Ipomadon
Ipomadon is a Middle English translation of Hugh of Rhuddlan's Anglo-Norman romance Ipomedon composed in tail-rhyme verse, possibly in the last decade of the fourteenth century.
[1] It is one of three Middle English renditions of Hugh's work: the other two are a shorter verse Lyfe of Ipomydon and the prose Ipomedon, both of the fifteenth century.
[4] The earliest Middle English version is found uniquely in MS Chetham 8009 (Manchester), probably composed in West Yorkshire in the north of England.
[8] The earliest of these surviving versions in Middle English is Ipomadon and occurs in the manuscript Chetham 8009 (Manchester), which contains a unique copy of an 8,891-line tail-rhyme romance, dating in composition to "anywhere between the last decade of the fourteenth century and the middle of the fifteenth century"[9] This version of the tale follows Hugh of Rhuddlan's story quite closely, although abridging it somewhat by cutting battle details and most of Hugh's rather coarse or prosaic narrative intrusions.
"[6] A fifteenth century, 2,346-line couplet version of the tale, called The Lyfe of Ipomydon, is found in MS Harley 2252 and also in two printed copies by Wynkyn de Worde, one of them incomplete.
King Melyagere (Meleager) of Sicily has a niece who has assumed power in Calabria at the age of fifteen, and has vowed, to the amused indulgence of her noblemen, to marry a man only if he has proved himself to be the finest knight in the world.
Soon, a young man named Ipomadon, who is the son of Ermagynes (Hermogenes), King of Apulia, takes his tutor Talamewe (Ptolomy) with him to the lady's court, having already fallen in love with her from afar.
Ipomadon, however, displays more interest in hunting deer than in warfare and jousting, a fact that is not lost on the other noblemen at her court who begin to make fun of him.
She tries to shame him into taking an interest in more manly pursuits, but her rebuke backfires and Ipomadon secretly leaves her court early the next morning with all his baggage.
He has been known during his stay simply as the "straunge valete",[18] or the 'strange or unknown young man', and the Proud realises to her horror that she knows nothing about him, neither his name nor where he is from, and so has little hope of ever finding him again.
Meanwhile, the Proud has fallen into despondency and her noblemen, concerned that she must find a suitable husband, at last persuade her to agree to hold a tournament and to marry the knight who proves himself to be the strongest at the fighting.
Ipomadon travels the world, fighting in tournaments, becomes King of Apulia following his father's death, and hears one day that the Proud is being besieged in her city by a knight called Lyoline.
But now a very curious thing happens, and one that Hugh of Rhuddlan is happy to remain inexplicable, although the author of this Middle English tail-rhyme romance tries to convince us that it is through a lingering uncertainty on Ipomadon's part, a lack of certainty that he has truly accorded with the Proud's vow.
[22] Near the end of this tale, having achieved the release of many people from King Arthur's court who had been held prisoner in this land, including Queen Guinevere, Lancelot attends a tournament in disguise, wearing a red shield.
[26] The tournament where the hero fights in disguise and claims to have been busy is a fairy tale commonplace (such as in The Golden Crab or The Magician's Horse, or in Little Johnny Sheep-Dung and The Hairy Man, where it is actual battle), and from there passed into such romances as Robert the Devil, Sir Gowther, and Lanzelet.
Thomas Chestre wrote an Arthurian romance Lybeaus Desconus in the late-fourteenth century in which a young man arrives at King Arthur's court not knowing his own name, having been brought up in seclusion in the forest by his mother.
In an anonymous fifteenth century Middle English romance called Sir Gowther, the eponymous anti-hero is given a penance by the Pope only to eat food that has been in the mouth of a dog.
She, believing him to be of humble origins (and receiving not the slightest hint from him to the contrary), urges him to attend a tournament that has been arranged in order to find a suitable husband for her.
