THE BOY AND THE MANTLE
Adapted from PERCY'S RELIQUES vol. II

(From F&F#39 autumn 2001)

I came across this story a couple of years ago when I was doing a storytelling session at a comprehensive school near Mansfield. I was based in the library so at lunchtime I was browsing. In a very old book of 'Ballads' (which I would have loved to have - all the usual ones - Sir Patrick Spens, Chevy Chase etc) - I came across this written in ballad verse. It obviously wasn't a genuine traditional ballad and couldn't have been sung. It was possibly the work of some antiquary. I just had time to jot down the outline of the story.

It was Christmas at King Arthur's court. The knights had eaten and drunk well; they had danced and jousted; they had been entertained by jugglers and storytellers; they had laughed and boasted and tried each other's prowess in tests of strength, but now they were growing restless. They wanted some other novelty. Just at that point a steward ushered into the hall an unknown boy who looked like a pedlar or a merchant. Out of his bag the boy took a beautiful gown. He draped it over his arm and showed it off in the way of a skilled salesman so that all the Ladies wished to own it and every Knight wished to buy it as a gift for his Lady. Finally though, he said it was Magic! That made everyone want it even more. "No woman who has been false to her husband can wear it" the boy said.

Guinevere, who liked all things new and fashionable and loved novelties, couldn't wait to try it on despite the warning, so she went into an adjoining chamber and climbed into the gown. But when she had put it on it wouldn't stay still - the hem rose up around her thighs, the neck fell down around her bosom, it shrivelled and clung to her, it blew up as if in a gale... Guinevere cursed the weaver and the merchant, discarded the gown and flew off to her room.

Sir Kay called on his wife to try the dress and it shrank upwards until her backside was bare. Other Knights had their wives try but the result was always as the boy had predicted. No woman in King Arthur's court was able to wear the dress. At last an aged knight whose wife seemed to be a veritable saint had her try it on but, despite her prayers, it shrivelled and hissed and hung in tatters.

Last of all up rose Sir Craddock. He bade his wife try on the dress but she blushed and refused and when pressed admitted that she wasn't pure for, she said, she had kissed Craddock on the lips before they were married. However the Knights called for her to try on the dress so she withdrew and a few minutes later re-entered the room adorned in all the beauty of the dress which fitted her as if the best seamstress in the land had made it especially with her in mind.

Then the boy waved a wand over the Boars Head on the table and said that no man who was a cuckold could cut it and sure enough it was only Sir Craddock whose sword could make any mark at all in its skin.

Next the boy took from his pack a horn and said that no man who was a cuckold could blow it. When the knights tried they couldn't even put it to their mouths; it hit them in the eye, or went into their ears, they dropped it and fell over their feet trying to control it. Except for Craddock. When he put it to his mouth it made the sweetest music ever heard in Camelot.

And so all the Knights of Arthur's Court, excepting Craddock, but including the King himself, had to admit that their women had been false, had made fools of them and they should all become celibate and have nothing more to do with women at all in the future. And they consoled themselves that they were all as badly off as each other and that it was all down to the untrustworthiness of women...

Until a wiser woman than most pointed out that a woman could not be false by herself, she needed the complicity of a man....

[After publishing this with my comment at the start it was pointed out to me that it is known as a traditional song in Cumbria. Pete ]

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