1.3 From Manannán to Bercilak:
The Green Knight and the Gaelic Otherworld-god-in-disguise

Dr Charles MacQuarrie, Department of English, California State University, Bakersfield @ Antelope Valley, 43909 30th Street West, Lancaster CA 93536, USA

Submitted 3/8/01, final text submitted 1/7/03

Summary

On the literary level of the tale, the Green Knight is Bercilak and his supernatural power is due to Morgan le Fay, but on the mythic level the riddle of the Green Knight's role in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight can best be solved by recourse to Gaelic literature. While the poet made a valiant effort to reconcile the demands of his genre with the deeper structural elements of the tale-type, compelling questions about the nature of the Green Knight remain. The results of this investigation into the nature of the Green Knight reveal, then, that his role in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is analogous to that of the Gaelic Otherworld-god-in-disguise. Furthermore, while Buchanan and others have previously noted this relationship, their choices of Cu Roí and/or the Welsh Arawn, as the primary examples of the type do not sufficiently exemplify the role of this character in the tradition. C. S. Lewis may have been essentially correct in his assertion that there is nothing really like the Green Knight, at least not in English literature; nevertheless, it is clear that there are important analogues to, and possible archetypes for, the Green Knight in the Gaelic Otherworld gods, particularly in the role of the Otherworld-god-in-disguise, and specifically as that role is filled by Manannán mac Lir.