with no friend but his horse through forests and hills

and only our Lord in heaven to hear him.

He wanders near to the north of Wales

with the Isles of Anglesey off to the left.

He keeps to the coast, fording each course,

crossing at Holy Head and coming ashore 700

in the wilds of the Wirral, whose wayward people

both God and good men have quite given up on.

And he constantly enquires of those he encounters

if they know, or not, in this neck of the woods,

of a great green man or a green chapel.

No, they say, never. Never in their lives.

They know of neither a knight nor a chapel

so strange.

He trails through bleak terrain.

His mood and manner change 710

at every twist and turn

towards that chosen church.

In a strange region he scales steep slopes;

far from his friends he cuts a lonely figure.

Where he bridges a brook or wades through a waterway

ill fortune brings him face to face with a foe

so foul or fierce he is bound to use force.

So momentous are his travels among the mountains

to tell just a tenth would be a tall order.

Here he scraps with serpents and snarling wolves, 720

here he tangles with wodwos causing trouble in the crags,

or with bulls and bears and the odd wild boar.

Hard on his heels through the highlands come giants.

Only diligence and faith in the face of death

will keep him from becoming a corpse or carrion.

And the wars were one thing, but winter was worse:

clouds shed their cargo of crystallized rain

which froze as it fell to the frost-glazed earth.

With nerves frozen numb he napped in his armour,

bivouacked in the blackness amongst bare rocks 730

where melt-water streamed from the snow-capped summits

and high overhead hung chandeliers of ice.

So in peril and pain Sir Gawain made progress,

criss-crossing the countryside until Christmas

Eve. Then

at that time of tiding,

he prayed to highest heaven.

Let Mother Mary guide him

towards some house or haven.

Next morning he moves on, skirts the mountainside, 740

descends a deep forest, densely overgrown,

with ancient oaks in huddles of hundreds

and vaulting hills above each half of the valley.

Hazel and hawthorn are interwoven,

decked and draped in damp, shaggy moss,

and bedraggled birds on bare, black branches

pipe pitifully into the piercing cold.

Under cover of the canopy he girded Gringolet

though mud and marshland, a most mournful man,

concerned and afraid in case he should fail 750

in the worship of our Deity, who, on that date

was born the Virgin’s son to save our souls.

He prayed with heavy heart: ‘Father, hear me,

and Lady Mary, our mother most mild,

let me happen on some house where mass might be heard,

and matins in the morning; meekly I ask –

and here I utter my pater, ave

and creed.’

He rides the path and prays,