When is a Knight a Knight?
Attributive Adjectives and the Use of urdaỼl/urddol in the Middle Welsh Ystoryaeu Seint Greal
Abstract
The Middle Welsh Ystoryaeu Seint Greal, the ‘Stories of the Holy Grail’, are a late fourteenth-century translation of two thirteenth-century Old French Arthurian texts—La Queste del Saint Graal and Le Haut Livre du Graal (Perlesvaus). Statistical analysis shows evidence of a sophisticated and so far unique system for the use of the adjective urdaỼl (Mod. Welsh urddol) ‘ordained’ in qualifying the status of otherwise unknown knights.
