Melion and Biclarel - University of Liverpool

Introduction
… conme loups grans et corsus
Fort cuir et de mambres ossus;
Ne pour ce ne perdoit son san,
Sa memoire ne son asan. (vv. 43-46)
On Biclarel’s return to his cache, he immediately understands his wife’s
treachery. Similarly, when Melion fails to find his wife waiting with his clothes
and the magic ring, the narrator makes plain that the hero’s consternation is that
of a reasoning creature, a human being:
Molt fu dolans, ne set que face,
Qant il ne le troeve en la place.
Mais neporqant se leus estoit,
Sens e memoire d’ome avoit. (vv. 215-218)
Melion’s subsequent actions underline the coherent duality further: he deduces
that his wife, the daughter of the Irish king, has returned to her homeland, and
succeeds in following her. The details of the narrative stress that Melion’s
behaviour is due to human reasoning, not wolfish instinct: ‘Une nef vit que on
charga, / Ki la nuit devoit eskiper / Et en Yrlande droit aler’ (vv. 220-22); Melion
can understand the ship and its purpose, and find out its destination. He then
waits until nightfall to hide himself on board, and the next day he is ready to leap
off the ship as soon as it arrives in Dublin, presumably at the moment when the
crew is most occupied. Later, when Arthur’s ship appears, the narrator reinforces
the idea of the wolf’s human mind through a surprisingly lengthy and detailed
description of Melion’s recognition of the knights’ heraldic emblems:
Lor escus furent fors pendus,
Melïons les a coneüs;
Primes conut l’escu Gawain,
E puis a ravisé l’Iwain,
E puis l’escu le roi Ydel;
Tot ce li plot e li fu bel.
L’escu le roi bien ravisa,
Sachiés, de voir, grant joie en a;
Molt en fu liés, molt l’esjoï,
Car encor quide avoir merci. (vv. 351-60)
Ohler notes that ‘shields were often fixed over the sides [of sea-going vessels] to
stop the waves washing over the boats’ (The Medieval Traveller, p. 38). Melion’s
author gives the custom a different purpose, presenting the wolf’s recognition of
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