Sebile
Sebile, alternatively written as Sedile, Sebille, Sibilla, Sibyl, Sybilla, and other similar names, is a mythical medieval queen or princess who is frequently portrayed as a fairy or an enchantress in the Arthurian legend and Italian folklore.
[1][2] A further transformation during the Late Middle Ages eventually turned her (as summed up by Alfred Foulet) from ...the sibyl of antiquity, a god-possessed human prophetess, into the fay of mediaeval, particularly Arthurian romance, a queen and enchantress, only rarely virginal and prophetic, usually a lustful magician who entices heroes to her otherworld lair for prodigiously prolonged sessions of love-making.
[14][15] Sebile makes her first known appearance in an Arthurian legend in Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's late 12th-century German poem Lanzelet, in which the loving fairy mistress of Prince Lancelot is named Iblis (or Yblis), an anagram for Sibil/Sybil.
Iblis is the most virtuous woman, as proven by a magic cloak test (an arguably central motif of the entire tale[18]), who falls in love with Lancelot in a prophetic dream before even meeting him.
After Lancelot slays her father in combat (she faints when he fights and instantly forgives him after his victory[19]) and he learns his name and real identity, Princess Iblis marries him as the new king of this realm.
Amazed by how fairylike handsome Lancelot is, they argue over who among them would be the most deserving of his love for reasons other than their equal social rank and magical powers (at least in the French original version, as Malory turns Morgan into a clearly dominant leader of the group[31]).
[27] The Queens consider waking up Lancelot to ask him to choose among them, but Morgan advises that they take him still asleep to their castle,[note 1] where they can hold him in their power.
In the French text known as the Livre d'Artus (Book of Arthur, written c. 1280), Sebile (Sebille) is a beautiful pagan queen of the Fairy Realm (la Terre Fae) Sarmenie,[note 2] who has just lost her husband.
Their mutual love then grows, especially after Sebile nurses him back to health from a grave wound and Alexander lifts a siege of her castle by defeating her enemies.
[47] In The Paradise of Queen Sebile (Le Paradis de la Reine Sebile, Il paradise della regina Sibilla), Antoine de la Sale records a folk legend that he heard from locals at the aptly-named mountain Monte Sibilla in 1420: Sebile/Sibilla is depicted as a demonic fay sorceress who lives with an entourage of amorous nymphs in magnificent palaces and lush gardens within a subterranean, paradise-like enchanted realm (inspired by Morgan's Avalon).
Before it is too late for him, the knight realizes the sinfulness of this by witnessing how the fair ladies transform each week into adders and scorpions for a night, so he escapes and hurries to Rome to confess to the Pope just in time.
The squire, who regrets having left the pleasures of the fairy realm, flees him and returns to the Sebile's earthly paradise; the Pope sends out messengers with the news of his absolution, but they arrive too late.
[47] In a similar story included within Andrea da Barberino's prose chivalric romance Il Guerrin Meschino (the part written c. 1391), a pious knight, advised to seek out the fay Sebile (fée Sébile) in her abode in the mountain near Norcia, goes through a cave to her realm; he stays there for a year, but refuses all temptation and only attempts to learn about his parentage, without success.
He boldly resists the flattering advances of the fay and her damsels, whose sinister nature he suspects, but later too receives an absolution after confessing to the Pope in any case.
