Yvain, or the Knight With the Lion

The Lady of Noroison and her servants bathe Yvain and trim and shave his beard. He wants for nothing, and over time he recovers his strength.

Count Adler’s knights attack the territory, plundering and burning. Yvain leads a counterattack, his sword and shield downing four knights in quick succession. Heartened by Yvain’s bravery, the castle knights spur forward with renewed energy. The Lady of Noroison observes the battle from atop her castle. She and her courtiers watch as Yvain draws blood over and over. He sets among the enemy “as a lion among the deer” (108), his attacks so ferocious that he regularly breaks his lance and must call for another. 

Routed, the remainder of the enemy runs away, Yvain and the troops in hot pursuit, slaying as many of the foe as they can. Yvain catches up with Count Alier and, amid cheers, brings the vanquished leader back to the castle. The Lady of Noroison demands that the count cease making war against her and repay and repair the damage he has caused. The count submits.

The lady and her people want Yvain to stay and become the lady’s husband and rule the land, but he refuses: “Despite their pleas, he chose to leave” (111). 

Riding across country, Yvain hears a terrible cry. He follows the noise to a glen, where a fire-breathing dragon has caught a lion by the tail. Yvain decides to help the lion, “For a venomous and treacherous / Creature should be slain by us” (113). Walking forward, his shield protecting him from the dragon’s fiery breath, Yvain strikes at the creature and slices it into pieces. The dragon’s mouth is locked onto the lion’s tail, and Yvain finds he must slice off some of the tail to free the lion.

Yvain quickly steps back, anticipating a possible attack from the lion, but it simply bows down to him, and Yvain notices tears of gratitude on the beast’s face. He cleans his sword and sheathes it, mounts his horse, and rides away; the lion follows alongside him.

Soon, the lion smells prey, runs forward, then halts and looks back at Yvain for permission. Yvain urges the lion forward; the lion rushes at a lone deer, kills it, and lays it on the ground before Yvain. The knight carves out a nice hunk of venison, cooks it, eats his fill, and falls asleep on his shield. The lion dines on the rest of the deer, bones and all, then sits back, alert, and guards his new master and Yvain’s horse through the night. 

For the next two weeks, Yvain and the lion travel and hunt together. By chance, Yvain’s journey takes him to Laudine’s magic fountain. Stunned by the sudden memories, Yvain stumbles forward in a swoon, his sword falling free from its sheath, its point somehow stabbing him in the neck. The lion, thinking Yvain has been killed, moans and paws the ground in grief. Wishing to die, the lion wedges the sword in a fallen tree trunk and makes ready to fall on it, but Yvain revives and groans loudly, and the lion desists. Yvain wonders why, having ruined his own life, he shouldn’t simply kill himself. 

Lunete, lately imprisoned in the fountain chapel, hears Yvain’s moans and calls out, “Who is it who complaineth so?” (119). Yvain replies by asking who she is; she says she’s the saddest person alive. Yvain retorts that he is doubtlessly much sadder. They banter a bit, and Yvain asks why she is imprisoned. She replies that she will be put to death in the morning for treason. Only two men, she believes, can speak up for her: One is Gawain, and the other is Yvain, the cause of her impending execution.

Yvain realizes he’s speaking to Lunete, and he announces himself to her. He asks her to explain her situation. Lunete replies that, when he failed to return, Laudine became angry with her and complained to her majordomo, who resents Lunete, and he testified that she lied about Yvain to Laudine for selfish purposes. Lunete won permission to search for a champion willing to fight in her name against three other warriors, and her quest took her to King Arthur’s court. There, Lunete learned that Yvain was nowhere to be found and that Gawain was away on a search for the king’s missing wife. Empty-handed, she returned to await her fate.

Yvain declares that he will fight for her as long as she doesn’t reveal his identity. She thanks him but asks him not to take so dangerous a risk, lest she watch him die and then face her own doom on the same day. He insists since he owes her so much.

Yvain travels to a local castle, where the occupants, though nervous about his lion, bid him welcome. Strangely, their joy at having so noble a visitor is mingled with sorrow and crying. Yvain asks the baron why; he answers that a giant, Harpin of the Mountain, torments the castle and its town, stealing and burning, and has kidnapped the lord’s six sons, killing two and threatening to do the same to the rest unless the lord turns over his daughter for the giant’s amusement. 

Yvain asks if the baron has sought the aid of King Arthur’s knights, who are known for their ability and willingness to fight for good causes. The baron says that he has, indeed, asked them, as his wife is a cousin of Gawain, but that Arthur left the management of his queen’s activities to the foolish knight Kay, who let a “foreign knight” make off with her. Thus, Arthur’s warriors all are searching for her. Yvain volunteers to fight the giant as long as he can be away before noon, the time when he must defend Lunete. 

The baron presents his wife and lovely daughter, both stifling tears of sadness, to Yvain. The baron commands them to prostrate themselves before their champion, but Yvain protests, saying he would feel shame if relatives of Gawain were to abase themselves before him. He warns the ladies that, should the giant fail to appear before noon, he must leave to honor a previous promise. They understand and thank him. The wife and daughter escort Yvain and his lion to a sumptuous room, where the two travelers promptly fall asleep. Fearing the lion, the people lock the room.

The next morning, after attending Mass, Yvain waits until it’s too late to stay any longer. He informs the baron and his family that he must go. The baron offers him land and other enticements, but Yvain refuses them. The ladies tremble in terror at the prospect of his departure; Yvain, torn between his duty to Lunete and his love for Gawain and his family, delays leaving. Suddenly, the giant appears.

Harpin brings the baron’s sons, dressed in rough clothing, hands tied, riding horses whose tails have been tied together, prodded by a huge stake wielded by the giant. A little person with a hunchback walks among the sons, whipping them continuously. The giant calls out to the baron, demanding his daughter in exchange for her brothers’ lives. He taunts the lord, reminding him that his men will soon have their way with the daughter.

Yvain says he’ll do his best to make the giant pay for his vile insults. The stewards dress him in his armor, he mounts his steed, and they hand him his weapons. Yvain gallops through the gate and out to meet the giant. The lion follows.

The giant and Yvain briefly taunt each other, then Yvain stabs Harpin in the chest with his lance. The giant, bleeding, pushes back; Yvain strikes at him with his sword. Harpin swings his stake, knocking Yvain from his horse. The lion leaps at Harpin and tears a chunk from his thigh. Yvain slices an arm from the giant’s body, then drives his sword up from below and through the giant’s chest. Harpin topples forward, dead.

The castle’s people rush out to see the vanquished giant and welcome back the lord’s sons. They want Yvain to stay, but he must leave. They ask him to return when he is finished, but he can’t promise them that he’ll survive the day. He asks that they retain the giant’s little person and take him to King Arthur’s court so that Yvain’s good deeds can be known. The baron asks to whom he should give credit when addressing Gawain; Yvain replies, “The Knight of the Lion is my name” and “I know him well as he doth me” (142).

Yvain gallops back to the fountain chapel, arriving just as they’re about to light Lunete’s pyre. He shouts for them to give way, and they do. As he rides forward, he sees Laudine in the crowd, but he looks away and continues forward. He hears the stifled cries of castle ladies, who love Lunete and, losing her, will also lose her wise counsel and influence with Laudine on their behalf. 

Walking over to Lunete, Yvain lifts her up from her knees and asks to see her accusers. The Seneschal and his two brothers step forward. The Seneschal says Lunete is wicked and must be executed; he warns Yvain to leave or be killed himself. Yvain refuses. The Seneschal says that the lion may not join the fight. Yvain tells the lion to go lie down, and the lion obeys.

The Seneschal and his brothers gallop at Yvain with their lances, but they break on his shield. Yvain retreats a little, then whirls and attacks the Seneschal, stunning him and knocking him from his horse. His brothers attack Yvain with swords, but he parries them with much stronger blows. The Seneschal, recovering, returns to the fight, and Yvain is surrounded.

The ladies pray for a miracle. The lion, impatient, charges at the Seneschal, tearing his chain mail and ripping open his innards. 

Yvain tries to deter the lion, but it continues its attack and lunges after the brothers. They fight back, covering the lion with wounds. Yvain, though wounded himself, is newly angered, and he strikes at the brothers so fiercely that they back down and surrender.

Laudine orders Lunete freed, and the brothers are burned at the stake in her place. Laudine doesn’t recognize Yvain in his armor and helmet; she invites him to stay at her castle. He refuses because the one he loves is angry with him, and he cannot rest until he has returned to her good graces. She asks his name; he answers only that he is the Knight of the Lion. She wishes that he be free of his lady’s displeasure; Yvain thinks, “Lady, tis you that holds the key” (155).