The Avowing of Arthur: A Violent Forest
The Avowing of Arthur concentrates, as the title suggests, on the vows of Arthur and three of his knights. The king swears to kill a boar ravaging Inglewood Forest; Sir Gawain, to stand watch overnight at the Tarn Wathalene; Sir Kay, to kill anyone who crosses his path in the woods. Sir Baldwin, meanwhile, puts the lie to their vows by swearing not to be jealous, fear death, or deny anyone food. The first half of the romance features the forest vows playing out; the second half details Baldwin upholding his oaths in the face of his young king’s juvenile tests. Emotion and soundscape together come to the fore when Arthur parts from his knights and turns to face the boar alone.
Keywords: forest; hunting; boar
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Citation
Middle English passages on this page have been quoted from:
Anonymous. 1995. Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales, ed. Thomas Hahn. Medieval Institute Publications. Click here to access this edition.
All Modern English translations were done by the website author, with recourse to the Middle English Dictionary and glosses in the cited edition(s).
Possible Provenance:
The map of Great Britain above highlights the possible provenance(s) — that is, place(s) of composition — suggested by scholars for this romance. The numbered markers denote the areas depicted by 360-degree photos or videos I have included on this page, listed in the order that they appear in my discussions below.
In the map, click the box icon in the upper-lefthand corner to display the legend.
This map is based on information regarding provenance supplied in the cited edition(s) of this romance, along with the linguistic analysis found in: Purdie, Rhiannon. 2008. Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature D.S. Brewer.
Scene 1: Facing the Boar
Then the Kinge con crye,
And carputte of venerie
To make his howundus hardi –
Hovut on a stede.
Als sone as he come thare,
Agaynus him rebowndet the bare:
He se nevyr no syghte are
So sore gerutte him to drede.
He hade drede and doute
Of him that was stirrun and stowte;
He began to romy and rowte,
And gapes and gones.
Men myghte noghte his cowch kenne
For howundes and for slayn men
That he hade draun to his denne
And brittunt all to bonus.
Thenne his tusshes con he quette,
Opon the Kinge for to sette;
He liftis uppe, wythoutun lette,
Stokkes and stonis.
Wyth wrathe he begynnus to wrote:
He ruskes uppe mony a rote
Wyth tusshes of thre fote,
So grisly he gronus (ll. 169-92).
Then the king began to cry out,
And shouted of venery [hunting calls]
To make his hounds hardy –
[He] rode on his steed.
As soon as he came there,
Against him rebounded the boar:
He never before saw a sight
[That] so sorely caused him to dread.
He had dread and doubt
Of him that was stern [i.e., fierce] and stout;
He [the boar] began to roar and rage,
And gapes and opens [his mouth].
Men might not find his lair
On account of the hounds and slain men
That he had drawn to his den
And torn all to bones.
Then he whet his tucks,
[Planning] to set upon the King with them;
He lifts up, without delay,
Sticks and stones.
With wrath he begins to root [about]:
He rips up many a root
With his three-foot tusks,
So grisly he groans.
This scene of Arthur (and his ill-fated hounds) facing off against the boar of Inglewood Forest features the most detailed environmental description of the romance. The royal huntsman earlier reported the boar’s destruction of the forest and the court’s hunters, and here the king himself comes face-to-face with this porcine challenge to human physical and imperial authority. The soundscape here embeds the king’s affective experience of the encounter into the local environment: his encouraging cries to his dogs turn to “dread and doubt” inside him as the boar violently defeats the hounds and defiantly growls his own challenge. Human control over the royal forest has been turned on its head, with the boar enacting his own industry in building his grisly fortress of human and canine bones, and through his uprooting of trees and tossing about of “sticks and stones.” The guiding principles of his landscape engineering are violent domination and animal appetite; his actions on the land do injury to the political body of the king as he prepares to unmake Arthur’s physical form in turn.
This image shows a grassy path running through a small patch of woodland at the site of the former Tarn Wathelene. Pasture is visible through the trees.
The recordings paired with this scene seek to engage with these engineered aspects of the boar’s domain. The still image depicts the tiny patch of woodland preserve abutting the site of the former Tarn Wathelene in Inglewood forest. Notably, its trees are predominately Scotch Pines, and not the dramatic oak that will feature prominently in Arthur’s fight. Yet these conifers cover the geographical spot explicitly evoked by the text, at least as it existed in 2022.
This video depicts a path in the woods abutting Skipton Castle. A rock wall runs along one side of the path.
The video recorded in Skipton Castle forest, meanwhile, shows woodland from closer to the provenance of the one surviving manuscript containing Avowying – and which has been fairly consistently afforested since the time of the romance’s composition. The peaceful soundscape of bird calls, wind-tossed foliage, and the occasional automobile provides a sharp contrast to the calls of hunter, hound, and boar that characterize the romance’s encounter. But this auditory context helps to provide an affective inroad to Arthur’s anxiety in the text: for the anticipated forest sounds have been replaced by threats and violence. The interruption of the car noises also help draw attention to the constant entanglement of human activity and nominally nonhuman spaces. Moreover, cut and uprooted trees to the side of the trail help to evoke the destructive effects of the boar’s violence, while the nearby wall helps to remind the viewer of human attempts to contain and categorize the landscape – a point that applies to the image of Tarn Wathelene forest as well, given that it, too, is contained by a stone wall.
Scene 2: Tree of Gore
There downe knelus he
And prayus till Him that was so fre:
“Send me the victoré!
This Satanas me sekes.”
All wroth wex that sqwyne,
Blu, and brayd uppe his bryne;
As kylne other kechine,
Thus rudely he rekes.
The Kynge myghte him noghte see,
Butte lenyt hym doune bi a tree,
So nyghe discumford was hee
For smelle other smekis.
And as he neghet bi a noke,
The King sturenly him stroke,
That both his brees con blake;
His maistry he mekes (ll. 225-240).
…
To brittun him the King was bowne,
And sundurt in that sesun
His brode schildus bothe.
The King couthe of venery:
Colurt him ful kyndely.
The hed of that hardy
He sette on a stake.
Sethun brittuns he the best
As venesun in forest;
Bothe the thonge and lees
He hongus on a noke (ll. 254-64).
He kneels down there
And prays to him that is so noble:
“Send me the victory!
This Satan seeks me.”
That swine grew all angry,
Blew [out his nose], and lifted up his brows;
As a kiln or a kitchen,
Thus he rudely reeks.
The king might not see him,
But leaned himself down by a tree,
So close to being overcome was he
By the smell of the smoke.
And as he knelt by an oak,
The king sternly stuck him [the boar],
[So] that both of his brows grew black;
His mastery he demonstrates [makes].
…
The king was eager to field dress him,
And sundered at that time
Both his broad shoulders.
The king knew well the craft of hunting:
He collared him appropriately.
The head of that hardy [foe]
He set upon a stake.
Then he butchers the beast
As [he would] venison in the forest;
Both the strips and slices
He hangs on an oak.
The climax of Arthur’s battle with the boar comes stars, intriguingly, an oak tree. Overcome (and indeed, blinded) by the hellish reek of the “Satanic” boar, Arthur takes shelter next to an oak – and it is kneeling here that he deals the deciding stroke to his adversary. Notably, the language slips into pronouns here, conflating king and boar in their violent struggle as the stinking smoke makes it difficult for the king himself to distinguish features in this environment. The tree, however, remains an anchor for the scene, an emblem for the forest itself. Arthur thus celebrates his victory by cutting apart the boar’s body and displaying its viscera across the oak tree’s branches: he has reclaimed the lordship of the forest. In so doing, however, he has embraced the boar’s violent model of rule, with disquieting implications for the forest and its denizens, human and more-than-human alike.
The two images accompanying this passage are likewise dominated by trees at their center.
This image shows a path through the woods along Aira Beck, leading up to the Aira Force Falls, with a dramatic topography featuring prominent stones and a stream.
Here, a tree’s roots wrap around a rock jutting out at eye level in the Aira Force preserve. The dramatic topography of this image, with its mix of rushing water, stone, and hilly woodland, is more characteristic of the highlands west of Inglewood than it is of the Tarn Wathelene area itself – but arresting image of the tree grasping and growing from the stone rooted in the exposed hillside dominates the foreground of the image, evoking the way in which Arthur’s (And the narrative’s) perspective are thrust close to the tree at this moment.
These photographs show both sides of an ancient oak tree in Sherwood Forest.
The second pair of images are from beyond the geographical bounds of the romance’s setting and known circulation; they depict an ancient oak tree in another famous medieval woodland, Sherwood Forest. I include these images not to make any argument about readers taking the Avowyng into Robin Hood’s haunts, but to illustrate how a large oak tree can create an enclosed world unto itself with its tangled trunk and outstretched branches. Of course, the oak depicted (photographed from both sides) occupies a dirt circle kept clear by human activity – but its bulk and immediate surrounds amplify the already spherical nature of the 360-degree image to create the sense of a stage. Its dramatic weave of branches already provides a natural form of display – and illustrates Arthur’s reasoning when he turned to spreading body parts across the oak to demonstrate his victory. Finally, while the recordings cannot convey the scent of the scene, I can attest that the sun-warmed oaks let out a comforting, woody smell, particularly those aged enough to provide openings at their center, as in the final image. Thus their enwrapping presence could provide protection not only from the boar’s violent physical attacks, but from his Satanic stench as well.
This image shows the interior of an ancient oak tree in Sherwood Forest (a different tree, notably, than the one depicted in the two images above).