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ON NEW YEAR'S EVE, when the old year takes to its deathbed and life, having passed through its longest night, begins to disentangle itself from the grip of wintry death, during that spell between the feasts of Christmas and Epiphany when ghosts and specters are supposed to be abroad, the Green Knight made his unheralded appearance at King Arthur's court. He rode directly into the hall, and was a man of gigantic stature; his armor and horse, his face and weapon, were green, and what he carried was not a sword but an archaic battle-ax. He uttered a challenge to the assembled knights of the Round Table, to meet him on his own terms or else be disgraced in the eyes of the world.
But the terms were very strange. The knight who would dare to arise and champion the reputation of King Arthur's court should take the ax of the apparition and try to decapitate him with a single stroke. In return, on the following New Year's Eve, the selfsame champion should appear at the "Green Chapel" and there encounter the challenger again, but that time it should be he, and not the Green Knight, who would offer his neck to the ax.
The giant stated his terms, and the whole circle of the Round Table sat amazed. The amazement was succeeded by a general uneasiness, for not one of the knights had arisen to accept. Then King Arthur himself made a move to save the honor of his court, but his nephew, Sir Gawain, quickly interposed. The young man strode to confront the unnatural visitant and pledged himself to fulfill the stipulations. The Green Knight dismounted, handed Sir Gawain his ax, bent and readied his neck, and waited. Gawain gripped and weighed the mighty weapon, then, finally, with a single