“Good sir, an’ it be thy will,
Give me leave to drink my fill,
For sweet St. Charity,
And I will do thee the same deed
Another time if thou have need,
I tell thee certainly.”

St. George, like Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, traverses an Enchanted Vale, and hears “dismal croakings of night ravens, hissing of serpents, bellowing of bulls, and roaring of monsters."[3] St. Andrew traverses a land of continual darkness, the Vale of Walking Spirits, amid similar sounds of terror, much as the pilgrims of the Second Part of Bunyan’s story traverse the Enchanted Ground.  And as these pilgrims found deadly arbours in that land, tempting them to repose which must end in death, so St. David was tempted in an Enchanted Garden, and fell flat upon the ground, “when his eyes were so fast locked up by magic art, and his waking senses drowned in such a dead slumber, that it was as impossible to recover himself from sleep as to pull the sun out of the firmament.”

Bevis of Southampton has many points in common with St. George in the Seven Champions.  The description of the giant, the escape of Bevis from his dungeon, and a number of other passages show how much was common stock for the writers of these earlier romances.  There is the same rough humour in it from first to last, and the wonderful swing and stride of vigorous rhyming metre.  Of the humour, one quotation will be enough for an example.  It is when they are proposing to baptize the monstrous giant at Cologne, whom Bevis had first conquered and then engaged as his body-servant.  At the christening of Josian, wife of Bevis, the Bishop sees the giant.

     “‘What is,’ sayde he, ‘this bad vysage?’
     ‘Sir,’ sayde Bevys, ’he is my page—­
     I pray you crysten hym also,
     Thoughe he be bothe black and blo!’
     The Bysshop crystened Josian,
     That was as white as any swan;
     For Ascaparde was made a tonne,
     And whan he shulde therein be done,
     He lept out upon the brenche
     And sayde:  ’Churle, wylt thou me drenche? 
     The devyl of hel mot fetche the
     I am to moche crystened to be!’
     The folke had gode game and laughe,
     But the Bysshop was wrothe ynoughe.”

There is a curious passage which is almost exactly parallel to the account of the fight with Apollyon in the Pilgrim’s Progress, and which was doubtless in Bunyan’s mind when he wrote that admirable battle sketch—­

     “Beves is swerde anon upswapte,
     He and the geaunt togedre rapte;
     And delde strokes mani and fale,
     The nombre can i nought telle in tale. 
     The geaunt up is clubbe haf,
     And smot to Beves with is staf,
     But his scheld flegh from him thore,
     Three acres brede and somedel more,
     Tho was Beves in strong erur
     And karf ato the grete levour,
     And on the geauntes