With that came a squire and said: Madam, ye must purvey you to-morn for
a champion, for else your sister will have this castle and also your
lands, except ye can find a knight that will fight to-morn in your
quarrel against Pridam le Noire. Then she made sorrow and said: Ah,
Lord God, wherefore granted ye to hold my land, whereof I should now be
disherited without reason and right? And when Sir Bors had heard her
say thus, he said: I shall comfort you. Sir, said she, I shall tell you
there was here a king that hight Aniause, which held all this land in
his keeping. So it mishapped he loved a gentlewoman a great deal elder
than I. So took he her all this land to her keeping, and all his men to
govern; and she brought up many evil customs whereby she put to death a
great part of his kinsmen. And when he saw that, he let chase her out
of this land, and betook it me, and all this land in my demesnes. But
anon as that worthy king was dead, this other lady began to war upon
me, and hath destroyed many of my men, and turned them against me, that
I have well-nigh no man left me; and I have nought else but this high
tower that she left me. And yet she hath promised me to have this
tower, without I can find a knight to fight with her champion.
Now tell me, said Sir Bors, what is that Pridam le Noire? Sir, said
she, he is the most doubted man of this land. Now may ye send her word
that ye have found a knight that shall fight with that Pridam le Noire
in God’s quarrel and yours. Then that lady was not a little glad, and
sent word that she was purveyed, and that night Bors had good cheer;
but in no bed he would come, but laid him on the floor, nor never would
do otherwise till that he had met with the quest of the Sangreal.
CHAPTER VIII. Of an advision which Sir Bors had that night, and how he
fought and overcame his adversary.
And anon as he was asleep him befell a vision, that there came to him
two birds, the one as white as a swan, and the other was marvellous
black; but it was not so great as the other, but in the likeness of a
Raven. Then the white bird came to him, and said: An thou wouldst give
me meat and serve me I should give thee all the riches of the world,
and I shall make thee as fair and as white as I am. So the white bird
departed, and there came the black bird to him, and said: An thou wolt,
serve me to-morrow and have me in no despite though I be black, for wit
thou well that more availeth my blackness than the other’s whiteness.
And then he departed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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