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Snow and Mist in Sir Gawain and the Green

Knight—Portents of the Otherworld?

Martin Puhvel

To cite this article: Martin Puhvel (1978) Snow and Mist in Sir�Gawain�and
the�Green�Knight—Portents of the Otherworld?, Folklore, 89:2, 224-228, DOI:
10.1080/0015587X.1978.9716109

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.1978.9716109

Published online: 30 Jan 2012.

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Snow and Mist in Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight—
Portents of the Otherworld ?
MARTIN PUHVEL

G A W A I N ' S last night at the castle of his hospitable host in Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight is marked by a violent snowstorm that presumably
further harries the already troubled mind of the sleepless hero:

Bot wylde wederez of he worlde wakned beroute,

Clowdes kesten kenly pe colde to be erbe,
Wyth ny3e innoghe of be norbe, he naked to tene;
Pe snawe snitered ful snart, hat snayped he wylde;
Pe werbelande wynde wapped fro he hyje,
And drof vche dale ful of dryftes ful grete.
be Ieude lystened ful wel hat leg in his bedde,
I>a3 he lowkez his liddez, ful lyttel he slepes;
1
Bi vch kok hat crue he knwe wel he steuen.

This turbulence of the weather may well seem to effectively and

dramatically correspond to, or even reflect, the restless, perturbed state o f
mind of the hero, preparing as he is to face the dread axe-stroke o f his m y s ­
terious challenger. T h e storm is o f course by no means a mere artistic exten­
sion of this state; on the contrary, the main idea conveyed—if largely left
to the listener's or reader's imagination—is that of the impact the a t m o ­
spheric turmoil must have on the psyche of the knight. From contemplating
this it is not a long step to wondering whether the rage o f the elements on
the night preceding the inexorably approaching day of crisis is to be s e e n —
within the plot of the poem—as sheer coincidence or whether it has s o m e
intended role within the scheme of things.
From such wonder one may logically progress to conceiving the idea that
Gawain may be undergoing a further dimension of the test o f courage that
started in Arthur's hall at Camelot with the Green Knight's challenge and
Gawain's interposing with the King to solicit the beheading game for h i m ­
self. Certainly a violent storm-during a largely sleepless night is not c o n ­
ducive to calming taut nerves. T h e question that would fhen logically pose
itself is whether the turbulent weather, rather than being an accidental part
of the test o f courage—or perhaps ordained by God—may not be intended
to be perceived as being precipitated by the immediate agency o f Sir
Gawain's tester or his possible cohorts.
S N O W A N D M I S T I N SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN NIGHT 225

While not everybody among the first-time audience or readers of the

romance is at this stage of the poem likely to divine a connection between
Gawain's host and the Green Knight, everybody knows that the hero is
about to encounter his gigantic green challenger-tester, who was at Camelot
2
apparently perceived to be an 'aluisch mon'. Hence it may not be invalid
at this point for the audience or reader to conceive the suspicion that if the
snowstorm is precipitated as part of the protracted process of testing the
hero's courage, fairy magic may very well lie behind it. Fairies are namely
in medieval, and subsequent, popular and literary tradition notorious for
their ability to influence weather, not least to unleash storms, including bliz­
zards. Porphyro's phrase in Keats' 'The Eve of St Agnes', 'Hark! 'tis an
elfin storm from faery land', reflects genuine, ancient tradition, apparently
3
with deep roots in Celtic fairy lore. In medieval legend such magic storms
are particularly apt to overtake heroes on their way to the Otherworld. Thus
when in the very ancient Irish tale Compert Con-Culainn ('The Conception
of Cuchulain') Conchobar, Conall, and Bricriu are on their way to the dwell­
4
ing of the fairy monarch Lug, 'there fell a great snow upon them'. In the
twelfth century Acallam na Sen'orach ('Colloquy of the Ancient Men'),
Finn and his men, again, encounter a snowstorm on their way to a sid of
the Tuatha De Danann: 'Heavy snow poured down now, making of the
forest's branches as it were a withe-twist; the greatness of the foul weather
5
and of the storm that came robbed us of our lustihood and resourcefulness.'
In The Turke and Gowin, an English romance of about 1500 from the north
or northwest, a violent storm rages before the otherwordly dwelling of the
Turke, to which he takes Sir Gawain:

He led Sir Gawaine to a hill so plaine;

the earth opened and closed againe,
then Gawaine was adread;
the merke was comen & the light is gone;
thundering, lightning, snow & raine,
4
thereof enough they had.

In the ancient Irish tale The Death of Muirchertach mac Erca this king
of Erin falls under the sway of the fatal charms of 'a damsel with a green
mantle about her' who gives her name as Sin—'Storm'—clearly a lady of
fairy nature. She brings about the King's death through her magic devices,
which include a violent snowstorm:
When the hosts were intoxicated there comes the sigh of a great wind ... After
that she caused a great snowstorm there; and never had come a noise of battle
that was greater than the shower of thick snow that poured there at that time,
7
and from the northwest precisely it came.
It would thus seem far from unlikely that the exceptionally heavy snow­
storm that rages during Gawain's last night at Hautdesert represents a reflec­
tion of the tradition of the elfin storm, often encountered by a hero on his
8
way to the Otherworld; here it occurs just prior to Gawain's departure
for the meeting with his 'aluisch' adversary, a variation not surprising in
226 MARTIN PUHVEL
the case of an echo—and, as seen in the last-cited instance, fairy snow is
even in Celtic lore not always featured in the context of approach to the
Otherworld. It may be a question of a source-relic or an element introduced
by the poet; in either case the storm may be intended to be perceived by
the audience as part of the testing of Sir Gawain by magic of the fairy kind.'
What Gawain does, on the other hand, encounter in the very course of
his passage following the turbulent night is clouds of mist:
I>e heuen watz vphalt, bot vgly ber-vnder;
Mist muged on he mor, malt on he mountez,
10
Vch hille hade a hatte, a myst-hakel huge.
This may well recall the apparently magic mist that in medieval Celtic
tradition not infrequently attends the passage to the Otherworld, a motif
not improbably related to that of the magic storm. Thus in the ancient Irish
Echtrae Cormaic ('The Voyage of Cormac') the hero and his men pass
through a mist to reach the palace of Manannan:
A great mist was brought upon them in the midst of the plain of the wall. Cormac
found himself on a great plain alone. There was a large fortress in the midst of
the plain with a wall of bronze around it. In the fortress was a house of white
silver and it was half-thatched with the wings of white birds. A faery host of
11
horsemen was haunting the house.
In The Feast ofBricriu, again, Loegaire, Conall, and Cuchulain encounter,
on their way to the castle of Curoi—a place of manifest Otherworld charac­
ter—in turn a 'dim, dark, heavy mist', also described as 'a hideous, black,
12
dark cloud' and 'druidical mist'.
In the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven voyagers to the castle of Mal-
duc, a rather otherworldly domain, encounter outside it a mist almost
13
impenetrable to the eye.
The powers of fairy are in Celtic tradition apparently able to create such
mist at will. Already the Tuatha De Danann landed in Ireland shrouded
14
by a cloud of magic mist, and they used a similar device to try to foil
15
the invasion of the Milesians.
There is, of course, no direct indication that the profuse mist over the
moors and mountains along Gawain's passage towards his appointment with
his otherworldly-seeming challenger in the latter's domain is of magic origin;
the account of it may seem quite natural and realistic, even if the description
of hills having hats and cloaks of mist may convey an ominous mental image
of giants—and the hero is riding to a critical encounter with a creature who
16
seemed 'half etayn'. Yet an echo of the motif of the magic mist of Celtic
17
lore may well seem present, especially if viewed in conjunction with the
18
preceding snowstorm. So it may, anyhow, have seemed to a contemporary
audience familiar with such elements of fairy lore influenced by Celtic tradi­
1
tion and sensitive to traits of the Otherworld and the approaches to it; '
it should be remembered that the poem was apparently written in an area
adjacent to Wales. It may also be well to note that the setting of Gawain's
testing exhibits Otherworld traits; the 'grene chapel', the hollow green
SNOW AND MIST IN SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN NIGHT 227

mound, cannot, it has long been recognized, but evoke associations with
a s'td and the stream bubbling beside it easily recalls those that so often in
20
medieval romance border fairyland. T h e picture is somewhat confused in
that while the territory beyond the stream whence the menacing challenger
comes could be seen as the Otherworld, the sid-like mound is on the opposite
bank. T h e entire scene need, of course, not be expected to be clear and con­
sistent in its otherworldly lay-out; it should not be surprising if only disjecta
21
membra o f the fairyland concept are exhibited.
Nor is it clear whether such elements are accidental survivals o f a source
or earlier version or whether the author purposefully employs them—be they
old or new—in the interests of a pattern of suspense and wonder involving
the apparent, if elusive, recognition o f the supernatural by the audience.
What with the extremely subtle craftsmanship o f the work increasingly
recognized by Sir Gawain scholarship, the latter possibility seems, however,
the more plausible.

NOTES
1. LI. 2000-08. 'But wild storms arose in the world outside. Clouds cast piercingly the
cold to the ground, with exceeding bitterness from the north, to afflict the ill-clad; the snow
came shivering down and cruelly nipped the wild creatures; the shrilly blowing wind rushed
from the heights and drove each valley full of very great snowdrifts. The knight listened
closely, lying in his bed; though he shuts his eyelids, he sleeps very little; each crowing
of the cock recalled to him his appointment.'
2. 'elvish man', 1. 681.
3. It may be noted, by way of parallelism, that in folklore, witches, trolls, devils, and
yet other uncanny creatures, are also often credited with the ability to influence weather.
4. Ernst Windisch (ed.), Irische Texte (Leipzig, 1880), p. 137.
5. Standish H. O'Grady, Sdva Gadelica, II (London, 1892), p. 222.
1
6. Bishop Percy 's Folio Manuscript, Ballads and Romances, td. J. VV. Hales and E.J. Furni­
vall, Vol. I (London, 1868), p. 93.
7. Revue Celtique, XXIII (1902), p. 419.
8. The storm overtaking the traveller to the Otherworld is, as indicated above, by no
means always a snowstorm. At times it is a question of a wind-, rain-, or hail-storm, some­
times accompanied by thunder, as, for example, in Chretien's Yvain (1. 439ff.). A. C. L.
Brown suggests that the passage through the magic storm 'seems to be another form of
the motif of a dive through the water of a spring or lake which in many Irish stories, notably
the folk-tale In Gdla Decair, is the mode of entrance to the Other World.' ('Independent
Character of the Welsh Owain', The Romantic Review, III (1912), pp. 171n.)
A striking example of the survival of the motif of the elfin storm in relatively recent folklore
is provided by the turn-of-the-century record of an Irish folktale, where the retrieve of
a fairy-changeling by the fairy host is accompanied by a violent storm:
In the darkness of the black midnight, a powerful great storm shook the place. It was
like as if the four winds of heaven were striving together, and they horrid vexed with
one another. There were strange noises in it, too, music and shouting, the way it was
easy knowing the Good People were out playing themselves, or maybe disputing in a
war.
('Nallagh's Child', Bampton Hunt, Folk Tales of Breffny (London, 1912), pp. 71f.)
9. It should be noted that the storm seems to be coming from the north, a traditional
direction of the Otherworld.
10. LI. 2079-81. 'The sky was high but it was threatening below it. Mist drizzled on
the moor, melted on the mountains; each hill had a hat, a huge cloak of mist.'
11. The Irish Ordeals, Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise, and the Decision as
to Cormac's Sword; Windisch, Irische Texte, 3rd Series, I (Leipzig, 1891), p. 213.
12. Fled Bricrend; The Feast of Bricriu, tr. George Henderson; Irish Texts Society,
Vol. II (Dublin, 1899), p. 87.
 228 MARTIN PUHVEL
13. Lanzelet, ed. K. A. Hahn (Berlin, 1965), p. 177 (1. 7589f.).
14. See Charles Squire, Celtic Myth and Legend (London, 1912), p. 72.
15. SeeJ. A. MacCulloch, Celtic Mythology; The Mythology of All Races, Vol. Ill (New
York, 1964), p. 43.
16. 'half giant', 1. 140.
17. In view of the generally recognized distant connection of Sir Gawain with The Feast
ofBricriu, one may compare the description of the mist in the latter as 'a hideous, black
dark cloud' with the statement in the former that 'be heuen watz vphalt, bot vgly ber-vnder*
(1. 2079), even if vgly is here generally interpreted to mean 'threatening'.
18. It may be noted that in the ancient Welsh Manawyddan, Son of Llyr both thunder
and a fall of mist precede the disappearance of Pryderi and Rhiannon into the Otherworld
together with the fairy castle they have entered (see The Mabinogion, trans. Gwyn Jones
and Thomas Jones (London, 1949), p. 47).
19. Mother Angela Carson, who believes the castle of Bertilak to be an Otherworld dwell­
ing, states that 'when Gawain left the castle of the hospitable Bertilak and crossed the draw­
bridge, he departed from the Other World and travelled for a time in the land of mortals,
returning through the same mist and desolation through which he had come.' ('Morgain
la Fee as the Principle of Unity in Gawain and the Green Knight', MLt\ XXIII (1962),
p. 13. While, like myself, she appreciates the possible otherworldly implications of the
vividly described mist, the observation is not quite accurate, in that nowhere is the landscape
Gawain passes through on his way to the castle said to be misty, even if one may imagine
the misy and myre 'marsh and swamp' (1. 749) he rides through on Christmas Eve to be
such.
20. Not uninteresting in this connection is the suggestion, initially advanced by Mabel
Day ('Introduction to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', EETS 210, ed. Israel Gollancz
(London, 1940), p. xx) and developed and articulated in closer detail by Robert Kaske
('Gawain's Green Chapel and the Cave at Wetton Mill', Medieval Literature and Folklore
Studies, ed. Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenburg (New Brunswick, N.J., 1972), pp.
11 Iff.) that the Gawain-poet may have had a geographic model in mind for the setting of
the hero's climactic meeting with his antagonist, viz., the surroundings of two caves
separated by a rapid-flowing stream, the tinyriverManifold, at Wetton Mill, Staffordshire.
Having visited the site, I must admit that the case for such association seems rather intrigu­
ing. A short distance from the stream a rugged knoll, overgrown with grass and weeds
and with a crevace-like, rock-strewn cave about thirty feet long extending most of the way
through it, tops a rather steep slope, separated from the stream only by a narrow gravel
road. The knoll is faced at a distance of about three hundred yards across the stream by
a forbidding-lookingfissure-likehole leading into a deep, narrow cavern in the towering
rock known as Ossom's Crag topping a steep hillside. Here, then, the 'Green Chapel' would
be facing the hole in the rock whence the Green Knight so dramatically emerges. An attempt
by the poet to infuse the legend with some aura of geographic reality, perhaps local colour,
is not out of the question in this connection, especially if these mysterious-looking caves
were, as is not difficult for a modern beholder to believe, in the popular mind of the poet's
day surrounded with fairy association.
21. It may not be in the poet's best artistic interests to make the otherworldly picture
very explicit. After all, at the end of the poem the carefully-nurtured suspicion of fairy
involvement is, at least on the surface, debunked; the 'aluisch' Green Knight turns out
to be the gregarious country squire Bertilak, endowed with what magic he possesses by
Morgain la Fee, herself not represented as a supernatural creature but as Gawain's aunt
steeped in the arts of Merlin. Thus at the end the audience is left free to think, in retrospect,
that the snowstorm, and perhaps the mist as well, could well have been the work of Morgain's
magic, if there was anything preternatural at all about them.