Sir Isumbras

This is a rather crazy one. Again, I'll tell it as briefly as I can, and list some features that really popped out. (My notes here and elsewhere are not of a form to do a just treatment here.)

So, Isumbras is a lord and knight who is fair, doughty, and strong, and he has a similarly fair wife. One day while hunting, he comes across a bird that tells him that he has sinned in pride. It asks him whether he would rather atone while he is young, or suffer while he is old. He chooses the former, because he'll be strong enough to take it then. The bird flies away, and both his hawk and hounds scatter. Then a servant finds him to report that his holdings have burned down, but that his wife and three children are fine. Then a herdsman reports that the herds are scattered. This isn't Isumbras's best day.

He goes home to find a burnt home. His wife and kids are all naked. He gives his mantle to his wife, and his vest to his three kids to keep them clothed, and they decide to journey forth. Pretty soon a lioness takes one kid and a leopard takes a second. Then, begging food, they come across a ship in a port. The ship happens to be the sultan's, and he is intrigued that such fair complexioned people should be wandering about hungry and ill-clothed. He takes them in, and first asks for them to convert. Isumbras refuses. Then the sultan is stricken by Isumbras's wife's angelic features, and first offers to buy her with red gold. When Isumbras refuses, the Sultan forces the transaction, beats Isumbras blue, and takes the wife away. They get one last meeting, where the wife urges him to take vengeance and swears her obedience in the plot. Then they must part. To add insult to injury, an eagle flies in and takes the gold, and a unicorn takes his third child.

So Isumbras must rebuild himself as a knight. He begs food from a smithy, and the blacksmiths ask that he work for it. So he does, for seven years. At that point he is well established as a smith, and is able to make his own knightly accoutrements, including armor. He soon goes to fight in a battle against Saracens. Though he requires the help of an earl once he loses his horse, he finally triumphs over both them and the Sultan. A Christian King, happy to be thus helped, enquires after the knight and offers him payment, the very things that originally led to his pride. Isumbras refuses both, confesses only to being a smith, and soon departs there on pilgrimage. It is only after seven more years, upon reaching Jerusalem, that an angel comes to him and forgives him of his sins.

At this point, Isumbras takes the habit of a palmer and goes to the court of a rich queen to beg. She takes him in and feeds him and the most destitute at a feast, but he is unable to eat for his tears of sadness. He spends some time there being pitied and pitiable. One day, he finds his mantle and the red gold at the top of a tree in an eagle's nest. He brings them back and puts them under his bed, but the queen and a servant find it. The queen realizes this is Isumbras, and soon the two are discovered to one another. (Yay!)

They decide to marry and become queen and king, but Isumbras's efforts to convert the Saracens causes an uprising of thirty thousand that they must quell in battle. Isumbras's wife decides to fight with him, but his men demur. In the midst of battle, the fighting gets intense until three knights show up, one on a lioness, one on a leopard, and one on a unicorn. It's the three sons come back! Together, they kill 20,003 of the Saracens. (The fate of the rest is unstated.) Then each son inherits some land, and Isumbras and his wife live happily until they die, and presumably ever after.


Besides the "wat" moments like the children suddenly being taken by animals and then returning, this romance was enjoyable. It goes at a very fast clip - the romance at ~770 lines isn't much longer than my summary of the events.

As for detailed observations, colors here were even more interesting than before. The white and red of the body contrasted with the Saracen red gold, the blue of the beatings when Isumbras refuses the gift, the significance of being dressed or undressed in the narrative, the economic angle of the tale where Isumbras works his way back up to knighthood (rather like Havelok), the strange role of sin and penance here that implies some exchange or conversation with saints' lives or spiritual texts, the substantial differences between manuscript versions, the significance of hunger... all of these are potentially rich sites to focus on, and ones that strike potential parallels in earlier and later romances.