brother knights. They stipulate that the lion is to be forcibly
prevented from interfering, and he is locked up in a room; but, hearing
the noise of battle, he scratches up the earth under the door, frees
himself, and once more succours his master at the nick of time. Even
this does not expiate Ywain's fault: and yet another task falls to
him--the championship of the rights of the younger of a pair of sisters,
the elder of whom has secured no less a representative than Gawain
himself. The pair, unknowing and unknown, fight all day long before
Arthur's court with no advantage on either side: and when the light
fails an interchange of courtesies leads to recognition and the
settlement of the dispute. Now the tale is nearly full. Ywain rides yet
again to the magic fountain and performs the rite; there is no one to
meet him; the castle rocks and the inmates quake. But the crafty Lunet
persuades her mistress to swear that if the Knight of the Lion, who has
fallen at variance with his lady, will come to the rescue, she will do
all she can to reconcile the pair. Which not ill-prepared "curtain" duly
falls: leaving us comfortably assured that Ywain and his Lady and Lunet
and the Lion (one wishes that these two could have made a match of it,
and he must surely have been a bewitched knight) lived happily

"Until that death had driven them down."

This, it has been said, is a specimen of the pure romance; with little
except incident in it, and a touch or two of manners. It does not, as
the others noticed above do, lend itself much to character-drawing. But
it is spiritedly told; though rougher, it is much more vigorous than the
French original; and the mere expletives and stock phrases, which are
the curse of these romances, do not obtrude themselves too much. In this
respect, and some others, it is the superior of the one coupled above
with it, _Lybius Disconus_, which is closer, except in names, to the