I was to submit this to my professor, Michael Jones, but didn't, and another prof., Joanna Martin took over his responsibilities. The Sir Orfeo poet achieves the themes of love, kinship and loyalty in Queen Herodius’ descent or rather capture by the fairy world and her King (Orfeo’s) foray into the fairy world to rescue her against a backdrop of idyllic imagery. In this poem Orfeo is the anti-spiritual hero that contrasts his self-imposed exile with that of Saul of the Bible. Orfeo purposely sets out not for redemption, as that would be selfish, but as an exile from the real world from which he failed to protect from a malignant encroachment of the fairy realm. At the beginning of the poem, Orfeo’s outstanding qualities are catalogued, especially his musical ability, in almost epic fashion, describing his idyllic nature without any flaws. This stasis at the beginning of the romance is a formulaic example which also shows up in Havelok the Dane, where King Athelstan is thusly described before his death. We also see this in Richard Coer de Lyon, though that poem, recording the actions of a saint, remains more real-world than Orfeo. The cataloging of personal qualities is a kind of foreshadowing of the conflicts that will follow, which is quite different from the sort of poem that Yawain and Gawain is, which starts out in conflict. The opening lines of Orfeo put me in mind of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’ Prologue, though they are in differing meter, Orfeo perhaps employing more consonance than Chaucer. In Orfeo this idyllic description is a foil, for we cannot learn from it except through a disruption of it. This is where the themes of commitment and personal worth amidst unpredictability come into play. Queen Heurodis is plunged into the unreal world, which is not spiritual, but which evokes spiritual qualities. When the queen encounters this other world, she begins to harm herself and her original beauty. King Orefo, upon rescuing her and taking her back to the formerly ideal world and safety, where she calms down a bit, laments her self-destruction and his loss, which is where they declare their commitments to each other. But the real world with its physical barriers and distances is no match for the fairy unreal, and when the King confronts and tempts the magical forces, perhaps quite unwisely, by taking his Queen back to the spot where she had the vision/disturbance and surrounding her with a shield-wall, he and his men are flabbergasted when she disappears into thin air, which necessitates his own journey into the unseen world. He remains true to his word that, ‘whider thou gost Ichil with the’: the proclamation of his commitment, which he follows up on. The idyllic setting of the pre-story is mirrored by the perfect setting in which the Queen first encounters the supernatural. The spiritual baiting in in Sir Launfil as well, with its leisure under the ympe or grafted tree in the beginning of the poem. Further, Heurodis, signals an intentional otherly encounter by her choice of the time of day, noon, when one was most likely to have such an encounter. Though neither poem is instructive religiously, per se, they both start out in the idyllic spring, a promising season in the Christian year as well. And as this is a Celtic story, we might expect to see more ‘pagan’ elements in the story. But Orfeo, as said above is the anti-hero, or rather unhero. He does not overcome loss of life in any spiritual resurrection or confrontation but rather in another biblical narrative in which he earns any prize the fairy king can pay in reward for his excellent harp playing, much the same as the dance before Herod which won the head of John the Baptist in the Gospels. In confrontation with the spiritual, there is loss of blood, in this case in Herodius’ self-mutilation; however this is merely a loss of the sheen of outward beauty, which Orfeo laments though does not despair of. He must enter the spiritual world in order to redeem true worth. Heurodis, for her part, seems to realize the mistake she has made and laments the stability of their former relationship, which now can never be the same, she realizes gravely: ‘ac now we mot delen a-to’! Shepherd notes on the time of day, that this belief in the noontide portal may stem from Psalm 90, and the Middle English particularly allows this literal witching hour of sorts, as well as justification for Orfeo’s shield wall: (5) With scheld um-gif þe sal his sothnes, And noght saltou drede fra drede þat night es; (6) Fra arwe þat es in daie fleghand; Fra wight þat es forth-gaand; In mirkenes and of in-ras ai, And of þe devel of mid-dai. This all brings us to a discussion of just what kind of a story Sir Orfeo is. Redemption? Dark-night-of-the-soul? Fantasy? Finlayson points out the fairy tale element of the story. An adult fairy tale is an interesting idea. Fairy tales are for kids though. Aren’t they? They are until we go back to middle ages mentality. Sir Orfeo is a captivating story for adult ears that involves the fairy world. The question is, what does it mean for adults? It means that love and oneness between a king and his queen is essential to the proper natural functioning of a government and that any measure to secure or rescue it is worth the undertaking. King Orfeo is up to the undertaking, and only a venture into the unseen enemy camp can transform the facetiousness of his excellent kingdom into a properly functioning society. Beauty is only skin deep—that is of course if we are only talking about outer beauty.