Then the “clownish person” started up and demanded the adventure.  The Queen was astonished, the maid unwilling, yet he begged so hard that the Queen consented.  The Lady, however, told him that unless the armor she had brought would serve him he could not succeed.  But when he put the armor on “he seemed the goodliest man in all that company, and was well liked of that Lady.  And eftsoons taking on him knighthood, and mounting on that strange courser, he went forth with her on that adventure, where beginneth the first book, viz.: 

    “‘A gentle Knight was pricking on the plain,’ etc.”

The story goes on to tell how the Knight, who is the Red Cross Knight St. George, and the Lady, who is called Una, rode on followed by the Dwarf.  At length in the wide forest they lost their way and came upon the lair of a terrible She-Dragon.  “Fly, fly,” quoth then the fearful Dwarf, “this is no place for living men.”

    “But full of fire and greedy hardiment,
    The youthful Knight could not for ought be stayed;
    But forth unto the darksome hole he went,
    And looked in:  his glistering armour made
    A little glooming light, much like a shade,
    By which he saw the ugly monster plain,
    Half like a serpent horribly displayed,
    But th’other half did woman’s shape retain,
    Most loathsome, filthy, foul, and full of vile disdain.”

There was a fearful fight between the Knight and the Dragon, whose name is Error, but at length the Knight conquered.  The terrible beast lay dead “reft of her baleful head,” and the Knight, mounting upon his charger, once more rode onwards with his Lady.

    “At length they chanced to meet upon the way
    An aged sire, in long black weeds yelad,
    His feet all bare, his beard all hoary grey,
    And by his belt his book he hanging had,
    Sober he seemed, and very sagely sad,
    And to the ground his eyes were lowly bent,
    Simple in show, and void of malice bad,
    And all the way he prayed, as he went,
    And often knocked his breast, as one that did repent.”

The Knight and this aged man greeted each other fair and courteously, and as evening was now fallen the godly father bade the travelers come to his Hermitage for the night.  This the Knight and Lady gladly did, and soon were peacefully sleeping beneath the humble roof.

But the seeming godly father was a wicked magician.  While his guests slept he wove evil spells about them, and calling a wicked dream he bade it sit at the Knight’s head and whisper lies to him.  This the wicked dream did till that it made the Knight believe his Lady to be bad and false.  Then early in the morning the Red Cross Knight rose and, believing his Lady to be unworthy, he rode sadly away, leaving her alone.

Soon, as he rode along, he met a Saracen whose name was Sansfoy, or without faith, “full large of limb and every joint he was, and cared not for God or man a point.”