Sir Eglamour of Artois is a Middle English verse romance that was written sometime around 1350. It is a narrative poem of about 1300 lines, a tail-rhyme romance that was quite popular in its day, judging from the number of copies that have survived – four manuscripts from the 15th century or earlier and a manuscript and five printed editions from the 16th century. The poem tells a story that is constructed from a large number of elements found in other medieval romances. Modern scholarly opinion has been critical of it because of this, describing it as unimaginative and of poor quality. Medieval romance as a genre, however, concerns the reworking of "the archetypal images of romance" and if this poem is viewed from a 15th-century perspective as well as from a modern standpoint – and it was obviously once very popular, even being adapted into a play in 1444 – one might find a "romance [that] is carefully structured, the action highly unified, the narration lively."
The action of the story involves the hero fighting with a giant who is fifty feet tall, a ferocious boar and a dragon. His son is carried off as a baby by a griffin. The mother of his son, like Emaré and Geoffrey Chaucer's heroine Constance, is carried in an open boat to a distant land. There are scenes of non-recognition between the principal characters and a threat of incest; but after all these vicissitudes, father, son and mother are reunited at the end.
Manuscripts
The story of Sir Eglamour of Artois was written in around 1350 and is found in six manuscript versions, four of them dating to the 15th century or earlier, one to the 16th century and one, the Percy Folio, to the seventeenth. It is also found in five 16th century printed versions. In one of the manuscripts, British Library Egerton 2862 (c. 1400), only a fragment of the story survives:
A complete or nearly complete version of Sir Eglamour of Artois is found in these manuscripts: Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript (c. 1440) Cambridge University Library Ff. 2.38 (c. 1460) British Library MS Cotton Caligula A ii (second half of the 15th century) Bodleian Library MS. Douce 261 (1564) British Library Add MS 27879, the Percy Folio (c. 1650)
Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, produced by Robert Thornton, preserves the Arthurian romance Sir Perceval of Galles and the popular romance Sir Isumbras. In Cotton Caligula A.ii is found the tale of Emaré. Like many other medieval English romances, Sir Eglamour of Artois is written in tail-rhyme verse; although it is somewhat irregular, written mostly in stanzas of the traditional twelve lines, rhyming AABCCBDDBEEB, although sometimes a stanza occurs of six or nine lines, sometimes of fifteen or more.
Plot
(This plot summary is based upon the version of the story found in British Museum MS Cotton Caligula A.ii)
The medieval story of Sir Eglamour of Artois makes use of a number of themes and motifs that are found in other romances of the period. Near the very beginning of the tale the reader, or listener, is at once introduced to two of them. Sir Eglamour is in love with his overlord's daughter. She is the child and heir of an earl. Sir Eglamour, a relatively poor knight, declares his love for Christabel and is immediately given three impossible tasks to achieve by her angry father in order to win her hand in marriage; just as Culhwch is given an impossibly long list of impossible tasks by Chief Giant Ysbaddaden in the Old Welsh Mabinogion tale How Culhwch won Olwen, in order to win the hand in marriage of his daughter and heir. Sir Eglamour's first task is to take a deer from a forest far to the west, where the Celtic Otherworld is often located. The forest is surrounded by a stone wall and the deer are guarded by a giant who stands fifty feet tall. Despite these difficulties, Sir Eglamour manages to kill the principal stag of the giant's herd and then kills the giant himself. Having achieved this first trial, Sir Eglamour returns home triumphant, carrying the giant's head as well as that of the deer.