Tiger skin

“Le Morte d’Arthur”
by Sir Thomas Malory

This immense written work was compiled by a noble man, who was put into prison for his raids on the church. He has traveled a lot and heard the legends about King Arthur on the Continent and the British Isles; he decided to put them all together and entitled his work as the last legend about King Arthur. It was written in 1470-71 and later published by William Caxton in 1485. It contains a lot of different mentioning of various animals, birds and beasts in a great variety of contexts. I would like to give here an example from this book, which is really rich in animal encounters. One of the most important meetings with the animal is that about the questing beast and King Arthur’s meeting with him in his dream. Malory, Thomas “Le Morte d’Arthur” CHAPTER XIX How King Arthur rode to Carlion, and of his dream, and how he saw the questing beast in the electronic version University of Virginia library

“And with that the king saw coming toward him the strangest beast that ever he saw or heard of; so the beast went to the well and drank, and the noise was in the beast's belly like unto the questing of thirty couple hounds; but all the while the beast drank there was no noise in the beast's belly: and there with the beast departed with a great noise, whereof the king had great marvel.”

“Him thought there was come into this land griffins and serpents, and him thought they burnt and slew all the people in the land, and then him thought he fought with them, and they did him passing great harm, and wounded him full sore, but at the last he slew them.”

“This hart will I chase, said King Arthur, and so he spurred the horse, and rode after long, and so by fine force of the was like to have smitten the hart; whereas the king had chased the hart so long, that his horse lost his breath, and fell down dead. Then a yeoman fetched the king another horse.”

References

contributor Khotskina, Olga, m04kho01@student.ceu.hu