The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell

by Mallory Ortberg · May 26, 2016

Originally.

KING ARTHUR: Sir Gawain you are the noblest knight in my court
in the board room AND in the bedroom if you all catch me, drift-wise
anyhow I killed a deer recently and the man who saw me do it hates us both
but in exchange for not killing me he’s willing to let me off if I can explain to him what women like most
and you can’t just say what field women like either
it has to be both field and town women together
by the way
his name
like his actual God-given name
is Sir Gromer Somer Joure

SIR GAWAIN: fuck outta here

KING ARTHUR: fuck IN of here, you mean
any old how
the point is I have to figure out what women want to not get murdered
so you go out and ask everybody
and I’ll look at every book I own
and between the two of us we’ll probably come up with something
probably someone has written it down somewhere

SIR GAWAIN: okay I’ll go talk to literally everyone, wish me luck

A LOATHLY LADY: heard you were looking for a gal to answer a question

KING ARTHUR: no I’m pretty set actually

LOATHLY LADY: if you give me Sir Gawain I will 100% answer your question for you
and before you say no consider this
even owls get married
so

KING ARTHUR: how does that relate to what our situation is

LOATHLY LADY: just think about it
both my offer and owls

SIR GAWAIN: I would marry anyone to help out a friend
I’ll double marry her just to show how serious I am

KING ARTHUR: just tell me the answer

LOATHLY LADY: WELL
some people think women want to have a lot of “sex” or “husbands” or hats or whatever
but what we actually want is just basic autonomy

KING ARTHUR: ahh tytyty
[to SIR GROMER] I think women want to be able to control men

LOATHLY LADY [faintly, offstage]: that’s not exactly how I put it but ok

SIR GROMER: Goddamnit
you must have met my sister, Dame Ragnell
she is the only bitch alive who knows the answer to that mysterious question

LOATHLY LADY: I honestly think a lot of people could have told you that
primarily people whose gender rhymes with “boman” and “shoman”

SIR GAWAIN: I’m still willing to marry you

LOATHLY LADY: oh my god
that’s amazing
you’re amazing
God I wish I was hot, just to reward you for being willing to marry me
[eats three chickens]
[that’s literally in the poem you guys]
okay heads up I can turn hot whenever I want
so as a puzzle and also a reward I can be hot for exactly half of the day
and you get to decide when, so either everyone can see how hot I am, or just you can see it when we have sex

SIR GAWAIN: how is this a reward for anything
what does this have to do with women wanting to be able to pick out their own crop rotation or whatever
I don’t want to make this weird night-time face call on your behalf

LOATHLY LADY: ohoho
you have chosen wisely
now I am beautiful all the time, because of your wisdom has broken my stepmother’s curse

SIR GAWAIN: I
okay
this sounds fake but okay

NARRATOR: Sir Gawain turned into a total fucking coward and stopped jousting just so he could nail his hot wife
then she died
a valuable lesson for us all

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.


91 Comments

  2. braak +279

    Sir Gawain: an okay dude, who was constantly being set bizarre moral conundrums

    3. Unreadaethel +78

      People kept trying to get him to play weird castle sex games without clarifying the rules or motivations

        1. braak +42

          “Oh shit, is Sir Gawain coming? We’ve got to…oh wait, oh here he is okay, okay, SIR GAWAIN this castle is under a curse and to break it you have to, uh, go into the top room of the tower and accept whatever the person there has to offer you. Even if it’s sex. Especially if it’s sex.”

          “Oh, uh. Okay I guess that’s…I mean, that doesn’t sound like a real thing but if it’s to break a curse, you know, I guess I can give it a shot.”

    4. terb +43

      Gawain’s stories always felt like the truest representation of mediaeval life to me, everyone’s slightly drunk, high on malnutrition/ ergot/ strange mushrooms, and nothing makes the least bit of sense.

      1. braak +34

        Everything is weird, people are getting their arms chopped off, there’s a ghost, Gawain’s just there trying to get through his day.

        GAWAIN:  [*sighs*] Yeah man, I don’t know.  I don’t know.

        1. terb +69

          *8 foot tall green knight appears at banquet, everyone expectantly stares at Gawain because if there’s an 8 foot tall green knight Gawain is gonna be involved somehow*

          GN: WHO WILL FIGHT ME???

          GAWAIN: ……. fine, that’s fine…. I’ll [*sigh*] I’ll fight you. How sexual is this gonna get? No dont answer that I’ll find out eventually.

  4. rawrbook +166

    [that’s literally in the poem you guys] I wish all texts were annotated like this

    1. lemonack +65

      Recently I was working on translating and annotating a charming song listing different types of Buddhist hells. My footnotes about who goes to which hell and what happens to them there were mainly “There is no good translation for this name and I apologize” and “I swear to you that I am not making this up.”

  5. Maryaed +83

    This is one of my favorite weirdo stories. I did not recall the chickens. I hope they were delicious because it didn’t sound like she had much of a life.

    1. Mairead +98

      I’d forgotten the chickens too. It’s like, ohmigod, she ate in public! She was hungry and she ate, right there where people could see her, on her wedding day even! How loathly and unfeminine can she even be!

  7. damanoid +136

    “Sir Gromer Somer Joure”

    Ah yes, the legendary smith who forged the mystic artifact, the Boomerang Toomerang Soomerang.

    Gawain really has no room to criticize this guy’s name, though, given the various permutations of his own moniker throughout history. Wikipedia can’t even be bothered to deal with it: “– also called Gwalchmei, Gualguanus, Gauvain, Walwein, etc.” You know, just “etc.” And so forth and what-not. It just goes on and on, my friend.

    Also:
    Gwawaurian
    Gowanwicha
    Gorn
    Granwiches
    Worwauk
    Garwagler
    Wawa
    Gruenwald
    Greenosaurus
    Gamergate
    Ganglewick
    Gwen

    1. Hepzebah +64

      ok but I would read about the adventures of Sir Garwagler and Sir Ganglewick.

    2. Herberta1 +70

      Granwiches dounds like some horrible snack food you’d buy in the freezer section of the grocery store.

    3. Unreadaethel +50

      Oh, maybe that’s why the BBC decided to go with ‘Gwaine.’ Also to avoid the GAH-wyn Guh-WAYNE conflict that has plagued humanity for…a length of time.

      1. vikander +257

        GAH-wyn Guh-WAYNE, GAH-wyn Guh-WAYNE, GAH-wyn Guh-WAYNE, in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight….

        3. GinnyQ9 +33

          This made me lol. I had to read it twice, but I got it, and I lol’d at my desk.

          Just fyi. I believe people who make good jokes should be told as much when they cannot hear the laughter.

          Carry on.

      2. MunchletteBelle +12

        I feel like I’ve heard it insisted somewhere that it’s pronounced “GOW-in” (with the first syllable rhyming with “cow”).

        Why can’t we all just pick something and agree on it?

        1. Unreadaethel +5

          That’s the pronunciation of the first of my options, yeah. GAH-wyn/GOW-in.

    4. spillyfilly +45

      Wait just one darn minute!

      Are you telling me that Wawa, aka the Double-Wa, aka the best convenience store in upper PA, possibly, maybe, could be named after Sir Gawain?

      I highly doubt this is even remotely possible, but just lets pretend.

      1. GinnyQ9 +13

        aka the Double-Wa

        This is not really a thing, is it? I mean, it takes longer to say than “Wawa”!

      2. Anna +18

        It’s a Delaware word for goose. Hence the logo.

        But Gawain clearly didn’t know his own name, so who can correct you? Certainly not he. Dame Ragnell might have thoughts, though.

        1. knitting_pun +10

          It’s ALSO a town in Ontario. A giant Canada Goose statue is their claim to fame/reason to pull off the highway/reason I remember the town from my cross-Canada childhood roadtrip. (Here we say it’s an Ojibwe word, but Delaware and Ojibwe are both in the Aglonquian family, so they probably share words.)

    5. femaelstrom +96

      I honestly assumed that last list was real until I got to “Gamergate.” Everything up to that seemed plausible.

      1. adoptraya +26

        Sir Gamergate and the It’s REALLY About Ethics in Gaming Journalism Knight

    9. liesandperfidy +1

      whoah whoah whoah did you just make a dang Arthurian mythos/Korn lyrics joke

  8. emmysuhweeks +140

    I feel like I would probably marry a man who gave me three chickens to eat all on me onesie and did not judge me for eating said three chickens.

    (In my head, the chickens are fried, but like, the GOOD kind of fried that your aunties made for the church potluck.)

  9. v_d_budenmayer +99

    So I’m a literature teacher and everything but I honestly did not know that the Wife of Bath straight up stole that story and now I feel hopelessly inadequate help me please

    1. HelenaCosimaSarah +39

      It looks rather like this story stole from the Wife of Bath, according to Wikipedia.

    2. typewriterandgramophone +80

      Ragnell did not die. Alison is indestructible time traveling Ragnell.

    3. SarahL +96

      (Disclaimer: nerdy medievalist response)

      This version of the story (probably) post-dates both Chaucer’s version and the one in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (written about the same time as the Canterbury Tales), but the Loathly Lady is a common trope in medieval romance and the test that involves being kind to an ugly old woman (who then rewards you by turning beautiful, having sex with you, and making you a king) is most likely originally Irish. There’s a great collection of essays (if by “great” you mean “makes this medievalist happy”) titled _The English “Loathly Lady” Tales_, eds. Passmore and Carter, if you want to know more than you ever thought you needed to know about the topic.

      Also, Chaucer’s version switches up the test (beautiful and unfaithful or ugly and faithful) — and his version is the only one with this particular test, so Alison is only partially a plagiarist. I think she’d be okay with that.

      1. Unreadaethel +35

        Well of course Gawain’s going to win a faithful wife no matter what! Infidelity might suggest she actually had maisterye.

      2. angelartoscano +23

        I do want to know more than I ever thought I needed to! She said, ordering up the book from the library.

  10. mekline2015 +61

    Ooooh man I had an illustrated version of this as a kid. Why you pick this particular one for a kid I can’t tell you, but CHECK OUT the Loathly Lady:
    http://lesliekenton.com/health/into-the-bliss/wp-…

    Ur-queen of Crone Island (Crone Island is where the women of Metafilter go when they want to Ban Men). Here she is getting married:
    http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/6140TJ7Q2WL…

    Hoooly damn. I was not a critical reader as a kid but even I knew this was some straight up weird “WOMEN WHAT ARE THEY WHO CAN UNLOCK THEIR SECRETS” bullshit at age 7 or so.

    2. Household_Opera +8

      I had that book! Or at least I checked it out from the library. I remember that cover, and the Loathly Lady.

    3. nopemobile +9

      OH MAN I HAD THE SAME EXACT BOOK. As a kid this did not ping at all, I took the story 100% at face value. That is QUITE the illustration though.

    4. ParadoxBox +1

      I had this one but in Spanish! Sir Gawain Y La Dama Fea. I read it a lot as a kid, and that painting scarred me.

  11. Xolandra +36

    You guys, Sir Gawain was always my fav. Him or Sir Gareth, I could never decide. GIANT HEARTS.

      1. megalesias +15

        like, Gareth has been at the tops of my baby names list for over a decade at this point, since I was an impressionable 14 year old reading Le Morte D’Arthur. I love him.

    2. dahlia_travers +51

      Yessss I had the biggest crush on Sir Gawain as a preteen.
      He refused to sleep with the Green Knight’s wife! He let Ragnell choose when she wanted to be beautiful! Clearly a prize. (as, you know, medieval dudes go)

    3. elsajeni +30

      Mine too! I liked him best because he seemed like a bit of a meathead, but a really nice and very loyal meathead.

      1. Erica Stratton +42

        I feel like “nice and very loyal meathead” is pretty much what people are getting at when they describe an Ideal Knight.

      2. adoptraya +14

        I feel like maybe Gawain is the medieval version of Good Guy Greg?

        Right?

    4. Delphinia +14

      Yeah, Gawain is often kind of an asshole. My favorite detail in Le Morte Darthur is that the whole “code of chivalry” business is pretty much invented because Gawain chops off a lady’s head, and his excuse is ‘dude, I was trying to kill her BOYFRIEND, who was just being unduly pissy ’cause I killed his pet.’ (Longer answer is that the French turned Gawain into an A-1 ass so they could promote their boy Lancelot, but hey).

      1. terb +21

        Which is one of the reasons I have always hated Lancelot, because some how I was introduced to the cool Gawain stories before I knew about the rest of King Arthur and I do not know how that happened.

        But yeah go flagellate yourself and cry Lancelot no one likes you

  12. bleucrayon +80

    “but what we actually want is just basic autonomy”

    Yes!

    ORTBERG FOR PREZ 2016

  13. damanoid +146

    I am bemused to discover that there was evidently an entire medieval literary genre which was basically the equivalent of that point in the movie where the librarian takes her glasses off.

  14. LeastBittern +102

    “Oh my God, you sound just like my stupid sister. But I suppose since you, a powerful man, are saying what she says ALL THE TIME it must be true.”

  15. Head4Hatrack +55

    Ah, this will be missed. There is no place for this, or monks creating art, anywhere else on the Tubes.

    1. nforssmed +10

      That is one of the things making me incredibly sad at the moment. All this awesomeness will be over. (The art/literature/mythology/etc comedy here has made me so happy.)

  16. GearyGirl77 +59

    How are we all supposed to go on without this?! I will miss it so much. And poor, dear, Sir Gawain, with “what does this have to do with women wanting to be able to pick out their own crop rotation or whatever.”

  17. walrathem +38

    I told this story to my neighbor’s kid this weekend to help him understand why he should just go ahead and call his girlfriend “Girlfriend” and not her name or any nicknames since it’s specifically what she asked him to call her. I should mention that he’s 9. He thought it was a great story.

  18. bluewindgirl +54

    I zeroed right in on the second half of the sentence– “women want to not get murdered”– King Arthur, the answer was in you all along!

  19. GinnyQ9 +58

    SIR GAWAIN: I
    okay
    this sounds fake but okay

    It’s Sir Gawain’s reactions that make these pieces so great. Like, he’s along for the ride just like the rest of us.

  21. Joe in Australia +16

    Now I want the entire cycle of stories this way, particularly something that explains why everybody called Iseult (Isolde) is basically interchangeable BUT NOT.

    1. knitting_pun +4

      The former linguist in me feels like the answer is Because Old French/Spelling Rules Were Just Being Invented, but the lazy person in me is too lazy to look it up properly.

    2. OhRather +4

      There’s a pretty great blog called “Better Myths” (or something) which might be worth a look after the toast does its tragic thing

  22. thegirlfrommarz +33

    I feel like my answer to every question today should be: “even owls get married / so”

  23. terb +27

    Damn I know you’re leaving us but I still want Mallory rewrites Malory in book form for my reading pleasure. Please. I’ll pay you full book price for it.

    1. nforssmed +8

      Yes! I would buy that book several times over. (Apart from the fact that i need it in my life it would be the perfect present for some of my friends.)

  26. msdewinter

    Oh!! I still have this book and LOVE the Loathly Lady!

    Adult me also enjoys the discreet "consummatum est" banner over Gawain and the lady's heads after their fateful wedding night

  27. N.

    That is one of the things making me incredibly sad at the moment. All this awesomeness will be over. (The art/literature/mythology/etc comedy here has made me so happy.)

  28. snowqueene

    Oh no. We need to invent some kind of MRA blocker for browsers.

    I'm picturing your dude waking up, sleepily heading to the computer, clicking repeatedly, becoming baffled, and being like "how come the only website I can get is … The Toast?