Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Middle English poem Tolkien edited, lectured on and translated — and where the Woses got their name
Sir Gawayn and þe Grene Knyȝt Gawain-poet Pearl Poet
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A late fourteenth-century romance in alliterative verse, preserved in a single manuscript. Gawain accepts a beheading game from a green giant, and a year later must ride north through a wild land to receive the return blow. Tolkien lived with this poem for fifty years: he edited it with E. V. Gordon in 1925, gave the W. P. Ker lecture on it in 1953, and his verse translation was broadcast by the BBC that winter; the letters show it repeatedly claiming time he wanted for the Silmarillion. Its mark on Middle-earth is a single word. Among the foes Gawain meets in the wilderness are 'wodwos', wild men of the woods — a word Tolkien glossed from Old English wudu-wāsa, the same word he later modernised as Wose for the Wild Men of Drúadan Forest.
Below stands the original wording of the source, public domain, with a translation of our own or one that is public domain. Marked words lead to the entry in the register that took something from them.
Lines 720–723: the foes of the wilderness
Sumwhyle wyth wormeȝ he werreȝ, and with wolues als, Sumwhyle wyth wodwos, þat woned in þe knarreȝ, Boþe wyth bulleȝ and bereȝ, and boreȝ oþerquyle, And etayneȝ, þat hym anelede of þe heȝe felle;
Sometimes with dragons he wars, and with wolves too, sometimes with wood-woses that dwelt in the crags, both with bulls and bears, and boars at other times, and ettins that pursued him from the high fells;
Our translation. Gawain's winter ride through the Wirral: the poet lists his enemies in one alliterating breath. Tolkien and Gordon glossed wodwos as 'satyrs, trolls of the forest' from Old English wudu-wāsa; Christopher Tolkien's note on the Drúedain in Unfinished Tales derives Wose from the same compound.
What became of it
Two facts are attested, the bridge between them is ours: Tolkien glossed the poem's 'wodwos' from Old English wudu-wāsa in his 1925 edition, and the Unfinished Tales note derives Wose, his name for the Wild Men of Drúadan Forest, from that same compound. Nowhere does he say the Woses came out of Gawain.
- Unfinished Tales — Part Four, I, The Drúedain, note 14
an Anglo-Saxon word wása, which is actually found only in the compound wudu-wása
- The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien — Letter 134
the W. P. Ker lecture at Glasgow; Sir Gawain; and new lectures!
- Unfinished Tales — Part Four, I, The Drúedain, note 14
Sources
- The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien — Letter 134
- The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien — Letter 137
- The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien — Letter 148
- The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien — Letter 176
- The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays — Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture, 1953)
Cite this page
Legendarium (2026): „Sir Gawain and the Green Knight“. Last updated September 3, 2026. https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/sir-gawain/
APA
Legendarium. (2026). Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Last updated September 3, 2026. https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/sir-gawain/
MLA
„Sir Gawain and the Green Knight“. Legendarium, 2026, https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/sir-gawain/. Last updated September 3, 2026.
BibTeX
@misc{legendarium-sir-gawain-en,
title = {Sir Gawain and the Green Knight},
author = {{Legendarium}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/sir-gawain/}},
note = {Last updated September 3, 2026}
}