Footnotes:
1 For a discussion of the Green Knight’s supernatural origins, see R.S. Loomis, The Development of Arthurian Romance (London, 1963). A critique of the search for historical origins is offered by Morton W. Bloomfield in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight : An Appraisal." In "Critical Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, eds. Donald R. Howard and Christian Zacher (Bloomington, 1968): 24-58:"There were various green knights and free squires running around Europe in the last half of the 14th century, and the temptation to identify one of them with Bercilak has been great. Braddy has suggested Ralph Holmes for this role and Highfield has chosen Simon Newton. In none of these cases is there any probability that, even on the basis of internal, let alone external evidence, there could be any good reason for the poet to allude to these men under the mask of Bercilak"(31).
2 Ross G. Arthur in Medieval Sign Theory and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, (Toronto, 1987), observes that: "Reconciling the readings that see the Green Knight as Lord of Hades, Ralph Holmes, and Christ, for example, would lead the critic into an agnostic morass and suggest a degree of incompetence in the poet at variance with the experience of every reader" (4).
3 Laura Hibbard Loomis "Gawain and the Green Knight." In "Critical Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, eds. Donald R. Howard and Christian Zacher (Bloomington, 1968): 157.
4 For instance specific details such as color, as well as more general elements (i.e. the beheading episode) are commonly thought to have Celtic origins. See Robert B. White Jr. in "A Note on the Green Knight’s Red Eyes." In "Critical Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, eds. Donald R. Howard and Christian Zacher (Bloomington, 1968): 224-5 : "The hyperbolic use of symbolic colors, the greenness, and the knight himself have all been traced through various sources and analogues back to similar motifs in much earlier legends, generally Celtic in origin."
5 C. S. Lewis "Viewpoints." In Twentieth Century Interpretations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Denton Fox (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968): 100.
6 Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Bloomington, 1957), classifies some of the relevant tale-types as follows: D42 God in guise of mortal; H1573.2.2 Saint tested by visit of deity in disguise; K1810 Deception by disguise; K1811 Gods (saints) in disguise visit mortals; Q1.1 Gods (saints) in disguise reward hospitality and punish inhospitality; Q66.1 Humility before saint (god) in disguise rewarded.
7 Tomás O’Cathasaigh The Heroic Biography of Cormac mac Art (Dublin, 1977): 13.
8 See O’ Cathasaigh, p. 14.
9 In the Intoxication of the Ulstermen Cu Roí is represented as Cú Chulainn’s mortal foe. In the story of the death of Cu Roí, Cú Chulainn is overcome by Cu Roí and has his hair shorn and his body smeared with cow dung, and in the Ulster Cycle a son of Cu Roí, called Lughaidh mac Con Roí, is named as the killer of Cú Chulainn. See Daithi Ó hÓgáin, Myth, Legend & Romance: An Encyclopædia of the Irish Folk Tradition (New York, 1991): 140-1.
10 These MSS are, perhaps coincidentally, nearly contemporary with the MS of SGGK (Cotton Nero A. xv).Vernam Hull in "Echtra Cormaic Maic Airt." Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 64 (1949): 871-83, linguistically dates Cuach Cormaic to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century.
11 The fact that Gawain takes over for Arthur in the initiation into wisdom which is normally reserved for a king, may imply that Gawain’s role included that of edlyng (Welsh "heir apparent") in Arthur’s court, and that he was therefore a suitable candidate for this sort of initiation. Certainly as nephew to the king he was in line for succession.
12 See Martin Puhvel, "Snow and Mist in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—Portents of the Otherworld?" In Folklore 89,(1978): 224-28. For the lines Puhvel has in mind, see Sir Gawain and the Green Knight edited by Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron in The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript (Berkeley, 1978):207-300;
pe heuen watz vphalt, bot vgly per-vnder;
Mist muges on pe mor, malt on e mountez,
Vch hille hade a hatte, a myst-hakel huge(2079-81).
13 According to this reading the Green Knight would have anticipated both that Arthur himself would respond to his challenge and that Gawain would interpose himself between Arthur and the unknown danger.
14 See Alice Buchanan, "The Irish Framework of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Publications of the Modern Language Association 47 (1932): 324; and Robin Flower in Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol 2 (London, 1926): 340.
15 The Green Knight is in fact named as a king in line 992 of the manuscript though most editors have chosen to emend "kyng" to "lord" here for the sake of the alliteration.
16 See White, pp. 224-5
17 Another common process, "demonisation", though it did not occur to any great extent to Manannán, seems to have affected the description of the Green Knight to some extent. John Spiers points out that: "Recently Christianised peoples could not at once imagine their old gods as not existing; the gods persisted, though outlawed by the Christian Church and turned into devils." ("Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." In Scrutiny 16 (1949): 274-300. P. 297 fn.19).
18 Duanaire Finn: The Book of the Lays of Fionn: Volume 2, edited and translated by Gerard Murphy (Dublin, 1933): 241, Murphy dates the poems to the "classical" period 1400-c.1500, vol 3 (1953) -- (CXVI-II).
19 See Murphy 1933, p. 245.
20 Tóraighecht in Ghilla Dhecair ocus a chapaill in so (or In Gilla Decair); Eachtra [Imtheachta] An Cheithearnaigh Chaoilriabhaigh (or Cetharnach ui Dhomnaill "O’Donnel’s Kern"); Bodach an Chota Lachtna ("The Carle of the Coat"); ed. & trans. by Standish H. O’Grady in Silva Gadelica (London, 1892). Irish texts in volume 1 appear on pages 256-75, 276-89, and 289-96. The O’Grady’s English translations appear in volume 2 on pages 292-311, 311-324, and 324-331 respectively.
21 Flower, Robin. Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum. Volume II. London: British Museum, 1926. 340, 350.
22 Although the bodach’s identity is not revealed to be Manannán at the end of the redaction included in Silva Gadelica, he is so revealed in other versions, including the early eighteenth-century manuscript British Library Additional 31,877 and a nineteenth century Manx text. See "Boddagh yn Cooat Laaghagh," ed. George Broderick in Béaloideas 51 (1983): 1-10.
23 The yellow colour of Manannán in that tale is, of course comparable to the green of the Green Knight. In fact, the Green Knight’s colour is considered by some to be evidence of Celtic influence. See Broderick, 1-10.
24 An example of this type of punning soubriquet is discussed by Robin Flower The Irish Tradition (Oxford, 1947): 70-1. He points out that the soubriquet used by Oengus in a tale from the Yellow Book of Lecan is Fedbadach mac Feda Ruscaig which "might mean either ‘Woodman son of Barked Wood’, or in the literary language ‘Man of Letters son of Poetic Letter.’" Like Manannán in his roles as Otherworld-god-in-disguise, Oengus who appears to be a "clodpoll of a savage" with a "bill-hook in one hand and in the other a beef" reveals his true identity and his connection with the literary tradition at the end of the tale.
My claim that Ábhartach mac Ildathaig is another forainm for Manannán in The Pursuit of the Troublesome Churl is not without its difficulties and will strike some as overly reductionist. Ábhartach is not a well defined character and he is usually named in connection with Manannán -- as in Altrom Tige Dá Medar ("The Fostering of the House of Two Vessels") edited by Lilian Duncan in Ériu 11 (1932): 184-225, where he is one of the nobles appointed by Manannán to the síd. He also appears in Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghrainne, edited by Nessa Ní Seaghda (Dublin, 1967): 52, where he is named beside Manannán as one of the players in a mortals versus Tuatha Dé Danann hurling match; and in "Two Skilful Musicians" edited by Cuthbert MacGrath in Éigse 7(1952-3); 84-94, where he is named as a síd-dweller and apparently a child of Manannán (88 & 92). However, he is also named independently of Manannán in two instances that I know of. The first in Cath Muige Tured Cunga "The First Battle of Moytura" ed. and trans. by John Fraser in Ériu 7, (1916): 48; and the second in Cath Finntrá "the battle of Ventry" ed. and trans. by Kuno Meyer in Anecdota Oxoniensa, Medieval and Modern Series 1, part 4 (Oxford 1885): l. 266. See also Dictionary of the Irish Language (Dublin 1983), for the speculation that the word abairt and the name Ábhartach are "presumably distinct" (2).
25 "The reading of this name is due to Gallancz. Early editors printed Bernlak, but Hulbert observed that it was either Bertilak or Bercilak, and preferred the latter (Manly Anniversary Studies, p. 12). Gollancz thought the doubtful letter was t rather than c, and appears to be right. This form of the name fits the other occurrences of what is apparently the same name, Bertolais in OFr. Vulgate cycle (Bertolais is nom.; the ac. was Bertolai, earlier –lac) and Bertelak in the ME. translation of Merlin ed. H. B. Wheatley, E.E.T.S. 10, 21 (2nd ed., 1875, 1877)). None of the knights bearing the name (which is apparently of Celtic origin) can be identified with the Green Knight." J.R.R. Tolkien, E.V. Gordon, and Norman Davis, eds., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989. Pages 128-9 fn.2445.
26 Buchanan 1932, p.316-7. The character who plays the role of the Green Knight in the related French romances, such as La Damoisele á la mule is a "vilain". In the related Middle English tales he is a "carl" or a "churl". The equation of Bercilak and bachlach, however, is, admittedly problematic; it can not, in fact, be explained as the result of expected sound changes, though it might result, as Buchanan suggests, from substitution. Because there are so few borrowings from Irish into French it is difficult to find any good analogies. Buchanan’s theory seems to be that Bercilak might have been substituted by a French speaker as a relatively close approximation of bachlach (perhaps bachlach /baxlax/ to Bercilak /berkIlaek/ via a nonsense French form like /*barklaek/ + svarabhakti, which was taken to be a personal name rather than as a descriptive noun. Clearly this argument is not provable, and perhaps improbable, but it is certainly less strange than other word substitutions between languages that we know to be true (see for example J.N. Adams’s discussions of name borrowing from Latin to Celtic and vice versa in Bilingualism and the Latin Language, Cambridge UP, 2003). Though the Bercilak/bachlach connection is tenuous, it is the best suggestion I have come across for the supposed original Celtic name which underlies Bercilak/Bertilak. See note 25 above.
27 In the Dictionary of the Irish Language (Dublin, 1983) bachlach is defined as: "(a) rustic, servant, laborer, serf, bondsman. (b) As term of contempt clown, churl, ignorant person. botach (bodach) -- serf; rustic, peasant. gilla -- (d) a servant, a gillie, a messenger (61).
28 Heinrich Zimmer in The King and the Corpse (New York, 1943), observes that: "The Green Knight, for example, before dismissing Gawain, opens his visor and discloses his true face, his hidden character and significance; yet the name that he announces is not his true nomen. He introduces himself merely as Bernlak de Hautdesert, ‘Bernlak of the Lofty Desert’. Still another joke of disguise, played this time not on the hero alone but on the readers and poets too"(80).
29 Sanas Cormaic ed. and trans. by Kuno Meyer in Anecdota from Irish Manuscripts 1, (Halle and Dublin 1912): 78; and Cóir Anmann ed. and trans. by Whitley Stokes in Three Irish Glossaries, (London, 1892): 356.
30 A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, edited by Angus McIntosh, et. al. (Aberdeen, 1986): 3.
31 Auvo Kurvinen, in Sir Gawain and The Carl of Carlisle in Two Versions (Helsinki, 1951), summarized the Scandinavian and Celtic elements in SGGK and later Middle English tales which are clearly related to it, such as the Carl of Carlisle and The Turke and Gowin (105-7).
32 The Green Knight’s chapel is similar in some respects to a Manx keeill, an earthen and/or stone church (seventh to twelfth centuries), usually built near a stream and found throughout the island. See R. H. Kinvig, The Isle of Man: A Social, Cultural, and Political History (Liverpool, 1975): 47-8.
33 Andrew Breeze’s "Was Sir John Stanley the Gawain Poet?" The Plantagenet Connection. 1999. Vol. 6:139-46.
34 See note 28.
35 Such an alteration is not as unusual as we might imagine. Larry D. Benson, in Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New Brunswick, 1965) outlines the situation thus: "If the medieval romancer had little of the modern novelist’s fear of plagiarism, he had even less of the modern scholar’s respect for the integrity of his sources. Perhaps this is partly a matter of definition, because to the medieval writer the faithful transmission of a tale meant simply repeating the main outline of the action.... More sophisticated writers, like the Gawain-poet, made their changes more boldly, preserving most of the old materials but greatly modifying their function and meaning" (9).
36 Morgan, while not the ideal explanation for the Otherworld-god-in-disguise, was the best option available to the Gawain-poet. As Dennis Moore observes in "Making Sense of an Ending: Morgan Le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Mediaevalia 10, (1984): "These conflicting views of Morgan’s nature in Gawain will surprise no one familiar with the way she haunts the periphery of Arthurian romance, a cryptic figure displaying such varied attributes that Roger S. Loomis called her ‘a female pantheon in miniature’" (227).
37 See A. C. Spearing Readings in Medieval Poetry (Cambridge, 1987): "One purpose of these explanations [of Morgan and Bercilak] is surely to give the effect of closure; though a little reflection discloses that the explanation is badly in need of being explained" (202).
38 Clinton Machann "A Structural Study of the English Gawain Romances," Neophilologus 66, (1982): 629-37, effectively distinguishes two levels of the text: "To identify underlying intermediate structures such as the sequences of functions within the Gawain romances and move toward the more abstract constituent units of opposition is to consider the text or set of texts as myth. On the other hand, to move in the opposite direction, to approach the surface of the individual text and to analyse the various codes whereby its language carries meanings is to consider the text as literature. The full consideration of a text as literature and as myth is dependent upon the intention of the reader-analyst and his ability to read the codes on various levels according to rules provided by various levels of ‘culture’" (636).
39 For parallels between Arawn and the Green Knight see Laura Hibbard Loomis "Gawain and the Green Knight". In Critical Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, eds. Donald R. Howard and Christian Zacher (Bloomington, 1968: 3-23).