395: Breton folklore: Darkest Knight

disclaimer, there is an instance of sexual assault this week on the podcast.

Please see the post on mythpodcast.com for more info.

This week, on Myths and Legends, it's the story of a medieval knight from France.

We'll see how you'll want to get that murderous joust out of the way before leaving on that big trip and how snapping a horse in half like a Kit Kat bar might just help you find your biological father.

The creature this week thinks you are so funny until you bite into its face.

This is Myths and Legends, episode 395, Darkest Night.

This is a podcast where we tell stories from mythology and folklore.

Some are incredibly popular tales you might think you know, but with surprising origins.

Others are stories that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen.

Today's story is a translation of a Breton lay from the High Middle Ages, for Brittany, an area of modern-day France.

It's a story of the supernatural, of knights and chivalry and growth, and over-protective murder dads.

An additional content warning this week.

If you speak French, you should be warned that I tried my hand at the supposed French pronunciation of today's protagonist's name.

Not sure that it went well, but it was fun to try and hopefully better than if I just called him Dagari.

The prince galloped in, and the light glinting off his armor made him look like an angel riding into the Breton keep.

Wordlessly, the grooms of the stable took his horse by the bridle, and the old hinges creaked as the watchman pushed open the door to the courtyard without even asking the man what business he had with the king.

Because when the prince looked that rich and handsome, he didn't need to answer to anyone but the man he came to visit, the king himself.

The prince strode into the throne room to the king sitting on his throne.

Bowing and removing his helmet, his hair spilled out onto his armor in a way that made it look somehow both meticulously done and completely effortless.

Scurrying up, the silken-shirted lackey that hadn't stopped with the rest of the men in town announced that the prince, the son of the emperor, had come seeking the princess's hand in marriage.

The king thought about it.

He rose.

I am honored, young man, that you would come seeking my daughter's hand.

Fight me, the king said.

The prince chuckled.

Um, he must have misheard the king.

The king couldn't possibly want the prince to fight him.

No, you didn't mishear.

If you heard, fight me, that's pretty much the gist, the king waved.

His servant rushed in with the shirt they fetched as soon as the fantastically handsome, archetypal prince rode through the front gate.

The king had sent it to the 15th century French equivalent of the dry cleaners to get the blood out.

There was a lot of blood.

Incensed, the prince demanded an explanation.

Did the king have any idea who he was, who his father was?

Nope, the king shrugged.

You fight me and win my daughter's hand, and then I remember your name.

That's how this works, the king scoffed.

Do you want to know how long the list of prince names I have to remember is?

The king said in an obvious rhetorical taunt.

Because if the princess was single, the answer was zero!

The king beamed.

He had remembered zero names, and he wasn't going to start now.

Let's get this going.

An hour later, the prince flew from his horse, him and his armor clattering on the ground.

While the prince's men tried and failed to rouse him, the king tossed aside his broken lance.

All right, he was glad that was out of the way.

You hate to have this stuff hanging over your head before you leave on a trip.

Why are we leaving so late this year?

The princess asked the king, as she trotted next to him, the keep and the walls shrinking on the horizon behind them.

Oh, just

no reason.

Boring state business, the king said.

It was another suitor, wasn't it?

The princess asked.

It was another suitor, the king admitted.

You can meet them.

If they beat me.

I haven't met one yet, the princess furrowed a brow.

And you never will, the king beamed as the forest approached.

He sighed at the silence that followed.

Okay, look, I know you want to have a life and get married and everything.

I just, it's...

You know what marriage leads to.

It leads to kids, the king said, and then looked off on the forest path to the trees.

I'm not going to end up...

I'm not mom, the princess managed, knowing what would follow.

They had this conversation every year since she came of age to marry.

Every year it went the same way.

The dad waxed nostalgic about the mother she never got to know, barked about maternal mortality rates, and then retreated into his grief.

At the end of it all, she gave him some time to ride alone and dropped back past the chamberlain and the others to her ladies.

It's not that she didn't mourn her mother, it's she just didn't feel the same way as her dad.

It was hard for her to miss someone she never knew.

And even though she knew her dad meant well, she wanted a life beyond his walls.

She was in her late teens, more than old enough to start a family of her own.

She dropped back to her ladies behind the father's chamberlain, and she talked with the three other girls, who encouraged her to work it out with her father.

Even though it had been years ago, he was still grieving and she should be understanding.

She agreed.

The princess would ride up and talk to her dad, and her ladies would follow out of support.

On their ride up, a call went out.

They were taking a break to, well, the king had to pee.

Tight 15, everyone, and then it was back on the road.

The princess said she could do with the bathroom break herself.

She dismounted, and she and her ladies made their way into the forest.

Um, where did everyone go?

The princess emerged to what she thought was the road.

It was only when it wasn't full of the king and his courtiers, knights, and servants that they realized it wasn't much of a road at all.

Really just a wide space between trees, which is necessary but not sufficient for a road.

They had been left behind.

The princess quickly deduced what happened.

The chamberlain thought she was with her father and her father with her ladies.

Their horses had followed the group when they saw the others leaving.

The group wouldn't know the princess wasn't with them until they reached the abbey.

That would be hours, and then it would be hours back to them, and Yeah, I'm taking a nap, one of the princess's ladies said.

What?

Oh, good idea, another lady said.

No, it's it's not.

We're lost in the forest, the princess pointed out.

The ladies looked at her, and what could they do about that again?

Nothing?

So they'd wedge in a nap before the others came back for them.

No reason to stress about something they couldn't control, so they'd do the exact opposite of stress.

They'd nap.

But we're in the woods.

You'll get bugs all over yourself, the princess protested.

But the ladies only laughed.

It must be different being a princess, because they lived in the Middle Ages.

There weren't screens.

They all had bugs on themselves all the time.

They asked to be awoken when their rescuers arrived.

Night.

For her part, the princess did try to sleep, but she couldn't quite get over the thought of some wild animal coming upon them in the forest while they were in their absolute most vulnerable state.

So she woke and began to pace.

Her pacing became wider and wider, hoping to pick up some form of trail, but if they had found the road, they couldn't even be sure it was the right one.

Then she turned and turned again as the icy fingers of fear found her neck.

Oh

oh no, she was lost.

Her ladies were not the best in the woods, but it was still nice to have someone.

Now, though, she was alone.

Lost in the forest, as the space between the trees and the wood stretched off in all directions and began to darken.

At the height of her terror, when she was reeling and things seemed the most hopeless, he

arrived.

At night.

He seemed to ride through the trees without touching them, seemingly unwilling to lower himself to be troubled by branches or leaves.

His armor shimmered, and the scarlet cloak rippled in the breeze.

She rushed over to him, beaming.

When he removed his helmet, she didn't recognize him.

He wasn't one of her father's men, but it didn't matter.

He was a knight.

A gentleman, a man of honor.

There was something...

different

about him.

His skin seemed to glow with an almost otherworldly radiance.

He was beautiful, of course, but this didn't mean anything for the princess other than the fact that these were, remember, the Middle Ages, and beautiful meant good.

She could feel her anxiety beginning to fade.

She said her father and his men they left without her, and that a noble knight would find her was truly fortunate.

She didn't know what dangers lurked in the forest, but she was glad he was here.

It wasn't that, the man smiled, seeming to sing his words, even though they were normal speech.

Fortune, that is, it wasn't that, that, the man said again.

She said, it's just something that you say.

It was Providence, of course, God.

They were on their way to mass.

They were all very religious.

It's not God either, the man said.

It was me.

She didn't understand.

He began to circle her, his horse seemingly less like a lifeline and more...

looming.

He said he had been watching from the forest as she passed by with her father.

All the talk of suitors for such a beautiful young woman,

how she was ready for so much more.

In this land, the magic came easy, speeding up time for her father while slowing it down for her, making all of her ladies drowsy, opening up some paths and closing others, all so that they could be alone.

Her smile had long since faded, and the princess paused for only a moment before she bolted.

She made it to the edge of the clearing before she heard the shuffling of his steel armor and the swish of his cloak, but he was right.

The path she had come in on was gone.

It was a wall of branches and brambles.

She threw herself into them, and they tore at her dress and skin as they seemed to get thicker the further she pressed on.

But she wouldn't stop.

He would have to drag her from the tangle.

And he did.

She kicked, she bit, she threw dirt in his eyes, but she was overmatched.

His magic was so powerful that her screaming didn't wake the ladies.

The man rose without a word.

The princess sat up and pulled the twigs from her hair.

He ruffled through the packs on the other side of his horse and lifted a sword in its scabbard.

Ah, here we are.

He drew it, and it was missing the top two inches.

I broke it while fighting a giant.

No other sword in the world like it, the fairy knight said, the blade slicing the air.

The princess truly, deeply, did not care.

She just wanted to leave.

Take it, he said, sheathing it and tossing it to her feet.

Her eyes steamed with vitriol.

Take it.

The voice was no longer an offer, but a command.

When he took a step toward her, her hands scooped up the sword.

Give it to my son, the knight commanded.

If he comes to meet me, I'll recognize him by it.

With that, the knight bowed his head a little, smiled, and said he must go.

Farewell.

He left as he arrived, seeming to float between the trees.

I need you to keep this.

Hide it among your things, the princess said when she returned to the others, who had awoken mere moments before.

The girl looked at her mistress through the sleep in her eyes.

A sword?

Why would she...

Then she saw the princess's face,

the streaks of dirt on her cheeks.

Yeah, absolutely.

There was no time to talk about it, even if the princess had wanted to, because hooves pounded on the path, and soon her father's knights loomed over them.

Squires, but thanks, the men said.

They had been looking for the women for hours.

They brought horses.

The princess insisted on mounting her horse herself and together they all rode for the abbey to say prayers for her mother.

We'll see what happens when the princess returns home, but that will be right after this.

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I have your sword, one of the princess's ladies said through the crack of the open door, her foot catching it as the princess tried to close it.

Do you want to talk about anything?

The woman asked, hopefully not losing a toe in the process.

It's not my sword, the princess said and kept pushing.

I know.

It's the father's, the lady said.

There was a pause on the other side and the door relaxed.

Can I come in?

The princess stepped aside.

After she finished explaining what happened, her lady looked at the growing bump.

Yeah, that's...

that's a development.

Okay, well, now she wasn't alone.

Princess had her.

No one can know.

The only man I see is my father.

People will think this is his, the princess cried.

I mean,

probably

not,

right?

I know it's in the original, that's, but why would that be the first place people go before a tryst with a forbidden lover or a guard or something like that?

Anyway, no worries.

She wasn't alone anymore.

No one would know.

And no one did.

For the next several months, the princess was grateful for her friend who did everything she needed.

Her father happened to be traveling the kingdom, and since no one had the authority to barge into the princess's quarters, the secret was kept, even through tears and anguish, as, having only her lady in waiting to help, the princess gave birth in the room.

It was a boy.

She loved him, she did, but he couldn't stay.

I know just the place, the lady said, swaddling the boy.

They prepared a basket for him, tucking four pounds of gold and ten pounds of silver in the bottom, which, combined with a five to eight-pound baby, made for a heavy basket.

But that wasn't all she was putting in.

Gloves?

Gloves.

The princess's face soured.

They were

a gift from the baby's father.

From Fairyland.

The gloves would only fit her, the princess, the mother.

As if she needed to test it, the lady tried on the gloves and wow, they had the same sized hands, but the gloves didn't fit at all.

Put them in, the princess said.

It was a reminder of the boy's father, and they would be more useful to the boy anyway.

She wrote a note explaining the gloves and the baby, that she prayed good people would find her son and look after him.

The baby was quiet as the lady in waiting stole out of a side door and to the waiting horse.

The princess, alone in her tower and mourning the child she wouldn't go a day without thinking of,

was not.

Because the night was cold, the lady could gallop across the fields without worry that anyone would accost her.

Even the brigands took such a frigid night off.

She left the horse 20 paces from the stone house, and the baby was stretching and squirming in the basket when she arrived at the door of the hermit's shack.

She set the baby down, stroked his face one last time, knocked on the door, and ran.

Looking behind her and seeing the cracks of the door glowing with the light of the lantern behind it, She found her horse, mounted it, and was out of the forest before the door opened.

Back at the shack, the hermit looked down.

Um

did.

Did someone forget their baby?

Three days of being a new parent, and the hermit was quickly out of his depth.

I'm pretty sure every new parent has been there.

I mean, every other new parent that wasn't a 40-something guy living alone in the forest who, when it came to being a parent, was very much not expecting in any sense of the word.

He had two choices, abandon his hermitage and seek help, or continue to raise the baby here, alone.

Not even needing to think twice, he slung the baby over his chest, grabbed his meager possessions of the forest, and went to his chapel.

Now, As much as I wanted the sitcom of a bunch of medieval French priests raising a baby together, with all the hilarious hijinks that ensue.

Fatherhood was the best name I could come up with, they knew their limits.

Thankfully, the hermit's sister was a merchant, and she and her husband had been trying to no avail.

They took the baby in, and...

De Gaulle, the sister said, taking the baby from the hermit?

Really?

You named him essentially unknown?

Which, yeah, that's what De Gaulle meant.

The priests were very much fish out of water.

That show would have been hilarious.

Would have gone for six seasons in a movie.

The deal was that they would raise little De Gaulle, which was like naming a kid John Doe, except even less creative.

But anyway, they would raise De Gaulle for ten years and then send him back to the Abbey, when he could talk and wasn't so sticky and squirmy.

And so little De Gaulle grew up in the care of the merchant couple, believing them to be his parents, and the less and less accurately named Hermit to be his uncle.

When he was ten, he went to be educated by the hermit in, quote, clerical lore, living at the abbey with the the priests.

Then, on his 20th birthday, his uncle sat him down.

He had something to tell the boy.

An hour later, both De Gaulle and the hermit dried their eyes.

The hermit said there wasn't a day that went by that he wasn't grateful for whoever left Daga at his doorstep in the woods.

His life was fuller and richer for his role in raising the boy, but if it were him,

he felt like he would want to know.

So he figured Daga would want to know.

De Gaulle always knew that he was different from his family, in that he looked nothing like his family and was a whole head taller than his adoptive father by the time he was 15.

He told his uncle, and he would tell his parents, that it in no way minimize their role.

They would always be his parents, but he wanted to know.

He tucked the gloves into his pack alongside half the gold and silver.

His parents didn't need it, but the Abbey could use it.

Above his uncle's protests that he required the gold for horses and provisions and such, De Gaulle wouldn't hear it.

The story tells us that they both wept as De Gaulle made his way into the forest to find his birth parents.

De Gaulle's ears pricked up as he heard the knights.

Heard the knights dying.

He had already seen their horses bolt on the path and pass him, and if he had known the owners were literally being torn to pieces, he might have tried to catch one.

But he didn't know the knight's fates until he peeked in the clearing and saw the last, limping away with one of his legs torn to pieces, the poison already visibly setting in.

The man fell to the ground under the dragon's pounce, and his last cries were silenced by the monster's teeth.

De Gal backed away slowly.

Well,

No need to get involved in any of this.

Then he heard the whimper, the soft soft weeping of the man barely hiding under the pile of his dead servants.

From the cut of the cloth alone, Tagal could tell the man was an earl.

And he wasn't the only one who heard the whimpering.

The dragon froze, listened, and turned, its eyes zeroing in on the pile of the half-eaten knights and the relatively plump, unarmored treat within.

Salivating, the dragon sniffed and trotted toward the Earl, whose eyes widened in terror as the dragon charged, opened up, and dropped.

De Gaulle had moved so quickly that neither the dragon nor the Earl knew what had happened until it was over.

And De Gaulle's club was dripping blood.

Who are you?

The Earl trembled.

De Gaulle, the young man replied.

You

unknown?

You don't know?

The Earl squinted.

No.

De Gaulle.

Yeah, that's what I said, the Earl noted before the dragon at his side began to stir.

Oh, it's not dead.

It's not dead.

After a few more blood splats and a lot more club strikes, the dragon was truly, finally dead.

And the Earl was in De Gaulle's debt.

De Gaulle could have anything he wanted.

Ladies?

De Gaulle asked.

The Earl kinda grimaced.

Awkward, but

anything means anything.

He noticed it was plural, which was even more problematic, but the young man was going to need to be more specific.

All the ladies of your earldom, De Gaulle said.

The Earl said now that was actually going to be an issue.

They were probably going to get some pushback on that.

Ladies, to wear my glove.

De Gaulle held up a glove.

The Earl didn't know what that was a euphemism for and frankly didn't need to, not judging.

Sure, they would find some ladies to

wear his glove.

On the way back, the Earl was relieved to know that it wasn't a euphemism.

Like drawing the sword from the stone, or anvil, or Cinderella's slipper, the glove was only meant for one person, De Gaulle's biological mother.

So for the next few months, every woman in the earldom came from places near and far and nothing.

The glove didn't fit a single person.

As the consolation prize, De Gaulle, who had become quite close with the Earl and his daughter at that time, got a sword, a horse, and a set of armor for saving the man, and they wished him luck in finding his mom.

What's uh

what's all this?

De Gaulle asked the peasant, who looked up and down and then averted his eyes out of deference.

Oh, the line.

The line's over there, sir.

De Gaulle thanked the man and went to the line.

It was probably the shortest possible line.

Two people.

It became three, but then went back to two, when one knight ran off screaming, saying he couldn't do it.

What's uh

what's all that about?

De Gaulle asked the man in front of him, the first in line, who smirked, Oh, him, he couldn't take it.

Take what exactly?

What is this line for?

De Gaulle learned that it was for the princess, more specifically for her hand.

Whoever beat the king got to marry the princess.

It had been going on for twenty plus years now.

Whole generations of knights were dead by this guy's hand.

Until today, that is, because the knight at the front of the line would defeat him.

His older brother had been lost to this king twenty-five years prior, and he had been raised and trained with a singular purpose.

Kill the king that had devastated their line.

He was twenty-three.

The king was pushing sixty.

It wouldn't even be a fair fight.

And it wasn't.

The knight was dead before he hit the ground, the king's lance going straight through his head.

Time out, time out, the king cried.

Need to hydrate.

Killing all these twenty-somethings wasn't difficult, but it was work, you know?

Like, you can do what you love, but it's still a job.

While De Gaulle waited, he saw the armorer who looked him over.

Good quality stuff, who trained him?

Nobody, De Gaulle noted.

The armorer blanked, okay.

How many tournaments had he won?

He was still young, but even at twenty there had to be some.

Oh, none at all.

I've never even held a lance.

Pointy end goes out, right?

I joke.

But that is about the level of my expertise, De Gaulle informed the horrified armorer.

Why are you even doing this?

the man asked as the king rode back out.

Well, De Gaulle said as he put his helmet on, I have nothing.

I figure, I guess, that it's better to try to be someone, and if I fail, I won't even shame my family, because I don't even know who they are.

That sounds sad and dark, the armorer sighed.

Still, though, he was the first guy who wasn't an absolute jerk to him this week, so he was pulling for Daga.

All right, calling it, the king cried out to the people in attendance.

Market, I've been doing a lot of eye and body stuff.

I'm going to break this kid's neck.

Spice it up a bit.

And this is in the original.

The king was calling his murders, and it's basically that.

Customs and rules varied across Europe, but it was very much not sporting to maim or kill opponents in tournaments.

That being said, absolute monarchy is absolute monarchy.

And these guys weren't related to the local nobles, so the nobles didn't have literal skin in that game, and opted instead to choose their battles.

Thus, all the death.

The Gaul was slow to get going.

He had only ever seen one joust, that one just now, and never taken part in one.

And when the lance hit his head, he took it very nearly on the chin.

And the lance shattered, and he didn't move at all.

The king was stunned.

The people were shocked.

De Gaulle was a little sore, but looked around.

Did I...

did I joust good?

Okay, um,

back this time.

The king would break his back.

He rounded the edge of the field with his horse and broke off into a gallop.

De Gaulle, wondering if jousting was sitting there and taking life-threatening hits, I guess, felt the next lance shatter on his chest armor.

The crowd was beginning to turn, though, in favor of De Gaulle, and they were crying out for him to do something.

Why wasn't he fighting?

De Gaulle slapped the armored gauntlet against his forehead.

Fight back, of course.

After getting hit so many times, he was pretty sure he knew how this worked.

And he did.

He spurred his horse onto a canter, and even though the king was in a full gallop, De Gaulle hit him in the chest, and the king fell from his horse.

Skidding to the ground, the whole of the stadium was in stunned silence.

It happened.

It finally

happened.

The king sat up, pointing a shaking finger at De Gaulle.

That man was Samson.

He was a devil.

He was perfect for the king's little girl.

Little girl, isn't she like...

Pushing 40?

One peasant whispered to a frown.

His companion said, this is a special day.

the princess is getting married.

Let people enjoy things, Jacques.

You might know who De Gaulle is marrying, but he sure doesn't.

That will, once again, be right after this.

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Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

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What a day.

DeGaulle laughed.

He unhorses the princess's dad in the morning, gets married in the afternoon, and now,

wedding night.

Not where he expected to be this morning when he woke up in a ditch.

Not by a long shot.

Are you gonna unpack?

The princess said, sitting awkwardly on the bed.

DeGaulle rolled his eyes.

Okay, mom.

She pursed her lips and started unpacking his bag for him, while he started undoing his shirt.

He said he knew they just met like 10 minutes before the wedding, so he understood there would be some getting to know each other.

He sat down on the bed and started stroking her back.

They didn't need to jump right in.

In fact, he wasn't exactly sure 100% on what it was.

He was raised in a monastery, so this would be a day full of all sorts of firsts.

He noticed that she was shaking and he gasped, standing up.

Whoa, sorry, no, they could take it so slow.

He could sleep on the floor, even, and

oh, weird reaction to gloves.

Yeah, those were gloves that would only fit his birth mom, who left him at the door of a hermitage, the princess said, as she slipped on the gloves.

The gall said, yeah, how did she

know?

Wait, how did those fit?

She turned and tears ran down her face.

Oh my gosh.

Mom?

The gall met her tears and then recoiled.

Oh my my gosh.

We almost...

Oh, gross, gross, gross.

Oh, my gosh.

I would have like clawed my eyes out.

She didn't care, though.

She said she had thought about him every day and he was here.

She held out her arms and he ran to her embrace.

And then both of their eyes opened.

Yeah, let's...

let's hug over there and maybe not on the bed.

That was still way too real.

You had a child?

The king stood, his chest heaving.

The princess looked at the floor.

She could explain.

It happened when she was separated from the group on their way.

This is amazing.

The king hustled down the stone steps and drew them both into his arms.

She said, Amazing?

He's not mad?

Why would I be mad?

You had a child and you didn't die.

That's all I ever wanted, was you not dead?

Who's the papa?

She explained what happened on that horrible day in the forest.

Oh, okay, well, I'm going to murder him, the king said.

You you're gonna kill my father?

Dagal asked.

The room turned to the twenty-year-old.

The king

the king said he was just angry.

No.

Sorry, he wouldn't murder him.

'Cause murder implied that it was a crime when really it was just a very delayed execution.

The kid could go find his pop-pop.

The princess stepped forward.

She only had one thing of his, one way to find him.

She showed her son the sword.

It was missing its tip, but it was otherwise beautiful.

De Gaulle held it aloft and swung it through the air.

He stood up straighter.

Now that he had the sword, he would not rest, night or day, until he found his father.

I don't know if the poem is trying to be funny, but it explicitly says he slept in the city that night immediately after that.

He also went to mass and prepared himself and got started about noon, noon thirty.

He rode west to the forest in which he was conceived.

For weeks he traveled back and forth sleeping on the ground, but nothing.

Soon he emerged out to the other side to see a limestone castle.

He sighed.

It would be good to go rest in an actual bed.

He rode for the castle, calling out his name and his lineage and asking if he might sleep there, and the drawbridge went down.

He led his horse in and, letting go of the reins, he turned and saw it being led into the stables.

He walked through the vacant town and the castle and found a fire crackling inside.

Okay?

He sat down and waited for whoever owned this place.

Oh, hi, the gal called out to the three maidens with bows and arrows, as they tried to sneak through the room behind him.

The three with the deer were next, and then the mythological dwarf stomped over and barred the door behind them.

What's happening?

De Gaull looked around.

Was he supposed to ask what was going on or not ask?

Was he being percivaled?

Ten more maidens arrived from up in the castle and then, behind them all, the lady of the castle.

De Gaull was instantly entranced, but not in a magic way.

The group sat down at the table where they served the deer and they cooked the foraged vegetables from the forest and there was an extra seat.

The mythological dwarfs scowled at him, but he sat down anyway and quickly tore into the meat and drank the wine.

After dinner, still with no one talking to him, the Gaul followed the people back into the room with the harp and the couch and the wine and several days sleeping in the forest cashing in their debt, sleep found him.

And the following morning, slaps found him.

Oh, so you can't talk, but you can slap?

The Gaul asked.

The lady said that she could also talk.

Why was he not defending her maidens?

Get ready to go.

Degaulle looked left and right.

Was that something that was expected of him?

He had no idea what was going on.

What was she talking about?

You deserve to suffer shame, she seethed in the original.

De Gaulle groaned.

Okay, seriously, what was going on?

Who is the lord of this land and who holds this castle?

And like, what was...

What was her deal?

Was she like a wife?

A widow?

Kind of doing the single thing?

She began to weep.

She said her father had been a great baron, and she was his only child.

There was a knight who had been in love with her for a long time.

He was strong.

One day, tired of her rejecting him because he had repeatedly vowed to murder anyone that stood in his way, he killed the baron on the open field, who rode out to warn him to leave and never return.

After that, he came for the castle to take her by force.

The knights all died that day.

The squires fought him four or five at a time, and they died, all the archers, the pages, and after that anyone who could be seen as standing against him fled in the night.

It was just her and a handful of her most loyal ladies.

The dwarf let De Gaulle in, maybe in hopes that he could stand against the knight, but now they feared that they had no hope.

The knight would be back.

He would gain entrance to the castle, and he would kill every one who remained and take her.

No, no, he will not, De Gaulle stood.

He would fight this shameful knight.

He had done a fight exactly one time before.

How hard could this be?

Not that hard, actually.

In fact, kind of easy.

De Gaulle was finding he had a real knack for fighting, much to his delight.

And to the horror of everyone who watched a full-grown horse getting snapped in half.

Yeah, it turns out the knight that killed everyone was no joke.

When De Gaulle hit him, it was like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object because the knight did not move.

Unfortunately, he was riding on a horse that was very movable, and, yes, the blow snapped the horse in half.

To the murderer knight's credit, even after killing an entire town, he wouldn't slay De Gaulle's horse.

De Gaulle dismounted, and the battle began.

If you can't tell, I kind of became bored with battles around episode...

30.

We did Kukullen, we did Balin vs.

Balin.

Even Sir Thomas Mallory in Arthurian legend seems to start phoning it in, too, with comparing everything to bears and boars.

Basically, a battle happened.

They hacked away at each other.

Quote, the knight gave Sir De Gaulle stern strokes, great plenty, and he him again also.

Those are direct quotes, by the way.

This was a fun read.

The fight was closer than when De Gaulle fought his grandfather.

And as I'm saying that, it really feels like that should have been the case.

Even though he was bleeding, De Gaulle managed to put his blunt sword through the challenger's helmet.

The keep was safe.

So there are a few interpretations when it comes to what happened next.

When the lady of the castle pulled De Gaulle into her bedroom and began pulling off his no-doubt blood-splattered plate armor, telling him he could, for charity's sake, dwell with her, and she would give him her land and herself while she lived.

Maybe it was just a very intense, emotional experience.

Maybe they were both euphoric after not dying that day.

Maybe we're at like line 900 of an 1100 line poem and the poet is tired.

Whatever reason for getting right down to it and skipping the prolonged love story and courtship, The gal held up his gauntleted hand.

No, thank you, for sure, but he had to go find his lecherous monster of a father.

Then he had an idea.

One year?

Could he come back in exactly one year and then stay with her forever?

She said, uh, sure, that was, it really kind of took the wind out of her sails here, though.

A year?

Really?

He was sure he was coming back, though, right?

Like, he wouldn't freak out and go into naked madness when 366 days from now, she sent her lady to find him at a tournament, having completely forgot about his oath.

He said that was really specific and that went over his head because he hadn't listened to episode 1b Yvain Glory released in May of 2015.

No, no, he would be back.

He just had to see this quest through.

And that was his reason.

Yvain was worried about atrophying and what his fellow knights might think of him.

De Gaulle, like me, when I sat down to work, knew that he had to see this task through first because a thousand others might distract him in the process.

The pair said a tearful goodbye and De De Gaulle rode west.

Vagabond, what dost thou hear in my forest to chase my deer?

The stranger with the azure shield, with three boarheads on it, cried to De Gaulle.

His armor was painted gold, which is as tacky as it is difficult to maintain.

De Gaulle trotted out, oh, no, sorry, he wasn't looking for deer.

He was an adventurous knight and he came seeking war and fight, he said, matching the challenger's rhyme scheme, even though battle or challenge or even dad might have been more appropriate.

Well then you found your fight, the stranger said, telling De Gaulle to arm himself.

Then he the stranger blinked.

Um

yeah, so De Gaulle's armor was definitely a capital C choice.

Before leaving the keep, he accepted armor from his betrothed.

The gemstone helmet was a bit gaudy, and it was like if you bedazzled some regular armor.

But in the place of the three boars, like his challenger had, the Gaul had three images of the woman he was going to marry.

Maybe I'm reading that wrong, the text is pretty difficult to parse to be honest, but yeah, it was like a three-wolf moon thing, but with her face carved in silver.

with crowns of gold.

It was a good shield though, and gripping his lance, the Gaul, the proto-wife guy, charged.

If you didn't know, there's a trope out there called Fridging, or Women in Refrigerators.

It is a plot device where women in stories experience brutal harm, or they're killed, or something terrible happens to them, so that a male character's plot can advance or he can learn something about himself.

That, thankfully, is not what happens here.

Exactly.

But the fact that both men struck with such force, yet were so immovable that both of their horses tore in half simultaneously, feels like a version of that where brutal horse death reveals something to us about the nature of the woodland harasser.

But neither the man nor his son, De Gaulle, knew the truth as they tumbled to the ground, drawing their swords to both continue and finish the fight.

That sword.

The forest jerk marveled.

Where did he get that sword?

De Gaull sneered, panting.

What did it matter him?

The fairy knight drew a piece of metal from his pouch and held it up to the tip of De Gaulle's sword.

It was a perfect fit.

D

Dad?

Son.

Literally both father and son swooned, fainting there in the forest.

They were certainly sharing a moment.

The princess swooned when she saw the knight, and the king appeared to have cooled a bit when he met the fairy knight.

But he did have one little insistence.

The fairy knight would be marrying his daughter.

He had done something terrible, but he would make it right, at least for de Gaulle.

So, much to the princess's horror, she was married off to the fairy knight, but a few hours after the wedding, De Gaulle gasped.

What

day was it?

The household flew into a flurry, getting everyone ready to go right out for Sir De Gaulle's wedding.

The king held up a finger.

Oh, he and the fairy knight, his new son-in-law, needed to see something here at the castle.

Shouldn't take long, just a small formality, just a little checkbox, really.

De Gaulle said that they didn't have time, they needed to get on the road.

And so the rest of the party left without the king and the fairy knight.

Yeah, so...

Small thing, so small, but everyone who wanted to marry my daughter needed to challenge me to a joust first.

And even though you're already married to her, you did kind of skip the line back there in the forest.

You want me to fight you?

The fairy knight laughed.

Well, you have to earn your place in this family.

Okay, the fairy knight shrugged.

Don't go easy on me, old man.

Oh,

I won't.

The gull sat with his wife when the king, his grandfather, arrived.

Oh, where was his dad?

That's the thing.

We were riding through the forest and he just left forever, the king shrugged.

The gull was nearly in tears, but the king told him not to waste any on that man.

If he couldn't stick around for his son, he wasn't worthy of him.

It was like the fairy knight could barely even control it.

Like something was dead inside of him that made him leave.

Like his heart was dead.

When I, okay dad, the princess cut him off.

She, at least, understood the connotation that was quickly morphing into denotation.

But yes, the gal was married and ruled over the keep with the lady, and the princess became queen after her father.

And so Degale found his place in the world, but still had one enemy to face.

himself.

How much of the monster that was his father lurked in him?

And how much of his own power was truly monstrous?

And how could he reconcile the fact that the man he idolized and sought the world over, his father, was actually the villain of the story?

Just kidding, he didn't think about any of those things.

He had a kingdom and ruled in peace without any introspection.

The end.

Okay, so a few notes.

First, the ending is not quite the ending in the original.

In the original, as I understand it, the family welcomes the Fae Knight, and he marries the princess he raped.

And we kind of touch on that, but I also wanted some justice.

And the king that was so protective of his daughter, in my mind, wouldn't let that go and didn't have a problem with killing knights, so I just took all those concepts to their logical conclusions.

In my mind, the story was more interesting because the Faye Knight was the villain, but he was also the person the protagonist was seeking.

So that kind of tension was interesting to me, even if De Gaulle didn't seem to feel that tension at all.

Moving on, if you notice that there are a lot of parts that seemed borrowed from other stories, you are not the only one.

We have Yvain, we have Oedipus, we have Cinderella, we have Tam Lin, and more.

The original author of this tale, according to an article in the Johns Hopkins University Press, had a reputation of, and this is a quote from 1938, being a stupid hack, clumsily fitting together borrowed plots like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in an incoherent tale.

Yeah, don't get English professors on your bad side.

They have all the words and they are not afraid to use them.

And yeah, the version I found had some inconsistencies with the translation that made it difficult at times.

It was translated because this type of work is, as I mentioned at the top, called a Breton Lay, an adventure story translated from French to English in the Middle Ages.

They focus on love, chivalry, and the supernatural.

This one, in particular, has a long and varied textual history.

I read one paper that said it was the longest.

I don't know, though.

I'm not a professor.

I will say, though, that I tended to agree with the scholars who took a more holistic approach when looking at this work and viewed it as a, quote, domestic epic of psychological growth, of rites of passage to maturity.

Like, for me, it does raise questions of, for example, the use of violence and power.

In de Gaulle's father's case, using it for evil and selfish ends, but in de Gaulle's case, using that exact same inherited power to rescue kingdoms and slay dragons, and how to reckon his direct family's violent history with his desire to do good, and using that violence to do good.

One issue raised with this text is that the story might raise questions and then doesn't do anything else with them, and Where some reviewers see a break with the past and a step toward the modern with a more character-focused, pseudo-psychological drama, it's not that big of a step, and the characters don't change all that much.

I thought it was interesting enough to make an episode out of, though.

If you want to talk about it with other listeners, check out Discord, link in the show notes.

If you want to connect with us on social media, there are links to those places.

And if you'd like to support the show directly and get ad-free and bonus episodes, check out mythpodcast.com/slash membership or find us on Apple Podcasts.

The creature this week is the Naminju, the human face tree from Japan.

Laugh and the human face tree laughs with you.

Cry and the human face tree laughs still because the fruit that's nothing but human faces can only laugh, or however the saying goes.

Yeah, so the human face tree is kind of a clumsy and obvious name for a tree with flowers that look like human faces.

It's like a podcast that tells myths and legends being called myths and legends.

You pretty much know what you're gonna get.

The human face tree has flowers that laugh and smile with you, and that sounds delightful.

Just don't get too delighted, because if the flowers laugh too hard, their heads will wilt and fall off the tree.

They can also die naturally because, according to one version, they smile away until their petals fall.

In the fall, they bear a fruit when, if you bite into it, tastes sweet and sour.

We glossed over it, but A couple weeks back in the story of Belukia, I mentioned that he found a tree with fruit that was human heads.

And that actually appears to be the origin of this creature, coming from the Middle East, making its way through China and then to Japan, with the Japanese name being thought of as a pronunciation of the Chinese name for the Islamic name, which came from an ancient Persian name.

The story is thought to have traveled via trade.

In other cultures, the faces can be that of beautiful women.

It's even stretched all the way to the modern day because If you were a kid in the 90s like me, or if you were any of Pokémon's millions of fans throughout the past, I don't know, 20, 30 years, this is the creature that apparently inspired Executor.

But before you start to think that you always have a great, sitcom-like audience with the Nimenju, there are some caveats.

One, probably don't pick them.

Not that that would be appealing or appetizing, but it would be pretty distressing to have a head slowly dying your pantry or refrigerator or God forbid your countertop.

Next, they haven't always been all laughs.

They apparently told Alexander the Great how he would die back in the day, so yeah, only approach the Nimenju if you want an extremely uncritical audience for your stand-up type five and are also willing to risk knowing the day of your death.

That's it for this time.

Myths and Legends is by Jason and Carissa Weiser.

Our theme song is by Broke for Free, and the Creature of the Week music is by Steve Colms.

There are links to even more of the music we used in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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