Sir Launfal is a 1045-line Middle English romance or Breton lay written by Thomas Chestre dating from the late 14th century.
The story of a powerful (fairy) woman who takes a lover on condition that he obey a particular prohibition is common in medieval poetry: the French lais of Desiré, Graelent, and Guingamor, and Chrétien de Troyes's romance Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, all share similar plot elements.
The final stanza includes the lines: It is widely accepted that Thomas Chestre was the author of two other verse romances in MS Cotton Caligula A.ii., Lybeaus Desconus and the Southern Octavian.
After ten happy years under Launfal's stewardship, however, King Arthur's court is graced by a new arrival, Guenevere, whom Merlin has brought from Ireland.
Returning to his home town of Caerleon, Launfal takes humble lodgings, spends all the money that King Arthur gave him before setting out, and soon descends into poverty and debt.
Two maidens appear and bring him to a lady they call Tryamour, daughter of the King of Olyroun and of Fayrye, whom Launfal finds lying on a bed in a glorious pavilion.
Tryamour offers Launfal her love and several material gifts: an invisible servant, Gyfre; a horse, Blaunchard; and a bag that will always produce gold coins however many are taken from it, all on the condition that he keeps their relationship a secret from the rest of the world.
This section of Thomas Chestre's tale does not derive from Marie de France's Lanval or from the English Sir Landevale, but perhaps from another romance that is now lost.
Gyfre, now visible, brings his horse Blaunchard, and Tryamour, Launfal, and her ladies ride away to the island of Olyroun, which in Marie's 12th-century version of the tale is Avalon.
In this story, Arthur is king of England (also referred to as Bretayn) and holds court in Carlisle and Glastonbury, particularly during such summer feasts as Pentecost and Trinity Sunday.
Marie de France's poem Lanval, along with other Old French Arthurian works,[13] has this city as "Kardoel",[14] which, given the confusion, must have sounded, even to a late-Medieval English ear, like a conflation of Carlisle and Cardiff.
However, he adds or changes scenes and characters, sometimes working in material from other sources, and makes explicit and concrete many motivations and other aspects of the story which Marie leaves undiscussed—for example, the fairy purse and other gifts, such as the horse Blaunchard and the invisible servant Gyfre, who both depart when he breaks his promise not to boast.
[19] Arthur generally comes off much better in Sir Launfal than in Lanval, and Guenevere much worse; she is promoted to a major character, with more speeches and actions, and her comeuppance is the climax of the poem.
Chestre also adds the Mayor of Caerleon, a character who is not present in Lanval and whose grudging disloyalty gives extra gloss to the generosity which Launfal shows when he obtains the fairy purse.
Chestre adds two tournament scenes that are not present in Marie's lai, allowing him to show off his ability to fashion them and also changing the emphasis on his hero's character.
Marie de France's Yonec, for example, describes a woman following a trail of blood left by her lover; a man who was accustomed to arriving at the window of her room in the form of a hawk.
[21] Marie's lai Guigemar, sees the wounded hero set sail in a mysterious boat with candelabra at its prow and with only a bed on deck, upon which he lies, the only living soul on board.
Sir Orfeo follows a company of ladies into the side of a cliff and through the rock until he emerges into an Otherworld, in a Middle English Breton lai, where he rescues his wife who had been abducted, from amongst those who have been beheaded and burnt and suffocated.
[23] Many ancient Irish tales involve a hero entering a hill of the Sidhe, or crossing a sea to a Land of Youth, or passing down through the waters of a lake into an Otherworld.
[1][27] Folktale elements inherited from Marie de France's Lanval include the fairy lover, magical gifts, a beauty contest and an offended fay.
[1] Sir Launfal adds a number of folktale elements of its own to those inherited from Marie de France's Lanval, including those of a spendthrift knight, combat with a giant, a magical dwarf-servant and "the cyclical return of the mounted warrior's spirit to this world once a year.