a kiss.  When the host returns and gives his guest the game he has killed Gawain returns the kiss.  On the third day, her temptations having twice failed, the lady offers Gawain a ring, which he refuses; but when she offers a magic green girdle that will preserve the wearer from death, Gawain, who remembers the giant’s ax so soon to fall on his neck, accepts the girdle as a “jewel for the jeopardy” and promises the lady to keep the gift secret.  Here, then, are two conflicting compacts.  When the host returns and offers his game, Gawain returns the kiss but says nothing of the green girdle.

The last canto brings our knight to the Green Chapel, after he is repeatedly warned to turn back in the face of certain death.  The Chapel is a terrible place in the midst of desolation; and as Gawain approaches he hears a terrifying sound, the grating of steel on stone, where the giant is sharpening a new battle-ax.  The Green Knight appears, and Gawain, true to his compact, offers his neck for the blow.  Twice the ax swings harmlessly; the third time it falls on his shoulder and wounds him.  Whereupon Gawain jumps for his armor, draws his sword, and warns the giant that the compact calls for only one blow, and that, if another is offered, he will defend himself.

Then the Green Knight explains things.  He is lord of the castle where Gawain has been entertained for days past.  The first two swings of the ax were harmless because Gawain had been true to his compact and twice returned the kiss.  The last blow had wounded him because he concealed the gift of the green girdle, which belongs to the Green Knight and was woven by his wife.  Moreover, the whole thing has been arranged by Morgain the fay-woman (an enemy of Queen Guinevere, who appears often in the Arthurian romances).  Full of shame, Gawain throws back the gift and is ready to atone for his deception; but the Green Knight thinks he has already atoned, and presents the green girdle as a free gift.  Gawain returns to Arthur’s court, tells the whole story frankly, and ever after that the knights of the Round Table wear a green girdle in his honor.[56]

THE PEARL.  In the same manuscript with “Sir Gawain” are found three other remarkable poems, written about 1350, and known to us, in order, as “The Pearl,” “Cleanness,” and “Patience.”  The first is the most beautiful, and received its name from the translator and editor, Richard Morris, in 1864.  “Patience” is a paraphrase of the book of Jonah; “Cleanness” moralizes on the basis of Bible stories; but “The Pearl” is an intensely human and realistic picture of a father’s grief for his little daughter Margaret, “My precious perle wythouten spot.”  It is the saddest of all our early poems.