9 - Armorial Colours, Quasi-Heraldry, and the Disguised Identity Motif in Sir Gowther, Ipomadon A and Malory’s ‘Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney’

Summary

The tournament scene in ‘The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney’ is the most colourful and dynamic armorial display in Malory’s Morte Darthur. It is also one of the most intriguing episodes in Malory’s Arthuriad. The protagonist, one of Arthur’s nephews cast in the role of a bel inconnu or ‘Fair Unknown’, having been mocked and insulted as the unidentified ‘Beaumains’ on an earlier quest, fights for the hand of Lyonesse (his previous tormentor’s sister) in a tournament arranged, in effect, to find her a worthy spouse. Gareth conceals his knightly identity by the power of a magic ring on loan from his future wife until, distracted by a dwarf, he forgets to put it on after a well-earned refreshment break (276/27–31). The ring protects the bearer from harm – ‘who that beryth this rynge shall lose no bloode’ (272/4) – and, more to the point, marvellously transforms colours such that Gareth’s armorial identity cannot be ascertained:

at one tyme he semed grene, and another tyme at his gayne-commynge he semed blewe. And thus at every course that he rode too and fro he chonged whyght to red and blak, that there might neyther kynge nother knight have no redy cognyssaunce of hym. (274/12–16)

The colour-changing aspect of the ring’s magical power, which Lyonesse curiously admits ‘encresyth my beawté muche more than hit is of hymselff’ (271/34), represents an example of ‘quasi-heraldry’ in romance writing. The tournament scene in which it appears tempts analysis in terms both of romance analogues and the wider contextual environment of medieval armorial writing.

Comparison with Analogues

While no single source has been identified for Malory’s ‘Tale of Sir Gareth’, the tournament episode (among others) has clear parallels in romances that share motifs, particularly the ‘Fair Unknown’, ‘Fairy-Lover’, and ‘Three-Day Tournament’. Comparisons with Sir Gowther and Ipomadon are especially apt given that they involve significant armorial colour changes that conceal their protagonists’ identities and suggest something about the knights’ maturation or transformation in relation to their deeds.

Sir Gowther narrates how a fiendish protagonist’s penance for murdering nuns and burning convents is to remain dumb and eat only what ‘thou revus of howndus mothe’ (293).