Sunday 4 December 2016

Gawain 1421 - 1475, Y'all ain't gonna wanna mess with this pig.



Soon one called of a a quest by creeks side;
The hunter urged the hounds that it first declared,
Wild words he warped with a wrenched voice.
The hounds that it heard hastened there quick,
And fell as fast to the foot-path, forty at once.
Then such a clamor and cry of the crowded hounds
Rose that the rocky hills rung about them;
Hunters halooed them with horn and with mouth.
Then all assembled surged together,
Between a gulf in that forest and a fearsome crag.
In a knot by a cliff, at the creeks side,
There where the rough rocks had randomly crashed,
They fell to the finding, and footmen there after.
Then in-between the creek and the knot both,
They sought, till certain and sure that inside this place was
The beast that the baying of the bloodhounds claimed.
Then they beat on the bushes, and bid him uprise,
Unsoundly, as it turned out, for he surged through the lines;
A swine, extremely serious, slashed from the hedges,
Long cleaved from his kin-herd by claim of his age,
For he was BIG, of boars-all the greatest,
Full grim when he grunted, then grayed many men,
For at the first thrust he threw three to the earth,
And spurred off at good speed without spitting more.
Those others halloed "hyge!" full high, and "hay! hay!" cried,
Held horns to mouth, heatedly recharged;
Many was the merry mouth of men and of hounds
That breaks after this boar with bugles and noise
          to quell.
Full oft he bides the bay,
And maims the mute in the mell;
He hurts of the hounds and they
Full somberly cry and knell.


Servants to shoot at him skirmished up close,
Haled to him of their arrows, hitting him oft;
But the points would not pierce the pith of his shoulders,
And the barbs would not bite of his brow -
Though the smooth shaft sundered in pieces,
The head heaved up again where-so-ever it hit.
But when the battering blows bothered him, he burst out,
Hurts them full heartily, hoves into their crowd,
And many arsed it, and ran for their lives.
But the lord on a light horse lances him after,
As a bro bent on boldness his bugle he blows;
He resounded, and rode through hedges full rank,
Seeking this wild swine till the sun slipped away,
The day with this mad deed they drive all the while,
While our lovely lad lies in his bed,
Gawain, happy at home, in gear full rich
          of hue.
She did not give in easy
And came him to salute;
She was with him full early
His mode to renew.

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