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Another Arthurian site has always
intrigued me; that of the Green Chapel in the 14th
century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The
source leaves no doubt as to what the Green Chapel really
is: "... a hillock of
sorts, A smooth-surfaced barrow on a slope beside a
stream... All hollow it was within, only an old cavern..."
(Lines 2171-82) This chambered barrow is
"hardly two miles" from the castle of the Green
Knight, who calls himself Bertilak of Hautdesert (High
Desert). The directions to this castle are unknown; we
are only told that Gawain is going north by way of the
Gwynedd coast opposite Anglesey and the Wirral Peninsula.
After this the description of his route becomes
increasingly vague. The fact that Morgan le Fay is said
to reside with Bertilak would seem to be major clue, for
Morgan resided in Avalon, a site wrongly identified with
Glastonbury. Unfortunately, the description of the
terrain Gawain encounters, together with the castle
itself and the barrow two miles distant, does not fit
Glastonbury. Because there is general
agreement among scholars that the writer of Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight hailed from SE Cheshire or NE
Staffordshire, and because, in the words of translator
Brian Stone, the "Peak District and the
Staffordshire moorlands have been mooted [as the location
of the Green Chapel], as these are the nearest high
regions to the Wirral, the last known place named in
Gawain's journey", Hautdesert as a French rendering
of an English castle name has been sought in this region.
R.W.V. Elliot (in The
Times, 21 May 1958) guessed at Ludchurch, the Roaches and
Swythamley Park in Staffordshire, M.J. Bennett of "the
weird trysting-place on the eastern borders of Cheshire"
(in Journal of Medieval History 5, 1979), while J.
Phillip Dodd ("Sir Gawain, the Green Knight and the
Green Chapel", copy of article courtesy Adrian
Tindall, Cheshire County Council, and Ken Smith, Peak
District National Park Authority) relied upon a tradition
recorded in 1547 which placed the Green Chapel in the
parish of Frodsham, this evidently being a reference to
the chapel at Alvanley (Alvaldeleh, c. 1220, "Aelfwald's
Ley", Aelfwald being "Elf-ruler";
information courtesy Alex Woolf of Lampeter, citing
Ekwall). Unfortunately, Hautdesert cannot be a French
rendering on any of these placenames. Only three or so miles
from Alvanley, however, is the Eddisbury hill-fort, a
double-ditched site in the midst of Delamere Forest (see
Hautdesert's double-ditches and forest location).
Eddisbury was originally Eadesbyrig (Ekwall, cited by
Alex Woolf of Lampeter) or "Eade's fort". I
propose that Eade was taken for Haut (pronounced "Oh"),
while bury was linked to OFr. berrie, which had the
meaning of "desert". Eddisbury thus became
Hautdesert. This is the home of Bertilak the Green Knight.
As for Bertilak himself,
Loomis believed that this name derived from the "bachlach"
of the Irish tale Bricriu's Feast, the churlish disguise
assumed by CuRoi son of Daire in a beheading contest. However, I should
mention that Bertilak appears to represent the Bertholais
of the Arthurian VULGATE. Indeed, the English translation
of the Vulgate renders Bertholais as Bertelak (information
courtesy Marcella McCarthy, Assistant Editor of the
Oxford English Dictionary, citing Hulbert, "The Name
of the Green Knight Bercilak or Bertilak" in Manley
Anniversary Studies, Chicago, 1923, 12-19). This
Bertholais is associated with Gawain, but does not bear
any of the characteristics later ascribed to Bertilak. In
the Vulgate, Bertholais and the False Guinevere (whose
champion the former was) are exiled to the hinterlands.
The suggestion has been made that Bertilak's beautiful
wife, the temptress of Gawain, is actually the False
Guinevere. Because the poet put Morgan le Fay in Bertilak's
house, it is also possible that the Green Knight's wife
is an aspect of "Morgan the goddess". Speaking purely from a
phonological standpoint, Bertholais may owe his name to
the Britaelis of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History.
Significantly, Britaelis was Gorlois's servant whose form
was assumed by none other than Merlin in the story of
Ygerna's seduction by Uther. If Bertholais is Merlin, it
may be significant that the _Life of St. Kentigern_ has
Lailoken/Myrddin/Merlin buried "not far from the
green chapel where the brook Pausayl flows into the River
Tweed." In other words, this southern "Green
Chapel" may be a relocation of the Northern Merlin's
supposed grave. I might hazard a guess that the
Green Knight was green because the Bert-portion of his
name, given that B- and V- were interchangeable in Welsh,
was related to OFr. vert, verd, "green" (cf. L.
viridis). gawain and the Green Chapel is Copyright © 2005, August Hunt. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Comments to: August Hunt |
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