of the original poet somehow.

It makes you feel a sort of kinship, I think.

And, I guess, when you translate something, that's what you're after.

You're trying to harmonise with this old text.

I also recognise, I think, in the author of the poem,

somebody who doesn't really have a moral message to give us.

He's not somebody with a dogmatic message,

a sort of fixed view of the world.

The poem is much better than that.

It's far more playful.

"Alert and listening, Gawain lies in his bed.

"His lids are lowered but he sleeps very little, as each crow of the cock brings his destiny closer."

-Good morning.

-You all right?

-I'm well. How are you?

-Good, thanks.

The next morning, Doug picks me up to guide me towards the green chapel,

sometimes thought to be the strange geological formation Lud's Church.

"Then he went on his way with the one whose task was to point out

"the road to that perilous place where the knight would receive the slaughterman's strike.

"They scrambled up bankings where branches were bare, clambered up cliff faces crazed by the cold.

"The clouds which had climbed now cooled and dropped, so the moors and the mountains were muzzy with mist.

"And every hill wore a hat of mizzle on its head."

A great many of the nature beauty spots in this country do have magic and religion,

sometimes primitive religion, associated with them, and these peaks are no exception.

So they're beautiful, and they're a bit spooky as well.

You can see the boardstone just up there.

-The boardstone is an ancient structure, said to have magical powers.

-Good to see you.

-We've arranged to meet local pagan Chris Brown at the stone.

-Simon.

-Simon. Hi.

-Nice to meet you.

Brought you a little gift, there.

Oh, thank you very much. I'll pop this on the stone.

Is this a pagan site?

It's a site that's significant to members of the pagan community round here.

It's obviously an erection that goes back to ancient times,

and one of the tenants of the pagan faith is keeping the old ways alive.

But, of course, the Christian church use it as well as a healing stone.

Sick people were brought up until the 1940s, the Second World War,

and they had to crawl underneath it to knock the devil off the back.

I don't think I'll bother today!

Is there a pagan element to The Green Knight?

With it taking place in Lud's Church, which is an absolutely

awesome place, to a pagan, you're actually going into the ground,

you're going into the great earth mother, you're offering yourself,

if you like, to the great earth mother.

So it is a thing that would have great pagan significance, yes.

-We're on our way.

-All right. Yeah.

-Cheers, Chris.

-See you.

-Bye.

'So it seems as if primitive religion is alive and well on the wet and windy roaches.

'It's as if the Gawain poet's reeling us in to the heart

'of a pagan landscape, where the climax of the poem will be played out.'

Here we are at a windswept Doxey Pool, the site of many a legend.

-It's a pretty miserable place!

-Yeah.

Which direction for Lud's Church?

Right. Well, we're turning over there. Just keep following the path

down to the valley and turn left through the woods, and good luck.

Thanks, Doug. Cheers. All right.

-Ta-ra.

-OK.

-See you. Bye.

"And his servant lifts his shield, which he slings on his shoulder

"The place you head for holds a hidden peril

"In that wilderness lives a wild man, the worst in the world

"He is brooding and brutal and loves bludgeoning humans."

It's almost a comic moment in the poem,

when the guide finally brings Gawain towards the Green Chapel.

He seems to be saying to him, "If you want to chicken out now,

"that's fine, I won't tell, it'll be OK."

But Gawain, um, because he's determined and he has faith,

he's going to carry on, and so am I.

I'm within striking distance now, and I'm looking forward

to getting into Lud's Church, er, if only for a bit of shelter.

At least it's not as wet here.

I've dried out a bit down inside this valley.

I've been trying to use the poem as a map.

There are references to various landmarks and places here.

He says, "He presses ahead, picks up a path,

"enters a steep-sided groove on his steed, then goes by and by to the bottom of a gorge."

And then there's reference as well to a river.

"A sort of bald knoll on the bank of a brook

"where fellwater surged with frenzied force."

I don't know. It could be here.

It's not exactly the Ordnance Survey.

Of course, Gawain would have been pretty terrified at this point.

He's about to meet his destiny. I'm looking forward to it.

I think, for me, there's a sense of achievement and excitement

in getting here, but then again, I'm not gonna have my head cut off.

As far as I know.

There's a marker here on the wall, "Lud", so that's pretty unambiguous.

And, er...

I guess this is where you go in.

Bit of a scramble up these steps.

Very wet and damp.

Even at this point, it feels cold.

It's a couple of degrees colder already.

'This truly feels like a suitably pagan site.

'Lud is actually the Celtic sun god, and if this were the inspiration

'for the Green Chapel, it would certainly make sense.'

"For certain," he says, "this is a soulless spot,

"A ghostly cathedral overgrown with grass, the kind of kirk where

"that camouflaged man might deal in devilment and all things dark."

Gawain has now walked hundreds of miles across open land,

and suddenly, the walls are narrowing.

He's walked into a trap. It's a dead end up there,

and he stands here and he listens, and he calls it ghostly and he calls it soulless.

And then suddenly, he hears an axe being sharpened on a rock.

"Abide, came a voice from above the bank

"You'll cop what's coming to you quickly enough"

"Yet he went at his work, wetting the blade,

"not showing until it was sharpened and stropped."

So the Green Knight appears at the top

and makes his way down here with his axe,

and Gawain must keep his promise, and he offers his neck.

And we might think that this is probably the end for our hero, but...

he's concealed about his person

the green sash given to him by the lady in the castle.

And if her word is true, this is going to keep him from harm.

As with so many things in the poem, the next scene comes in threes.

The Green Knight tries to behead Gawain on three occasions.

The first time, Gawain ducks out of the way.

The second time, the Green Knight misses.

And the third time, he just nicks him on his neck.

He just sheds a little bit of blood.

And then Gawain escapes with his life.

"Gawain leapt forward a spear's length, at least,

"grabbed hold of his helmet and rammed it on his head,

"brought his shield to his side with a shimmy of his shoulder,

"then brandished his sword before blurting out brave words, because never, since birth,

"as his mother's babe, was he half as happy as here and now."

All the threads of the poem are pulled together at this point.

The Green Knight reveals to Gawain that he was Bertilak.

He was the lord and master of the house with the big, bushy, red beard,

and that it was his wife who was sent to tempt and to trick Gawain.

And Gawain's full of shame and embarrassment for not revealing that

he'd received this sash, this girdle, from the lady.

But the Green Knight tells Gawain that he is a good man, and that's why he's being allowed to live.

So, fully humiliated, and with his tail between his legs,

Gawain now makes his way back to Camelot to explain his quest to the round table.

'So the Green Knight might be a terrifying, monstrous creation,

'but in testing Gawain, it teaches the young knight

'a lesson in humility, one that he'll never forget.'

'When we're young, like Gawain, we make big statements

'about what we're gonna do in our life, what we hope to achieve,

'and then we've to set about trying to put those things into practice.

'And, in that sense, I think this is a poem, I suppose,

'to use the cliche, about the journey of life,

'and whether we can arrive at the destination that we declare.'

I'm back at Camelot. I suppose I've come full circle,

just as the poem turns full circle as well.

One thing I've been thinking about across this journey is

the idea of something lasting for 600 years.

I mean, it's a pretty remarkable thing.

It's not just that it's a fantastic story or a wonderful piece of writing, which it is.

It's because we can all see a bit of ourselves in Gawain.

And so in that sense, it's a poem about the individual,

and if you can write a poem about the individual

that appeals to the individual,

then you're going to appeal to absolutely everybody.

It's been an eye-opening and mind-expanding journey,

quite literally full of ups and downs,

and I've been doing a little bit of writing of my own along the way, because that's what poets do.

"Time now to rise,

"to strike out with clenched heart and no map, bar the view from the peak,

"where the west wind pummels your cheeks,

"leads with its granite fists

"Days of rain, rain that permeates the bone

"Personal rain, persecuting the soul

"Days when the promised lake is a dishwater pond

"run from a grey cloud onto a dead hill

"Eat what the rook or crow leaves on its plate

"Bed down where even the fox won't sleep

"Till the way narrows and holts,

"and you wait in armour or anorak under the ridge

"With a campfire tan and hedgerow hair,

"and a God looks down, silent, stony-faced,

"bearded with living moss

"This is the place

"The journey over, and the story told

"The yarn at the end of its long, green thread

"Speak now for all that you're worth, as the blade

"swoons in judgement over your pretty head."

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