To avoid a fight, Arthur agrees to return the following New Year, on pain of forfeit of his land and liberty, and tell the baron 'what thing it is / That a woman most desire.'
Having successfully escaped from the baron, Arthur returns to Carlisle to deal with the matter of the hag's marriage.
She jubilantly informs him that she will now be beautiful both by day and by night, and reveals that she and her brother were cursed by their stepmother's witchcraft.
The poem is significant as a retelling of the loathly lady episode, which hearken back to a common motif in earlier literature, attested earliest in Irish.
[5] The positive view it expresses of Gawain, who is willing to marry the woman who saved King Arthur despite her hideous looks, is not a common feature of Arthurian literature at the time.