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Gawain and Michaelmas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Extract
The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, or Michaelmas, is held on Sept. 29. The feast is referred to in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:
Til MeƷelmas mone
Watz cumen wyth wynter wage;
Þen Þenkkez Gawan ful sone
Of his anious uyage.
These lines conclude the stanzas on the passing of the seasons with which part II of the poem begins. They are immediately followed by a statement to the effect that Gawain does not start on his anious uyage till Nov. 1 (Al-hal-day). Apparently something about the Michaelmas moon simply brings to consciousness, to the foreground of Gawain's mind, the grim agreement with the Green Knight.
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References
1 Lines 531–535; Tolkien, J. R. R. and Gordon, E. V., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2nd ed. revised by Davis, Norman; Oxford 1968) 15.Google Scholar
2 Oxford 1933; s.v. Michaelmas. Google Scholar
3 Wright, Joseph, English Dialect Dictionary (London 1898–1905) s.v. Michaelmas moon, offers similarly late citations.Google Scholar
4 In other words, I take the phrase as metonymy for Michaelmas; that the poet is thinking in terms of saint's days is suggested by the reference to All Saints' Day in the line which immediately follows (line 536).Google Scholar
5 Wright, A. R. and Lones, T. E., British Calendar Customs: England 3 (London 1940) 80; Biallas, A. A., The Patronage of St. Michael the Archangel (Chicago 1954) vii; Banks, M. M., British Calendar Customs: Scotland 3 (London 1941) 86.Google Scholar
6 The quarter days are a part of the official legal calendar of modern England. I can find no discussion of their origin. Much of my material is new to this context; although my primary interest is the work of literature, I shall contribute what I can to the question of origin.Google Scholar
7 ‘The style of Lady Day [reckoning the year from March 25] became accepted in England in the latter part of the twelfth century and continued to be the official mode of reckoning down to 1752’; Poole, Reginald L., ‘The Beginning of the Year in the Middle Ages,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 10 (1921–23) 125.Google Scholar
8 OED s.v. Midwinter ; Hampson, R. T., Medii Aevi Kalendarium 2 (London 1841) 272.Google Scholar
9 I suggest that this is perhaps the reason for the adoption of the particular days as quarter days. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have observed that the days come at cardinal points of the year — at the equinoxes and solstices; Chambers, Robert, The Book of Days 2 (London 1863–64) 744. Many factors may have been involved.Google Scholar
10 Stubbs, William, The Constitutional History of England 2 (Oxford 1880) 285.Google Scholar
11 The Middle English Dictionary dates the work ‘c. 1400 (? c. 1390)’; Kurath, Hans, Kuhn, Sherman M., et al., ‘Plan and Bibliography’ (Ann Arbor 1954) 42 (cf. Burke Severs, J., ed. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English [New Haven 1967] 42: ‘last quarter of the fourteenth century, probably towards the end’ [Helaine Newstead]).Google Scholar
12 Smith, Toulmin, Smith, Lucy Toulmin, and Brentano, L., English Gilds: The Original Ordinances, EETS Original Series 40 (London 1870) 315.Google Scholar
13 But in 1477–78 an ordinary workman was receiving only £4 a year (less than 3d. a day); Coulton, G. G., Art and the Reformation (New York 1928) 77–78. See also n. 22 below.Google Scholar
14 Marsh, B., ed. Records of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters 2 (Oxford 1914) 1; a slightly earlier instance (1435) is in Power, D'Arcy, ed. Memorials of the Craft of Surgery in England (London 1886) 307. I am indebted to Professor Kuhn for generously sharing these citations with me.Google Scholar
15 A number of my quotations, like the above, do not appear in the OED, but I shall not continue to call attention to the fact.Google Scholar
16 See English Gilds 293 (note).Google Scholar
17 ‘In ancient times Hocktide [second Monday and Tuesday after Easter] Was important in relation to tenures and payments of rents and other dues, and, like Michaelmas [my italics], is said to have been one of the usual terms’; Wright, A. R. and Lones, T. E., British Calendar Customs: England 1 (London 1936) 126.Google Scholar
18 In the original of this document (which the editors, contrary to their usual practice with Latin and French pieces, give) the phrasing is ad quatuor anni terminos, which can be rendered (as the editors do) ‘at four times of the year’ but also as ‘at the four terms’ — i.e., quarters.Google Scholar
19 Meetings were called, of course, whenever circumstances required. Those referred to, however, are meetings, very often four per year, which must be held; cf. Gross, Charles, The Gild Merchant 1 (Oxford 1890) 32.Google Scholar
20 Perhaps Easter (rather than Lady Day) is the locus; as later quotations will suggest, Easter was once an important term day (being paired with Michaelmas).Google Scholar
21 Adams, George Burton and Stephens, Henry Morse, Select Documents of English Constitutional History (New York 1929) 129; cf. White, A. B., The Making of the English Constitution (New York 1908) 197. I am indebted to Professor Mullett, Charles F. for bringing these courts to my attention.Google Scholar
22 The lines on the Michaelmas moon also refer to wages: ‘Til Mezelmas mone Watz cumen wyth wynter wage.’ Editors gloss this wage (which is etymologically the same word as the other) ‘pledge, earnest’ (Tolkien and Gordon 224), ‘challenge’ (Gollancz, ; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, EETS Original Series 210 [London 1940] 182). None of these rather divergent readings is really satisfactory (see the translations of the poem). I would not insist upon the point, but perhaps the proper meaning is simply ‘wage’: ‘Till the Michaelmas moon was come with [foreshadowing of] winter's wage’ — the pay which the Green Knight speaks of in line 396 and insists upon Gawain's accepting, on New Year's morn, in line 2247.Google Scholar
For specific connections between Michaelmas and wages see English Gilds 285 (‘Masters… shall not give more to the men than fourpence a day, beginning from the first Monday in Lent to the feast of St. Michael then next ensuing; and, from the said feast of St. Michael till the same Monday in Lent, threepence a day’); Skeat, W. W., Piers Plowman 2 (Oxford 1886) 201 (‘The accounts of farm-bailiffs were kept from Michaelmas to Michaelmas’).Google Scholar