Sir Gwain and the Green Knight Translated By Simon Armitage

A poem dating from around 1400 discovered and first published in 1839. It tells the story of a giant of a man dressed in green with green hair and a green beard who suddenly appears in Camelot at the Christmas festivities of Arthur and his round table knights with his green horse carrying a huge ax. He is willing to join the Yule dinner but after the feast he throws out a strange challenge. He will kneel and bare his neck and invite any knight to take the great ax and take the first whack. The condition is that one year from now, that same knight must seek him out and allow him to do the same. Sounds suicidal on the part of the giant but Arthur and his men are cajoled into accepting and Sir Gwain does the deed. The giant loses his head but the arms feel around and pick it up whereupon the eyes open and the head speaks reminding Gwain of the bargain.
The adventures and trials and temptations of Gwain as he seeks out the Green Knight are told in the poem. On the left of each page is each line of the poem in the original Germanic Old English, on the right is the translation. Fascinating and absorbing story.