One of the most widely read works in the late Middle Ages was a collection of stories or fables with a Latin title which means, in effect, ‘The Deeds or History of the Romans’. There are many surviving manuscripts of the work, in English and German as well as Latin, and it was to have a considerable influence over writers such as Chaucer and Boccaccio, both of whom borrowed heavily from it. The title might have suggested that, in the manner of earlier medieval chronicles which told of the gesta (the history and deeds) of a people, the stories had an historical basis and that they were drawn exclusively from Roman classical sources. That might indeed have been the case with early versions of the work, but as its popularity grew during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, new and fanciful stories drawn from many sources were added to the collection. Two of those which are reproduced here, for instance, were recorded originally by Gervase of Tilbury, while it is thought that many of the other fables in the compilation came from the Middle East and the Orient. The collection of stories may have had the primary purpose of providing narrative entertainment: the secondary aim (perhaps a subsidiary one, judging by the often cursory manner in which a pious conclusion was added at the end) was to demonstrate points of morality and theology.

The Phantom Knight of Wandlesbury

Tale CLV

On the borders of the episcopal see of Ely, there is a fortified place called Cathubrica [the castle of Cambridge] and a little below this there is a place which is distinguished by the name of Wandlesbury – because, as they say, the Vandals, having laid waste the country and cruelly slaughtered the Christians, pitched their camp here.

This place is situated on the summit of a hill, on a round plain surrounded by trenches and ramparts, to which there is only one entrance. According to many ancient legends, it was often reported that if any knight went there in the light of the moon at dead of night and called aloud, he was immediately confronted by another knight who rose up from the opposite side of the plain ready armed and mounted for combat. The encounter invariably ended in the overthrow of one or other of the combatants …