+The Text+ is from the early part of the Percy Folio, and the ballad is
therefore deficient. Where gaps are marked in the text with a row of
asterisks, about nine stanzas are lost in each case--half a page torn
out by a seventeenth-century maidservant to light a fire! Luckily we can
supply the story from other versions.
+The Story+, also given in _The Weddynge of Sr Gawen and Dame Ragnell_
(in the Rawlinson MS. c. 86 in the Bodleian Library), runs as follows:--
Shortly after Christmas, Arthur, riding by Tarn Wadling (still so
called, but now pasture-land, in the forest of Inglewood), meets a bold
baron, who challenges him to fight, unless he can win his ransom by
returning on New Year's Day with an answer to the question, What does a
woman most desire? Arthur relates the story to Gawaine, asks him and
others for an answer to the riddle, and collects their suggestions in a
book ('letters,' 24.1). On his way to keep his tryst with the baron, he
meets an unspeakably ugly woman, who offers her assistance; if she will
help him, Arthur says, she shall wed with Gawaine. She gives him the
true answer, A woman will have her will. Arthur meets the baron, and
after proffering the budget of answers, confronts him with the true
answer. The baron exclaims against the ugly woman, whom he asserts to be
his sister.
Arthur returns to his court, and tells his knights that a wife awaits
one of them on the moor. Sir Lancelot, Sir Steven (who is not mentioned
elsewhere in Arthurian tales), Sir Kay, Sir Bauier (probably Beduer or
Bedivere), Sir Bore (Bors de Gauves), Sir Garrett (Gareth), and Sir
Tristram ride forth to find her. At sight, Sir Kay, without overmuch
chivalry, expresses his disgust, and the rest are unwilling to marry
her. The king explains that he has promised to give her to Sir Gawaine,
who, it seems, bows to Arthur's authority, and weds her. During the
bridal night, she becomes a beautiful young woman. Further to test
Gawaine, she gives him his choice: will he have her fair by day and foul
by night, or foul by day and fair by night? Fair by night, says Gawaine.
And foul to be seen of all by day? she asks. Have your way, says
Gawaine, and breaks the last thread of the spell, as she forthwith
explains: her step-mother had bewitched both her, to haunt the moor in
ugly shape, till some knight should grant her _all_ her will, and her
brother, to challenge all comers to fight him or answer the riddle.
Similar tales, but with the important variation--undoubtedly indigenous
in the story--that the man who saves his life by answering the riddle
has himself to wed the ugly woman, are told by Gower (_Confessio
Amantis_, Book I.) and Chaucer (_The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe_). The
latter, which is also Arthurian in its setting, was made into a ballad
in the _Crown Garland of Golden Roses_ (_circ._ 1600), compiled by
Richard Johnson. A parallel is also to be found in an Icelandic saga.