Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- How Perceforest earned his name
- The Perilous Temple
- The Adventures of Claudius and Estonné
- The Wonders at Gadifer's Coronation
- King Gadifer's Wound
- Zephir the Trickster
- Troylus in love
- A New Order of Chivalry – the ‘Franc Palais’
- The God of the Sheer Mountain
- The Fish-Knights
- The Sleeping Beauty
- The Marvellous Child
- The Death of Caesar
- The Adventure of the Red Sword
The Marvellous Child
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- How Perceforest earned his name
- The Perilous Temple
- The Adventures of Claudius and Estonné
- The Wonders at Gadifer's Coronation
- King Gadifer's Wound
- Zephir the Trickster
- Troylus in love
- A New Order of Chivalry – the ‘Franc Palais’
- The God of the Sheer Mountain
- The Fish-Knights
- The Sleeping Beauty
- The Marvellous Child
- The Death of Caesar
- The Adventure of the Red Sword
Summary
One of the most striking characters in the later books of Perceforest is Passelion, son of Estonné and Priande, destined to be an ancestor of no less a figure than Merlin. The following passage tells of his remarkable birth.
The good lady Priande's labour lasted a day and a night and the next day till well past noon. The ladies attending her felt great pity for the trial she was suffering; but her fruit took a break from his struggling and she was able to rest and sleep. And as she slept she dreamt she was with her husband in the middle of a forest, and there the pains of childbirth began. And when her husband saw this he dismounted and started to build a bower around her to hide her secret business a little. Then he withdrew and sat beside a spring. And according to her dream, in the middle of her labour she looked through the leafy branches of her shelter and saw an armed knight emerge from the depths of the forest and thrust a lance clean through her husband's body; he fell dead, and she heard the traitor cry: ‘Go straight to Hell, and tell the devils that Bruiant slew you!’
She awoke, crying in horror and agony: ‘Seize the treacherous Bruiant who's killed my husband!’ The women attending her came running in alarm, and pinned her down for fear the terrible commotion might endanger the child's life;
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Perceforest ReaderSelected Episodes from Perceforest: The Prehistory of Arthur's Britain, pp. 84 - 92Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012