Sir Degaré is a MIDDLE ENGLISH verse ROMANCE of
about 1,100 lines, written in a southwest Midland
dialect in the early 14th century. The poem, composed
in couplets, survives in six manuscripts and in
three early printings, suggesting it was relatively
popular in its own day. Some scholars believe it was
based on a lost Breton LAI. Certainly it has many
qualities of the Breton lai, including the interaction
with the fairy world and its setting in Brittany.
Degaré is conceived under bizarre circumstances:
His princess mother, visiting her own mother’s grave
in the woods, wanders from her ladies-in-waiting
and is ravished by a scarlet-robed fairy-knight in the
forest. The mysterious knight then announces that
the princess will give birth to a male child, and leaves
the woman his sword, the tip of which is broken off.
The princess must hide her pregnancy and her newborn
from her possessive father, whose incestuous
desire for his daughter is strongly implied. The fatherless
infant is abandoned at the door of a hermitage
along with gold and silver, the broken sword,
and his mother’s gloves.Growing up as an orphan in
the hermitage, the boy has no status in society and
no family identity, and the kind hermit names him
Degaré, or “the Lost One.”When Degaré is grown,
he leaves the hermitage on a quest for his identity,
to learn his true parentage. Beginning his adventures,
Degaré defeats a dragon with a club and is
knighted by the earl that he rescues. He then comes
to Brittany, his mother’s kingdom, where she is
being offered as a prize to the knight who can defeat
her father in single combat. Defeating the king, Sir
Degaré wins his mother’s hand. Fortunately Degaré
still has the glove with him, and before the marriage
is consummated, she tries on the gloves, which fit
perfectly, and Degaré realizes he has found his
mother. He flees the incestuous union and goes off
to search for his other parent. Along the way he wins
a beautiful damsel by defeating her unwanted suitor,
but he says that he cannot marry her until he has
found his father. Finally, he engages in a climactic
battle with a potent knight who, recognizing the
sword in Degaré’s hand, reveals that he is the young
man’s father and proves it by producing the sword’s
lost tip. The two are reunited, and ultimately, the tale
ends happily as Degaré’s parents marry, and he weds
his own lady.
Sir Degaré has had its share of detractors as well as
defenders. Certainly the poem’s characters are purely
conventional, but the suspense created by the wellconstructed
plot goes far in sustaining reader interest.
The plot suggests the influence of some later
manifestation of the Oedipus myth, possibly the
Legend of Pope GREGORY THEGREAT contained in the
Gesta Romanorum. The folktale or fairy-tale atmosphere
of the romance is part of its popular appeal.
Bibliography
Faust, George Patterson. Sir Degaré: A Study of the
Texts and Narrative Structure. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1935.
Rosenberg, Bruce A. “The Three Tales of Sir Degaré,”
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 76 (1975): 39–51.
Sir Degaré. Edited by Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury,
in The Middle English Breton Lays. Kalamazoo,
Mich.:Medieval Institute Publications, 1995.
Slover, Clark H. “Sire Degarre: A Study of a Medieval
Hack Writer’s Methods.” University of Texas Studies
in English 11 (1931): 6–23.
Stokoe,W. C., Jr. “The Double Problem of Sir Degaré,”
PMLA 70 (1955): 518–534.