It has been said that Gawain was, in all probability, the original hero of the Grail quest.[108] Whatever the truth may be about that matter, there can be no doubt that Gawain is the most famous of all the knights grouped around Arthur in pre-romantic tradition. He figures largely in the Welsh Triads and in the _Mabinogion_ under the name of Gwalchmei, and in the story of Arthur’s wars as told by Geoffrey he is the king’s most powerful lieutenant. Originally a mythical hero, he was probably the centre of a cycle of traditional stories as old as, if not older than, anything fabled or sung of Arthur.[109] No other knight of the Arthurian court is the hero of so many episodic romances and poems, while there is no more prominent figure in Arthurian literature generally. No other knight, however, is subjected to such churlish treatment at the hands of the romancers as he. In the earlier stages of Arthurian story--in the _Mabinogion_, especially,--Gawain appears as the very flower of chivalrous knighthood, no less courteous and gracious than brave. His degradation is due largely to the later manipulators of the Grail legends, who could not brook the importance attached to so worldly a character. Malory and Tennyson follow in their footsteps, until for modern readers Gawain is branded with the words put into the mouth of Bedivere in _The Passing of Arthur_,--of Bedivere, who, as one of Gawain’s oldest associates in Arthur’s service, ought to have been spared the indignity of having attributed to him so mean an aspersion upon a comrade in arms: “Light was Gawain in life, and light in death Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man.” Gawain, however, was the favourite Arthurian hero in England up to Malory’s time,[110] and the finest contribution to English Arthurian romance in the Middle Ages,--_Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight_,--dealing, apparently, with an incident borrowed from the earlier traditions about Gawain, does full justice to him as a knight _sans peur et sans reproche_.