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Guy of Warwick

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GUY OF WARWICK, English hero of romance. Guy, son of Siward or Seguard of Wallingford, by his prowess in foreign wars wins in marriage Felice (the Phyllis of the well-known bal lad), daughter and heiress of Roalt, earl of Warwick. Soon after his marriage, seized with remorse for the violence of his past life, he leaves his wife and fortune to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. After years of absence he returns in time to deliver Win chester for King Aethelstan from the invading northern kings, Anelaph (Anlaf or Olaf) and Gonelaph, by slaying in single fight their champion, the giant Colbrand. Local tradition fixes the duel at Hyde Mead near Winchester. Making his way to Warwick he becomes one of his wife's bedesmen, and retires to a hermit age in Arden, only revealing his identity at the approach of death. The versions of the Middle English romance of Guy which we possess are adaptations from the French, and open with a long recital of Guy's wars in Lombardy, Germany and Constantinople. The kernel of the tradition evidently lies in the fight with Col brand, which may represent an historical fact. If so, the Anlaf of the story is probably Olaf Tryggvason, who, with Sweyn of Denmark, harried the southern counties of England in 993 and pitched his winter quarters in Southampton. Winchester was saved, however, not by the valour of an English champion, but by the payment of money. This Olaf was not unnaturally con fused with Anlaf Cuaran or Havelok (q.v.) . Guy's Cliffe, near Warwick, where in the 14th century Richard de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, erected a chantry, with a statue of the hero, does not correspond with the site of the hermitage as described in the romance. The bulk of the legend is obviously fiction.

The French romance (Harl. ms.

3,775) is described by Emile Littre in Hist. Litt. de la France (xxii., 1852). A French prose version was printed in Paris, 1525, and subsequently (see G. Brunet, Manuel du libraire, s.v. "Guy de Warvich") ; the Eng lish metrical romance exists in four versions, dating from the early 14th century; the text was edited by J. Zupitza for the E.E.T.S. (extra series, Nos. 42, 49, 59). The popularity of the legend is shown by the numerous versions in English, such as Guy of Warwick, translated from the Latin of Girardus Cornu biensis (fl. 135o) into English verse by John Lydgate between 1442 and 1468. See also an article by S. L. Lee in the Dictionary of National Biography.

english, romance, french and anlaf