Sir Lamwell in Scotland

Summary

An intriguing fragment of the Arthurian romance known as Sir Lamwell is preserved in a Scottish manuscript in Cambridge University Library (Kk.5.30). Unfortunately much confusion surrounds this text, as A. S. G. Edwards indicates in his recent discussion of Middle Scots romances: ‘Though obviously related to the English romance Sir Launfal, Sir Lamwell appears to be Scottish, but its fragmentariness makes further analysis difficult.’ Nonetheless, despite some undoubted difficulties, I consider it possible to carry scholarly investigation further, and to dispel some of the confusion, if not to solve all the problems posed by this text. The fragment is not part of an independent Scottish romance on the Launfal theme, but derives from an English work, first printed in the early sixteenth century, which has been lightly Scotticized in style and language. This may seem disappointing, since the corpus of surviving Scottish romances is very small. But the fragment has considerable textual importance, and demonstrates that interest in Arthurian topics was still very much alive in Scotland at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The manuscript in which the fragment occurs also provides small but interesting clues to the literary tastes of the Scottish copyist and his family during this period.

Lamwell, who is probably better known as Lanval (in Anglo-Norman) or Launfal (in Middle English), was a knight of the Round Table, and his adventures formed one of the most popular stories belonging to the Matter of Britain. The earliest extant version is Lanval, the twelfth-century lai composed by Marie de France. In Middle English there were two tellings of the story, the longer and more complex of which is Sir Launfal, written in the late fourteenth century by Thomas Chestre, in twelve-line tail rhyme. Today this is by far the best known of the English versions: it is available in several editions, much discussed by scholars, and generally (if not universally) admired. The other Middle English version, Sir Landevale, is shorter, written in octosyllabic couplets, and in some respects closer to the French lai. Less familiar today than Thomas Chestre's poem, Sir Landevale seems in its own time and for several centuries to have been more popular – or at least more widely disseminated.