These outliers were rather more fortunate, probably for no more recondite reason than that the French originals (from which they were in almost every instance certainly taken) were finished in themselves.  Of the special Gawain cycle or sub-cycle we have two romances in pure metrical form, and more than two in alliterative, which are above the average in interest. Ywain and Gawain, one of the former, is derived directly or indirectly from the Chevalier au Lyon of Chrestien de Troyes; and both present some remarkable affinities with the unknown original of the “Sir Beaumains” episode of Malory, and, through it, with Tennyson’s Gareth and Lynette.  The other, Lybius Disconus (Le Beau Deconnu) is also concerned with that courteous nephew of Arthur who, in later versions of the main story, is somewhat sacrificed to Lancelot.  For a “real romance,” as it calls itself (though it is fair to say that in the original the word means “royal"), of the simpler kind but extremely well told, there are not many better metrical specimens than Ywain and Gawain, but it has less character-interest, actual or possible, than those which have been commented on.  The hero, King Urien’s son, accepts an adventure in which another knight of the Table, Sir Colgrevance, has fared ill, after it has been told in a conversation at court which is joined in first by the Queen and afterwards by the King.  Sir Kay here shows his usual cross-grainedness; and Guinevere “with milde mood” requests to know “What the devil is thee within?” The adventure is of a class well known in romance.  You ride to a certain fountain, pour water from it on a stone, and then, after divers marvels, have to do battle with a redoubtable knight.  Colgrevance has fared badly; Kay is as usual quite sure that he would fare better; but Ywain actually undertakes the task.  He has a tough battle with the knight who answers the challenge, but wounds him mortally; and when the knight flies to his neighbouring castle, is so hard on his heels that the portcullis actually drops on his horse’s haunches just behind the saddle, and cuts the beast in two.  Ywain is thus left between the portcullis and the (by this time shut) door—­a position all the more awkward that the knight himself expires immediately after he has reached shelter.  The situation is saved, however, by the guardian damsel of romance, Lunet (the Linet or Lynette of the Beaumains-Gareth story), who emerges from a postern between gate and portcullis and conveys the intruder safe to her own chamber.  Here a magic bed makes him invisible:  though the whole castle, including the very room, is ransacked by the dead knight’s people and would-be revengers, at the bidding of his widow.