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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2020
E. M. R. Ditmas, in two essays on Arthurian relics which still remain the best summary of the subject, touches briefly on ‘Gawain's sword’. All she says is that it was exhibited at Wallingford, but she gives no references. Sir Frederic Madden, in his pioneering edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, privately printed for the Bannatyne Club in 1839, discusses Gawain's sword in his notes, saying that ‘I was the first to discover the following curious memorandum … relative to the sword of Gawayne’. This was in a series of medieval notes on a blank leaf in a manuscript from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, which was in the hands of a local Suffolk antiquary, and which Madden dated to the reign of Edward I. It reads:
Hec est forma gladii Walwyn militis: a puncto usque ad hilte, 53
pollices; hilte continet 11 pollices et dimidii; manicle prope 11
pollices; pomel continet 3 pollices. Latitudo 5 pollice, longitudo
in toto continet 66 pollices et dimidii, unde scribere in canello gladii:
Jeo su forth, trenchant et dure,
Galaam me fyth par mult grant cure.
Catosze ans Jesu Cristh
Quant Galaam me trenpa et fyth.
Saage feloun deyt homme dutyr,
Et folh felona eschewer.
Folh de boneyre de porte
Et sage debonere amer.
(This is the shape of the sword of Sir Walwyn: from the point to the hilt 53 inches; the hilt is 11½ inches; the grip 11 inches; the pommel 3 inches; It is five inches wide, and the overall length is 66½ inches, and on the fuller of the blade is written: I am strong, sharp, and hard, Galaam made me with much care. Jesu Christ [was] fourteen years [old] when Galaam quenched and made me.)
The four lines in italic are a verse proverb: a suggested translation is ‘Put aside foolish handsomeness (or elegance) and cherish wise patience (or weakness)’.
It is almost certainly not part of the inscription, and has been tacked on by accident. Madden's note was followed by a discussion of the same text from a different source by Robert Huntington Fletcher, a pioneer in the study of the Arthurian legend in chronicle sources.
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