David Navarrete, Selim 23 (2018): 139–162.
ISSN 1132-631X

Agostes in The Greene Knight: Widow, mother, and witch
sole1

David Navarrete
University of Oviedo

Following a linear textual approach, and set in the context of late medieval and early
modern ideas on witchcraft as portrayed in popular literature and culture, this article
will discuss the character of Agostes in the ballad The Greene Knight. This study will
look at her in relation to her nature as mother and witch sole: an old woman, usually a
widow or a mother-in-law, who is not under husband escort and therefore performs
and works on her own terms. Agostes is the unifying cause, the starter of the female-
desire plot, and the main concocter of events in the ballad. First, this article will seek
to illuminate her relationship to the rest of the characters in the narrative, particularly
her daughter. Second, it will shed light on her narrative function, identity, and
characterisation, providing an exploration of the ambiguities and problematics that she
ostensibly poses. For example, I seek to demonstrate that she is a peculiar variation of
the archetype of the wicked stepmother-witch.

For my analysis, I have particularly drawn on Heidi Breuer’s (2009) analysis of late
medieval and early modern witches in English literature. I have also considered Diane
Purkiss’s (2005) discussion of the figure of the witch in stories (with some references
to history) in Elizabethan England. The present study is relevant for the
understanding of Agostes’s agency in the text, as well as her explicit raison d’être as
opposed to Morgan le Fay’s obscure role in the Gawain-poet’s chivalric romance.

Keywords: late medieval and early modern English witchcraft; witch sole; mother;
widow; magic; desire

1
I am very thankful to Dr Rubén Valdés Miyares for his comments and suggestions at

all the stages in the process of writing this article.

140 David Navarrete

1. Introduction

The Greene Knight (GK henceforward) is a “late fifteenth-century balladic
romance” (Matthews 1994: 301) found in the Percy Folio, an early modern
manuscript written around 1650.

2
GK was written to be recited, that is, it was

meant to be orally performed (Hahn 1995: 309). Just like its medieval
counterpart Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK henceforward), this
ballad deals with the opposition between the already known, the orthodox,
and the familiar; and the mysterious or ‘Other’, having a witch’s machinations
at its very core.

GK has been mostly received negatively by scholars, who are all agreed on
its lack of stylistic beauty and literary refinement. Such unfavourable view is
chiefly due to the comparisons made between the ballad and its highly

2
There are different interpretations about the nature and origins of GK. For example,

it is considered to be a derivation of SGGK but with some elements from a well-
known, oral version added by the ballad’s author (Hulbert 1916: 702). Another
hypothesis is that GK is likely to be a translation of another text which might or
might not be the Gawain-poet’s well-known alliterative work (Matthews 1994: 303).
Other scholars believe the ballad “might well be a written record of the sort of recital
mentioned by Robert Laneham in a letter describing festivities put on for Queen
Elizabeth at Kenilworth in 1575” (Hahn 1995: 309). Hahn’s hypothesis is a probable
origin for the text, and one that makes sense to me considering the popularity of
ballads among people of all social ranks (also the aristocracy) at the end of the English
Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Hahn goes on to say that

Laneham offers an account of Captain Cox, a performance artist ‘hardy as
Gawain’, who acts, sings, recites, and professes ‘philosophy both morall and
naturall.’ Cox possesses [...] within his memory and ready for recital on
demand a vast repertoire of stories, including ballads, songs, perhaps plays, and
romances [...] Just which Gawain romance this was is not specified, for the
Percy Folio Manuscript (where The Greene Knight occurs) makes clear that
such popular performances provided the precise milieu where the surviving
poem was produced. (Hahn 1995: 309–310)

I think the previous quotation is worth including at full length because it reflects the
popular, oral nature that ballads such as GK would have had at the time, hence their
general public appeal. Such literary works would not be received by audiences as
refined courtly romances meant to be read.

Agostes in The Greene Knight 141

acclaimed predecessor, SGGK. The transformation of the fourteenth century
literary masterpiece into a ballad provoked a very strong reaction on the part of
scholars, who have considerably neglected the latter.

For example, there are some hints regarding matters of literary style and
genre that suggest that GK is placed outside the medieval tradition of courtly
love, consequently losing a great deal of the literary and allegorical beauty that
its medieval counterpart displays. First, as it is well-known among scholars,
the ballad has been mostly quoted marginally in diverse critical studies for its
unattractive style and low level of detail, exacerbated by the fact that SGGK
(with which the ballad has very often been compared) is considered one of the
most brilliant, sophisticated Arthurian romances in English literature. Second,
besides not showing any signs of refinement in the use of language, the
undistinguished scribe (or “uninspired author”, using the words of Cory James
Rushton 2009: 177) omitted the scenes of courtly conversation among the
lady and the knight, perhaps because the ballad format does not allow space
for such delicacies, usually expressed through intricate rhetoric figures, similes,
and metaphors in medieval courtly love romance.

Nonetheless, taking into consideration all the information that the ballad
provides concerning the relationship between the Lady and Gawain (as well as
her husband), one can certainly argue that GK is actually not situated outside
of this tradition. The trope of the (married) lady’s impossible, unrequited love
for a knight is one of the most characteristic traits of courtly romance (both in
medieval and Renaissance English love lyrics). Moreover, her identity as ‘The
Lady of the Castle’ and her role as infatuated woman are undoubtedly shaped
according to the code of fin’amor. Therefore, GK turns out to be a ballad
which partially represents a literary tradition which, even though found itself
in a state of decadence at the time, was still very influent in Elizabethan and
Tudor England, as we can observe, for example, in the adoration of Gloriana,
the Faerie Queen, in Edmund Spenser’s eponymous poem.

3
Let us remember that, in SGGK, courtly love is central to the seduction scenes,

where we find all the speech from the Lady of Hautdesert.
4
After the publication of Sir Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century Le Morte d’Arthur,

courtly love lost a lot of literary prestige and influence. For example, John Huizinga
argued in 1922 that the sudden change in fifteenth-century allegory revealed an
“artistic decadence” (using Helen Cooney’s words), a view which, however, has been
seen as anachronistic (Cooney 2006: 139). For more information about this literary
tradition in medieval English literature, see Lewis (1936), in which the author also

142 David Navarrete

GK is a ballad based on a story from a romance (SGKK) that deals with the
deeds of one of the most distinguished knights of King Arthur: Sir Gawain.
Stories, romances, and tales of the Knights of the Round Table were highly
popular in the European Middle Ages until they became unfashionable and
disappeared from the literary scene. (Some of them were transformed into
ballads and gained a lot of popularity, but such is not the case for GK.) Being a
chivalric text at its heart, GK is actually a hybrid of traditions and genres: it
has motifs from medieval Arthurian romance but the structure and style of
popular ballads.

5
More interestingly, it provides an interesting character

shaped according to representations of witches, mothers, and widows in late
medieval and early modern England.

The ballad bears a remarkable resemblance to SGGK but, as mentioned
above in a footnote, Matthews (1994) argues that the former is not based on
the romance but on another text whose plot derives from that of the
fourteenth-century poem. So far as I am aware, Matthews’s study is the only
one which offers a thorough analysis of the ballad and the characters in it.
Unlike him, the vast majority of scholars have considered the text a
debasement of its predecessor, ignoring everything that GK has to say.
However, Matthews (1994: 301-303) considers the ballad independently of
SGGK and pays special attention to its motifs, ideology, narratorial authority,
and characters’ respective narrative function.

GK tells the story of Sir Bredbeddle, “a man of mickele might / And Lord
of great bewtye” (ll. 41–24) who is sent by her mother-in-law (the witch
Agostes) to Carlisle in order to bring Gawain to her daughter (the Lady of
Hutton) at Hutton Castle.

6
The lady (Sir Bredbeddle’s wife) is in love with

Gawain and wants to meet him, so her mother concocts a plan to fulfil her

discusses several early modern English texts, such as Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, and
Cooney (2006).
5
Matthews points out that “[c]omposed at the end of the Middle Ages, it is poised

between two eras: it looks back to the fourteenth century’s use of the Arthurian
legend as cultural legitimation, while in its form it signals the disappearance of Arthur
into popular song and ballad, and the end of medieval romance” (1994: 312–313).
6
All the line numbers belong to Thomas Hahn’s (1995) edition of GK in Sir Gawain:

Eleven Romances and Tales. Depending on the scholar, the spelling of the Green
Knight’s name varies. The same occurs with the way they address the Lady. I have
chosen to refer to her as ‘The Lady of Hutton’. Like in SGGK, she is nameless in the
ballad, too.

Agostes in The Greene Knight 143

daughter’s desire. Sir Bredbeddle obeys Agostes’s command, but takes
advantage of the situation and offers King Arthur’s court a challenge (the so-
called and well-known ‘Beheading Game’ from SGGK) aimed at Gawain, who
fearlessly takes it up. Therefore, two different plots can be discerned in the
ballad. The female-plot, concerned with the realisation of the Lady’s desire
(and the focus of the present article); and the male-plot, which deals with the
deeds and political aspirations of the two knights.

The character of Agostes, the focal point of my study, has been generally
ignored by scholars over the decades. Except for Matthews, who published an
article on The Greene Knight in 1994 in which he makes some interesting
remarks about her, critics have paid very little (if at all) attention to the witch.
Whereas Matthews’s work is concerned with different aspects and characters
in the narrative, mine will solely be focused on Agostes.

7
Though the present article is by no means an anthroponomical study, the name of

Agostes definitely sheds light on her character. Thomas Hahn argues in a footnote as
follows: “So far as I know, this name does not occur elsewhere in Arthurian literature,
though the connection between her supernatural powers of witchcraft and the
consonance of Agostes with ‘ghostly’ is striking. Agostes’ counterpart in Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight, Morgan le Fay, is called ‘Argante’ in Layamon’s Brut” (Hahn 1994:
330). Rubén Valdés Miyares implicitly suggests that Agostes’s true identity is a matter
of ambiguity, wondering whether or not the Greene Knight’s mother-in-law is
actually Morgan le Fay, A-Ghostess, or Argante (Valdés Miyares 2003–2004: 153). I
endorse the view that she is the counterpart of Morgan le Fay in GK, yet her identity
is somewhat changed in the ballad, and therefore, she is actually a different character
and should be considered as such. Both of the aforementioned scholars seem to have
found an etymological connection between ‘Argante’ (or ‘Agostes’) and ‘ghostliness’,
but they only put forward said connection and did not explore the witch’s name.
According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary the adjective august from Old
French auguste and Latin augustus (‘consecrated’, ‘venerable’) has two senses: 1)
Inspiring reverence and admiration; solemnly grand, stately; and 2) Venerable by birth,
status, or reputation; eminent, dignified; (sometimes as an honorific). In my opinion,
Agostes fits the two senses of the word: she is, like Alison of Bath, “a sort of magistra
amoris, a mock-serious authority on matters of human desire” (Cooney 2006: 100).
Kittredge refers to her as a “procuress [...] whose eccentric name [is] doubtless a
corruption for something or other” (1916: 134). The Late Middle English adjective
aghast, meaning ‘terrified; struck with amazement’; and the noun aghastness (‘horror’)
are also reminiscent of the witch’s name. Both seem to be indicative of Agostes’s eerie,
shadowy identity.

144 David Navarrete

2. Introducing Agostes

Unlike Morgan le Fay in the Gawain-poet’s romance, Agostes has a voice of
her own and enjoys a more active role than the powerful sorceress in the
fourteenth-century poem. Whereas both have a pivotal role in the poems in
which they appear, Morgan le Fay is moved by her malice and hatred for her
kinship, but Agostes is driven by her love or care for her daughter. Therefore,
these two women represent two opposing characters: one seeks to destroy or
harm her family, and the other wants to help them. Another difference
between the two old women is that the Gawain-poet accounts for a lengthy
description of Morgan le Fay’s clothes, facial features, and body, whose
ugliness makes a sharp contrast with the Lady of Hautdesert’s outstanding
beauty (“Ho watz þe fayrest in felle […] wener þen Wenore”, ll. 943–945).

8
On

the contrary, the ballad’s author does not describe Agostes’s physicality at all,
even though considering that she is an old witch, it is extremely hard to
imagine her as good-looking or having an attractive figure. She must indeed
resemble the loathly lady from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale or
Allisson Gross from the eponymous ballad. Moreover, her speech (like her
name) is suggestive of authority over the two male figures in the ballad, and
functions as one of her most distinctive features, as shall be discussed below.

Agostes appears or is alluded to in three different passages throughout the
ballad. First, she is introduced at the very beginning of the text, shortly
afterwards we know of her daughter’s longing for her paramour (ll. 43–48) and
the witch’s command that her son-in-law go to Carlisle for Gawain (ll. 58–
66). Second, the narrator mentions the witch’s black magic powers when
Gawain beheads Sir Bredbeddle/the Green Knight, who afterwards picks up
his own head, speaks, and takes off to his castle. Such a gruesome, unnatural
act is attributed to Agostes’s dark magic (“All this was done by enchantment /
That the old witch had wrought”, ll. 212–213). Third, when Gawain arrives at
Hutton Castle, Agostes takes her daughter to Gawain’s bedroom, tells the
knight to wake up, and (implicitly) commands him to engage in sexual
intercourse with her daughter (ll. 363–376).

9
However, as will be discussed

below, she only enjoys relevance in the first half of the ballad.

8
Line numbers belong to Tolkien & Gordon’s (1967) edition of SGGK.

9
The respective discussions and details of these three passages will be provided in the

subsequent sections.

Agostes in The Greene Knight 145

The three aforementioned passages reveal a significant agency in the figure
of Agostes, the ultimate authority in the ballad and the character with the
hardest task to complete. Moreover, it should be highlighted that the female
plot that she unleashes is not (unlike in SGGK) residual or dependent on the
Green Knight’s narrative role and motivations. There is a clear disconnection
between the male and the female storylines in the ballad.

3. Agostes’s machinations

Agostes’s motives are clear from the beginning of the text. She does not
explicitly mention that her son-in-law’s journey is actually a search for
bringing Gawain to her daughter at Hutton Castle, but the audience is
obviously aware of her true intentions because of the information provided in
the text. Everything that she does is to realise her daughter’s longing.
Matthews rightly argues that

in The Grene Knight the main threat is refocused; what remains threateningly
unfamiliar in the narrative is woman. Femininity is recreated as the necessary
other to feudal, political order, for in a much more obvious way than in Sir
Gawain, the plot of the later poem is motivated by feminine transgressions:
Bredbeddle’s lady falls in love with Gawaine’s reputation; her mother then
arranges to procure the knight for her by manipulating her husband; Agostes is
of course a witch. Bredbeddle, unlike Bertilak, is the apparently unknowing
victim of her plot. (Matthews 1994: 310)

The information above is crucial to understand the role of women in the
narrative. More importantly, I do not read Agostes as ill-intentioned or
threatening to the men in the narrative. Instead, I look at her as a mother
willing and eager to help her daughter. Apparently prompted by honourable
reasons, she is intervening kindly in a family affair.

The following lines are very relevant for the understanding of the ballad’s
plot and Agostes’s interest in Gawain:

All was for her daughters sake,
That which she soe sadlye spake
To her sonne-in-law the knight:
Because Sir Gawaine was bold and hardye,

146 David Navarrete

And therto full of curtesye,
To bring him into her sight. (ll. 61–66)

Fulfilling her daughter’s desire is manifestly a matter of importance for her, as
her earnestness makes clear in line 62. She wishes to bring Gawain to the Lady
because he is bold, strong, and courteous. He is a good party, exemplary,
probably the knight who any lady would have wanted for herself, and the man
who any mother would have wished for her daughter, in a medieval romance.
Fulfilling the Lady of Hutton’s desire (which might as well be a fantasy or
need) is the backbone of the story and the only concern of the witch, to whom
Sir Bredbeddle quickly responds that he will do so “for to praise thee [i.e.
Agostes] right, / And to prove Gawaines points three” (ll. 69–70). Line 70
suggests (as mentioned in the introduction) that not only is he going to stick
to Agostes’s orders, but he is also going to test Gawain’s renown to verify
whether the hero is the knight that everyone says he is. At this point in the
narrative, the story is split in two different plots: a male (the testing of
Gawain) and a female one (the pleasing of the Lady of Hutton). As the ballad
advances, we become increasingly aware that Sir Bredbeddle is more concerned
with the former plot (the challenge of the renown knight), but the interest of
Agostes (and the Lady) is the fruition of female desire.

4. Female desire

In SGGK, the plot seems to be limited to the testing of Gawain’s renown,
whereas female interests seem to remain secondary. But GK differs here.
Agostes is a far more outspoken female figure than Morgan le Fay in her
articulation of desire.

10
In fact, I believe that GK is clearly concerned with

The concept of female desire in Renaissance literature has been widely explored by
scholars through psychoanalytical and feminist theory. One case in point is Finucci &
Schwartz (1994). Also, Deleuze & Guattari (1983) have explored the concept of desire
in capitalist societies in their book Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, in
which they introduce the term ‘Anti-Oedipal’: the rejection of the family, religion,
and territory because of the coercive nature that these have on individuals. Most
importantly for the purposes of the present article, Deleuze & Guattari put forward a
definition of desire understood not as lack (in the case of Agostes, her daughter’s
apparent uneasiness or unhappiness because of her unrequited love for Gawain) but as

Agostes in The Greene Knight 147

women’s longings and ambitions as well as their ways of making these come
true. In relation to the notion of the fulfilment of women’s wishes, also
known as the motif of the realisation of desire, Agostes’s apparent anxiety
(which shall be discussed below) is suggestive of a mother’s concern with the
fulfillment of her maternal duties towards her daughter. Even though the
witch does not seem to be under pressure, she has a great responsibility in the
ballad: if her scheme does not go as planned, it means that her daughter’s
desire will not be met.

Considering the arguments put forward hitherto, I believe that Agostes in
GK is more resolute than Morgan le Fay in SGGK for several reasons. Firstly,
let us remember that she does not seem to have evil intentions (“All was for
her daughters sake” l. 61) despite the fact that she is implicitly addressed to an
old woman with bizarre magic powers (“Shee cold transpose knights and
swaine / Like as in battaile they were slaine, / Wounded in lim and light”, ll.
52–54). Secondly, unlike Morgan le Fay, who machinates on the margins of
the plot, Agostes takes part in it, literally taking the Lady of Hutton to
Gawain once he has arrived at the castle. She is not thoroughly passive: she
has her son-in-law do part of the job, but she also gets involved in it.

Agostes is defined in relation to a woman (her daughter) rather than a
man. More importantly for studies of women’s agency, she operates freely

something that is actually beneficial or productive for the individual in question:
Agostes is working towards her daughter’s well-being by creating a system or strategy
(i.e. her plot to bring Gawain to Hutton Castle) through which her desire can be
fulfilled (1983: 48).
11

Heide Breuer argues that some medieval and early modern English make-over
romances, such as ‘The Tale of Florent’, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame
Ragnelle, SGGK, and GK,

[...] respond to the newly-developed possibilities for female economic and legal
agency; they mitigate an anxiety about the effect of increased economic power
on the traditional family position of women as mothers [...] In early modern
England, when the population was faced with a living example of strong,
capable, and (perhaps most importantly) non-maternal female power, as
embodied by the unmarried and childless Queen Elizabeth I, the anxiety was
surely even more intense, a fact that has received no small amount of attention
in early modern studies. (Breuer 2009a: 94)

See Section 6 for a more detailed explanation of the idea of anxiety in Agostes.

148 David Navarrete

towards her goal by using Sir Bredbeddle in her own interests. Judging by
lines 46–66 of the ballad (mentioned above), it might be readily deduced that
both mother and daughter are cooperating, Agostes being the head of the
operation. GK is, in my view, a narrative clearly concerned with the
relationship among a mother, her daughter, and her son-in-law, as well as
with the desires and aspirations of the family’s members. (It would be
mistaken to call this ballad a “family narrative”, though.) But this relationship
is quite peculiar (to say the least): the witch uses his son-in-law as a tool for
her own daughter’s adultery and he is compliant and aware of it all from the
outset.

Half of the ballad’s plot revolves around the interests of women, however
marginalised they are in the narrative: out of 515, only twenty verses are
devoted to Agostes’s traits, dialogue, and actions, thirteen of which are her
own speech. Both women enjoy the same number of spoken lines in the
ballad, which is anyway a very small sum. It is evident that their voices are
repressed, but whereas the Lady of Hutton’s words are not particularly
relevant to the plot, Agostes’s clearly are. She might not speak too much, but
what she says is crucial: her words are the vehicle through which the entire
ballad comes to being. She commands Sir Bredbeddle to go to Carlisle and
bring Gawain to her daughter, and once he has done so, it is time for Agostes
to exercise her influence, which she also does through her speech. Her
determination (embodied by her speech) and magic powers are her only
weapons, both of which render her a figure of agency. Once Gawain has
arrived at Hutton Castle, Agostes emerges —in Kittredge’s (1916: 135)— as
“mistress of the situation”, that is, the one in charge of handling the
relationship between her daughter and Gawain.

Sir Bredbeddle does not raise any objection to his wife’s infidelity, maybe because he
knew that Sir Gawain would never get involved in an amorous or sexual relationship
with a married woman, or perhaps because had he refused Agostes’s orders, he would
have had to pay a very high cost because of his refusal to obey a witch. Just like he was
turned into a green knight, so could he have suffered the witch’s gruesome powers as
punishment if he had not done as told. In my view, Agostes does not come across as
compassionate to anyone but her daughter.

Agostes in The Greene Knight 149

5. Mother-daughter bond

Agostes is above anything else a witch-mother defined in terms of
motherhood and concerned with her daughter’s contentment. The witch is
introduced as the Lady of Hutton’s mother who, through “witchcraft and noe
other”, (l. 40) “dealt with all” (l. 51). In ballads, mothers-in-law are powerful
figures with influence over the rest of the characters. In the context of early
modern women’s depositions in witchcraft cases and fantasies regarding
witches, Purkiss argues that the identity of the witch as mother is “central to
understanding the stories that are told [...] the role of [the] mother [...] was
even more central to early modern notions of maternal identity [than it is
nowadays]” (2005: 99). Purkiss addresses stories of mothers as providers of
food for their children and the household (2005: 99). Seen in this light, I
believe that there is a clear connection with the relationship between Agostes
and her daughter: the former literally “provides” (i.e. Gawain) and the latter is
metaphorically “fed” (with the knight’s company). Breuer (2009b: 12) argues
that the witches in texts such as GK and ‘The Tale of Florent’ exemplify an
“extreme anxiety over maternity” in the context of sixteenth-century England.
Whereas Breuer supports part of her arguments drawing on the economic
situation of English women at the time, I simply read Agostes as a mother
who is anxious over accomplishing her daughter’s desire.

Interestingly enough, Purkiss points out that “early modern women saw
witches as inverted mothers, and [...] in some cases the death of the mother
was the result of the witch’s usurpation” (2005: 107). Witches were feared and
seen as anti-maternal, embodying all that is bad about motherhood. However,
Agostes is not the case. Whereas she is certainly portrayed as stereotyped in
the way that she behaves (as explained above), she is not a degraded maternal
figure, hence the subversion of the popular characterisation of witches as
destructive. Breuer rightly argues that

[t]he wicked witches of the [late medieval] make-over narratives are mothers,
but not birth mothers: they are step-mothers and mother-in-law. While
mothers-in-law might be married, they might also be widows. Indeed, Agostes,
the mother-in-law in Greene, operates as a witch sole, working her magic
without the nuisance of a husband; as she has a daughter, the implication is
that she’s a widow. (Breuer 2009b: 3)

150 David Navarrete

In literature, witches and widows are two of the most well-known
archetypes with negative connotations of authority, power, and free choice, as
particularly reflected in early modern English texts. The degree of agency is
doubled when the character in question is both a witch and a widow, as
Agostes.

In terms of mother-daughter relationships, Agostes operates as two sides of
the same coin. She wants to help the Lady, but doing so means having her
daughter commit adultery and what this transgression entails: “undermin[ing]
the foundation of Christian marriage” (Breuer 2009a: 86) and ostensibly
risking his son-in-law’s life.

13
Also, it could be argued that Agostes is actually

committing a transgression by heading a plot against her son-in-law for the
benefit of the Lady of Hutton.

14
But, for the purposes of this article, it should

be emphasised that her characterisation, actions, and speech render her a
figure worthy of evaluation in terms of late medieval and early modern ideas of
the realisation of female desire and motherhood. As Breuer points out,
“Agostes attempts to provide her daughter access to a famous knight, in effect
side-stepping the aristocratic reliance on patriarchal marriage, in which female
desire is unimportant” (2009a: 86). In GK, women’s aspirations are certainly
far from being insignificant. Agostes, who commiserates only with her
daughter, acts against gender expectations and violates those rules that hinder
her from accomplishing her goal.

She is not preoccupied with the hardships to which Sir Bredbeddle is going to be
exposed throughout his journey, fraught with numerous dangers, all the way to
Carlisle, far away from Hutton Castle. Perhaps, she trusts that his son-in-law has, like
Gawain, prowess in battle and is not going to have any sort of trouble.
14

Sir Bredbeddle’s revelation at the end of the ballad that he was aware of his wife’s
feelings is problematic. He eventually confesses that he knew of her wife’s love for
Gawain all the time, which raises two hypotheses: either the scribe misunderstood the
plot (Sir Bredbeddle is not supposed to know anything about the female plot, as it is
signalled in the text) or the Greene Knight pretended not to be aware of it. He is
thankful that Gawain did not engage in sexual intercourse with her out of respect for
him (ll. 486–488).

Agostes in The Greene Knight 151

6. Agostes in action

One of the defining features of Agostes is her noticeable anxiety. When Sir
Bredbeddle goes out hunting and Sir Gawain is still asleep, “Up rose the old
witche with hast throwe / And to her dauhter can shee goe / And said, ‘Be not
adread!’” (ll. 363–365).

15
Then,

To her daughter can shee say,
‘The man that thou hast wisht many a day,
Of him thou maist be sped,
For Sir Gawaine, that curteous knight,
Is lodged in this hall all night.’
She brought her to his bedd. (ll. 366–371)

Shee saith, ‘Gentle knight, awake!
And for this faire ladies sake,
That hath loved thee so deere,
Take her boldly in thine armes.
There is noe man shall doe thee harme.’
Now beene they both heere. (ll. 372–377)

As we can observe in these lines, she runs to her daughter and tells her not to
be afraid. The hero is finally at the castle and it is time for Agostes to do her
task. In my view, these lines evoke a clear feeling of anxiety. An old witch
running in a rush —“with all haste” (Hahn 1995: 324) and/or “eager” (Hales
& Furnivall 1868: 56)— towards her daughter makes up a peculiar image. The
witch seems anxious and even more enthusiastic than her daughter, who is a
rather passive character, about bringing the Lady to Gawain, most likely

Line 365 (quoted above) is rather intriguing: when Agostes runs in a hurry towards
her daughter, knowing that Gawain is alone in his chamber, she tells the Lady not to
be afraid. Why Agostes says so remains a mystery to me unless her daughter is actually
scared of committing adultery (whether or not she has her husband’s consent to sleep
with another man), she is bashful about it, she is inexperienced in matters of love, or
maybe she has just changed her mind about the idea of having a lover. Be that as it
may, Agostes is determined to doing as designed. In this context, it is interesting to
note that the passiveness of the Lady, added to her apparent reservedness, build an
image of her sharply different from the uninhibited Lady of Hautdesert in SGGK.

152 David Navarrete

because realising her daughter’s yearning is a matter of concern for her, as
stated before.

The idea of anxiety is represented only superficially but I believe it is
indeed revealed in the character of Agostes, as the lines above show. The
concept of anxiety in Middle English and early modern texts has been vastly
explored by scholars, mostly in the portrayals of boisterous, noisy, and unruly
women.

16
Two cases in point are SGGK or The Wife of Bath’s Tale, narratives

clearly concerned with men’s anxiety about female power. But many of these
texts are not directly concerned with maternal commitment, whereas GK is.
Agostes’s notorious agency throughout the female-plot can only be
understood in relationship with her magic powers and, most importantly, her
daughter’s desire. The fulfillment of the Lady’s desire is the trigger of the
witch’s anxiety.

The fact that Agostes is more active (most of the weight of the female-plot
lies on her) suggests that not only the concept of desire is represented
differently on the male than in the female characters, it also operates
discordantly in the two women. The characterisation of Agostes as an old
witch skilled in the magic arts might be the reason why she comes across as
more confident: elderliness goes hand in hand with experience and knowledge.

Lines 367 and 374 (quoted above) reassert the Lady’s strong, passionate
desire and love for Gawain;

17
but most importantly, they reveal an important

trait of Agostes’s character. When the witch confidently takes the Lady to
Gawain’s bed, she commits a transgression or boundary-breaking: she literally
crosses the imaginary line that separates the private (Gawain’s alcove) from the
rest of the space in the castle. In other words, she enters a personal place in
which she should not be, a supposedly intimate place not to be trespassed,
least of all with the witch’s intentions. Therefore, her intrusion into Gawain’s
bedroom consequently identifies her with an obtrusive, obscene character.

Scholarship on anxiety over agency in later Middle English literature is too vast to
be noted here, but one case that I consider especially relevant is L’Estrange & More
(2012).
17

It appears as if she is truly in love with the renowned knight of the Round Table,
but either there is something that hinders her from going by herself to Gawain
(perhaps she is too inexperienced or young and does not know how to act under such
circumstances) or her mother is domineering or overbearing and decides to guide her
daughter through the plan that she devised.

Agostes in The Greene Knight 153

Discussing some early modern cases of witchcraft at the popular and domestic
level, Purkiss argues from a gender perspective that

the threshold, as the name implies, is a liminal space, the boundary between
inside and outside [...] It is the association of female identity with maintaining
the boundaries of and order in the house which makes the witch a fearful
fantasy if what can happen when those bounds are transgressed. (Purkiss 2005:
98)

Purkiss’s analysis can help illuminate my discussion of Agostes’s inadequate
behaviour before one of the finest and most courteous knights of medieval
romance. (In the case of Hutton, we are dealing here with a castle and a witch
instead of a house and a housewife, though.) Agostes actually opposes Purkiss’
idea of maintenance of order and what this implies, such as peace and
tranquillity. In this passage, she functions as a disturber of harmony and
perpetrator of disorder; she operates as a sort of (using Purkiss’s terms)
“grotesque presence” (2005: 224).

19
Even though she is not a grotesque

character in its own right, she does present some traits of grotesqueness, not
understood as monstrosity, freakishness or deformity, but as a deviation from
the norm; in this case, from the courtly etiquette, as manifested in her
impropriety. I believe Agostes is a grotesque character because she is a mother
who is intervening good-heartedly in a family affair and is prompted by
honourable reasons, but, at the same time, she carries out her manoeuvre
through the employment of apparently disquieting, threatening means. This

Purkiss points out that “whereas most historians see the witch as the church’s
Other, or as man’s Other, I’m suggesting here that early modern women could also
represent the witch as their Other, that female anxieties, fears and self-fashioning
could also shape the notion of ‘witch’ at popular level” (2005: 97). In the context of
women’s witnesses depositions at witch-trials, she goes on to argue that “some
women’s stories of witchcraft constituted a powerful fantasy which enabled women to
negotiate the fears and anxieties of […] motherhood” (2005: 93). Whereas I do not
read the character of Agostes in the context of witch-trials or as a threat to her
daughter, I do view her as suggestive of women’s anxiety about motherhood, just as
Breuer does.
19

Purkiss uses the term ‘grotesque presence’ in a different context, but I think it can
be equally applied to the character at hand.

154 David Navarrete

ambiguity leaves her in a liminal position, the epitomic characteristic of the
grotesque.

Indeed, misrule and misbehaviour are one of the main traits of witches, just
like they were in several medieval and early modern popular festivities. Stuart
Clark argues that

[t]hroughout the late medieval and Renaissance period ritual inversion was a
characteristic element of village folk-rites, religious and educational ludi, urban
carnivals and court entertainments. Such festive occasions shared a calendrical
licence to disorderly behaviour or ‘misrule’ based on the temporary but
complete reversal of customary priorities of status and value. (Clark 1980: 101)

Agostes displays some traits of witches from late medieval and Renaissance
rituals and spectacles of inversion, but in a different context from the one that
Clark suggests above. In the passage at play, not only does Agostes trespass
and cause chaos, but she also takes the liberty to give Gawain orders (or, at
least, that is what can be inferred from lines 372–377, quoted above). She uses
the word “gentle” to refer to Gawain, but her bold speech and unflinching
determination are suggestive of a more discourteous conduct. Gawain holds a
very high social rank (he is one of the Knights of the Round Table and King
Arthur’s nephew), an elevated position of authority, and notorious refined
manners, all of which makes a sharp contrast with Agostes’s inhospitable
attitude and demeanour. The witch’s lack of courtliness and sophistication
towards the knight further reinforce the uncourtly atmosphere that she
creates. More importantly, they are suggestive of the stereotypical
configuration of witches as misbehaving women.

The grotesque is one of the most subjective and flexible literary genres or pictorial
forms. It “defies the notion of categorization altogether” (Harpham 1976: 464) and its
features are not fixed. Even though there is no one definition of the term but many,
there is something common to all of them: the grotesque is chiefly characterised by
the split against the ordinary, the common, and the familiar, always represented
through threatening bizarre or monstrous characters and ludicrous situations (1976:
462–463). But most importantly, this term is defined as liminality or ambiguity. I
believe that Agostes definitely displays some grotesque trait for the reasons explained
above. My definition of the grotesque is based on Bakhtin (1984), Russo (1994),
Edwards & Graulund (2013), and Danow (1995).

Agostes in The Greene Knight 155

7. Magic powers and witchy skills

Another point worth exploring in the character of Agostes is her power: what
kind of magic she knows and what this can disclose about her agency and
identity as a witch. Even though we have almost no information at all about
her in the ballad, what we know about her suffices to explore her dark
witching skills. We only witness her powers in the narrative twice. First, when
she transforms Sir Bredbeddle into the Green Knight (even though the
scribe’s clumsiness in the depiction of the Green Knight reveals that he is only
wearing green-coloured clothes but is not green himself, hence his lack of
supernaturalness). Second, when the Green Knight is beheaded and
immediately afterwards grabs his head and starts talking. He does not bleed to
death, which can only be explained by magic. These two events in the
narrative come from the powers of Agostes, as we are informed by the ballad’s
author. Her agency is emphasised by the narrator’s insight into her magic
skills in lines 52–54 (see Section 4 above), in which we can read that, through
her powers, she can make people look as if they had been harmed in battle.
Also, in lines 55–57 (“She taught her sonne the knight alsoe / In transposed
likenesse he shold goe / Both by fell and frythe”), we read that she is the one
who teaches Sir Bredbeddle his knowledge of witchcraft. Her son-in-law
would perhaps be helpless without her because he owes his magic to the
witch.

The previous passages reveal the kind of magic that Agostes knows:
transformative power, which consists in the ability to manipulate and change

Sir Bredbeddle is “a venterous knight” (l. 345) who “works by witchcraft day and
night, / With many a great furley” (ll. 346–347). Judging by these two lines, it could
be argued that we are dealing here with a case of male witchcraft, yet unfortunately we
do not have any information at all about what his powers consist in any more than
about his nature as witch. In fact, rather than a witch, he merely seems to be the
passive subject through whom Agostes’s witchcraft works. Let us remember that it is
her who functions as the only performer of the magic events. The ballad’s author gave
no importance at all to the Green Knight as a figure of supernaturalness; on the
contrary, his magic powers are only a reflection or expansion of those of the powerful
female figure behind them. Male witches were common, especially before the fifteenth
century, such as in Froissart’s chronicles, in which we have the story of a man
condemned for witchcraft; but this is not the case for Sir Bredbeddle, who might just
be an instrument of magic, like the Green Knight in SGGK.

156 David Navarrete

the appearance of people and things. Heidi Breuer argues that GK “explicitly
designates ‘witchcraft’ as transformative, transferable power —witches like
Agostes can make things appear different than they are, and they can pass
their magical knowledge on to others” (2009a: 86). Shape shifting and illusion
making are the most common attributes of this kind of power, which is
probably one of the greatest instances of supernatural magic as it entails the
radical transformation of a being into another.

In order to grasp the character of Agostes more thoroughly, we should ask
what kind of witch she is. There are several types of magical figures (whose
powers come from different practices and beliefs) in late medieval and early
modern England. Among others, Breuer mentions occultists, herbalists,
alchemists, healers, necromancers, demonologists, prophets, and sorcerers.
Concerning feminine magic, three of the most common images in late Middle
English literature (particularly Arthurian romance) are the witch, the
sorceress, and the Loathly Lady (2009b: 9–11).

22
She argues that the

Breuer’s points on the representation and role of magical figures in this literary
tradition are crucial for the understanding of late medieval and early modern English
witches. She argues that

whether represented negatively or positively, magical figures are by definition
different from the norm; they function as others against which normative
conventions can be defined. In particular, describing and interpreting the
gendering of magical figures allows us to configure normative gender
conventions by delineating their boundaries, those liminal spaces where
humanity fades into monstrosity. (Breuer 2009b: 7)

The previous definition further emphasises the grotesque element on the character of
Agostes. In the present article, I read the character of Agostes neither as negatively
nor positively characterised, but I do see her as ‘the Other’ who (as explained above)
functions as a boundary crosser. Breuer goes on to argue that “the power to transform
one thing into another is so important and so rare that it demands to be treated with
the utmost reverence. Transformative power is what makes magic so useful to our
understanding of medieval and early modern society, precisely because of its position
as other” (2009b: 7). It is Agostes’s transformative powers that unquestionably render
her a powerful magical figure. For more information about late medieval and early
modern witchcraft in English literature, Breuer (2009b) offers a good analysis of
matters such as agency, maternity, and magic in several fictional representations of
witches.

Agostes in The Greene Knight 157

“beautiful temptress’ and the ‘crone hag’ are the two most frequent archetypes
of the wicked witch in Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, Edmund Spenser’s
The Faerie Queene, and William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
Macbeth, and The Tempest. Most importantly, she points out that “[t]he
juxtaposition of these two figures creates a construction of femininity that
indicts both the overtly alluring and the grotesque” (2009: 12). Whereas
Agostes would likely fit into the category of the ‘crone hag’, this label actually
falls short for her raison d’être in the text, as shall be discussed right below.
She is one more of the many fictional representations of witches, but not a
typical one.

8. The Lady of Hutton

The Lady of Hutton’s desire is strongly tied to Agostes’s. Whereas the
former’s wish is to meet Gawain, her mother’s is to make this possible.
Therefore, the two desires are interconnected and both women need one
another in order to succeed. However, both suddenly disappear from the plot
when Sir Bredbeddle chooses to fulfil his wish to join the community of the
Round Table. Consequently, the realisation of female desire proves a
problematic situation: the female plot becomes secondary (a sub-text),
neglected to the benefit of the male story about the Green Knight and Sir
Gawain.

Still, importantly enough, the passage of the Lady of Hutton’s dialogue
exposes one more desire in her: she wants to save Gawain’s life. In the context
of the giving of the girdle, Matthews argues that

the offer of the magical lace is made purely because of the lady’s concern for
Gawaine, not because of a pre-arranged conspiracy with her husband and
mother, as is the implication in Sir Gawain. Given that the lady loves Gawaine,
she would not be part of a plot involving his possible destruction. (Matthews
1994: 305)

In line with the interpretation that the Lady is seriously in love with Gawain
(as she reveals) and has nothing to do with her husband’s testing of the hero,
there is no reason to think that she would seek to hurt the knight. In fact,
judging by lines 391–401 (see quotation below), it can be inferred that the
Lady wants to help him by soothing his anxiety and, what is more, saving his

158 David Navarrete

life through her magic-charged white lace.
23

In my view, in this context, the
Lady of Hutton comes across as the saviour of King Arthur’s nephew, whereas
Sir Bredbeddle becomes his potential challenger and murderer. Right after
Gawain leaves Hutton Castle, the narrator employs the adjectives “gaye” as
well as “curteous and sheene” (ll. 434, 440) to refer to her. Gawain accepted
her lace, so the Lady’s glowing happiness might be interpreted as if she was
happy that Gawain, her “paramour”, is going to make it out of the Greene
Chappell alive.

All the interaction between the Lady of Hutton and Gawain is limited to
three kisses and a very brief conversation in which she confesses her feelings
for the knight.

24
Whether or not the Lady’s attempt of enjoying an extra-

marital relationship is frustrated is open to interpretation. When she says
“Without I have the love of thee, / My life standeth in dere” (ll. 379–380), she

Even though colour symbolism is not the concern of this article and does not have
much to add to my study, it is interesting to remark that Lady of Hutton’s lace is
white and her retinue of maidens in waiting is dressed in purple. Concerning the
contrast that these two colours make, Louis Adrian Montrose (in a different context)
points out:

The change suffered by the flower —from the whiteness of milk to the purple
wound of love— juxtaposes maternal nurturance and erotic violence. To an
Elizabethan audience, the metamorphosis may have suggested not only the
blood of defloration but also the blood of menstruation —and, perhaps, the
menarche, which manifests the sexual maturity of the female, the advent of
womanhood and potential motherhood. (Montrose 1983: 92)

White and purple colours are metaphorically reminiscent of two extremes of
womanhood and femininity: purity and sexual intercourse. (This allegory for
menstruation further harks back to the Irish hag from the Ecthtra-poem who, after
her transformation into a lady, wears a purple mantle and has snow-white skin;
Irslinger forthc.: 5–6]). Seen in this light, it seems like these two colours are
suggestive of female sexuality in full bloom in the Lady of Hutton.
24

Gerald Morgan has argued that the Lady of Hautdesert, from SGGK, is unhappily
married to Lord Bertilak of Hautdesert (2002: 159), yet I do not find his
interpretation very believable given the circumstances: she is pretending to love
Gawain, as required by Morgan le Fay’s machinations. In contrast, the Lady of Hutton
can be seen in my view as a young woman in love who wishes to free herself
temporarily from her marital and wifely duties to Sir Bredbeddle.

Agostes in The Greene Knight 159

lets both the audience and Gawain know about the gravity of the situation:
her life would be wrecked if Gawain, her paramour, refused her love.

25
To her

misfortune, the knight does so out of honour and courtesy towards his host
and because of the pressure under which he finds himself (ll. 381–389).
However, Gawain’s rejection of her love does not erase her concern for him.
After Gawain’s refusal,

Then spake that Ladye gay,
Saith, ‘Tell me some of your journey;
Your succour I may bee.
If itt be poynt of any war,
There shall noe man doe you noe darr
And yee wil be governed by mee. (ll. 391–395)

For heere I have a lace of silke:
It is as white as any milke,
And of A great value.’
She saith, ‘I dare safelye sweare
There shall noe man doe you deere
When you have it upon you.’ (ll. 396–401)

Therefore, even though the Lady of Hutton is neglected, she does not fulfil
the role of the evil temptress determined to bringing down the male
protagonist. On the contrary, she operates as the only help for the knight,
whether or not this also requires jeopardising Gawain’s trouthe.

26
Her narrative

role and identity are in turn closer to that of protector rather than antagonist
of the hero.

This is a convention in courtly and romantic love (the medieval motif of the
lovesick lady), which seems to point to the presence of some courtly love culture in
the ballad.
26

The fact that the Lady of Hutton wants to save Gawain’s life out of love and respect
for the honoured knight definitely establishes her difference from the Lady of
Hautdesert, who turns out to be a mere seductress who offers the hero her girdle
more to compromise his honour than to save his life.

160 David Navarrete

9. Conclusion

In this article, I have put forward a reading of Agostes that highlights her role
as a witch sole and renders her an independent, self-sufficient woman with a
considerable degree of agency who does as she pleases in the face of prevailing
social patriarchal conventions. Agostes’s narrative function in the narrative is
crystal clear, and she never deviates from her goal. Most importantly, she
operates on her own terms, functions as a mediator among her family and
Gawain, and does not live up to the portrayal of witches as anti-maternal. I
believe these traits are evocative of female autonomy and construct an
interesting, specific witch figure, rendering Agostes a character worthy of
analysis for scholars of witchcraft.

The question of whether or not both women realise their desire is central
to the present article. Whereas Agostes does her maternal duties and carries
out her task, she (or, perhaps more accurately, her daughter) does not
ultimately accomplish her goal. However, if bringing Gawain for her daughter
in order to satisfy the Lady’s amorous and/or sexual demands is all that they
wanted, then they have partly succeeded. But it is hard to believe that the
Lady might have been satisfied with that.

The author deprives women of the apparent notoriety that they enjoy in
the text when he shifts the plot’s action from Agostes’s and the Lady of
Hutton’s actions and interests to Sir Bredbeddle’s: his testing of Gawain and
intention to join the community of the Knights of the Round Table. Such
change has actually a negative impact on the two women: from this point
afterwards, they do not appear again. However, the main authority in the
ballad still resides at the top, in the character of Agostes. Louis Adrian
Montrose explores the notions of gender and power in William Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream “within a specifically Elizabethan context of
cultural production [...] in which authority is everywhere invested in men —
everywhere, that is, except at the top” (Montrose 1983: 61). Whereas GK
presents several characters of outstanding agency in the Arthurian tradition
(Sir Bredbeddle/the Green Knight, Sir Gawain, King Arthur), it has women at
the very top. Agostes’s agency might not suffice to assert that she enjoys an
undisputable position of influence or control (unlike, for example, Queen
Elizabeth), but I believe that her role, character, and actions make a decent
role model for women, particularly mothers and witches, who try to operate
unchallenged by men.

Agostes in The Greene Knight 161

The arguments put forward in this article have sought to shed light on the
witch Agostes, and hopefully I have succeeded in illuminating this unusual yet
widely ignored character. I also hope that I have clarified her relationship to
the rest of the characters in the ballad, particularly her daughter. Agostes
stands for the archetype of the witch/ mother, a motif charged with negative
connotations in medieval, modern, and contemporary popular culture (e.g. the
wicked step-mother in Cinderella). Still, as Agostes demonstrates, a witch can
also function as a vehicle for the fulfilment of good causes, such as helping
one’s child. Whereas she could certainly be read as an evil woman, I feel more
inclined to look at her a mother who intervenes kindly in a family affair
through her voice and power. Her concern for the Lady turns her into a
woman who subverts the stereotype that the witch/(step-)mother is always
necessarily evil. All in all, as I have demonstrated in this study, Agostes has a
lot to offer to scholarship on literary representations of witches and mothers
and has something that Morgan le Fay, despite the great scholarly interest
that the priestess from Avalon has aroused among SGGK-scholars, did not
offer in the enormously popular and influential fourteenth-century romance.

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Author’s address
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Campus El Milán, C/ Amparo Pedregal
E-33011 Oviedo, Spain received: 3 October 2017
e-mail: UO261990@uniovi.es revised version accepted: 20 March 2018