[Brighton Herald and other papers of September and October 1872; Musical Directories; Harmonicon, 1832; Brit. Mus. Music Library; Dict. of Music, 1827, p. 310.]
GUY of Warwick, hero of romance, is almost wholly a creature of fiction. Dugdale and other historians of Warwickshire literally accepted as historical the series of legends respecting him, to which literary shape seems to have been first given by an Anglo-Norman poet of the twelfth century. Omitting the obviously romantic details in which the story abounds, the legends are to the following effect. Guy, the son of Siward or Seguard of Wallingford, was educated by Harald or Heraud of Arden. He became page to Roalt or Rohand, earl of Warwick, Rockingham, and Oxford, and fell in love with Rohand's daughter Felice, who declined to marry him until he had proved his valour. His first expedition to the continent failed to satisfy Felice, and he was sent forth again on another foreign tour, in the course of which he fought against the Saracens at Constantinople. Once more in England, he was welcomed by Athelstan at York, and slew a savage dragon which was devastating Northumberland. Thereupon Felice consented to marry him, but he soon left her at Warwick to journey as a palmer to the Holy Land. Coming back for a third time to England, he found Athelstan besieged in Winchester by the Danes under Anlaf. The Danes boasted among their forces a giant named Colbrand. A duel to decide the war was arranged between Guy and Colbrand, and Guy killed the Danish champion. He then returned to Warwick, and lived as a holy man in a hermit's cell, practising the severest asceticism. Felice long lived in ignorance of his presence in the town, but finally identified him by a ring which he sent her by a herdsman, and she attended his deathbed. She survived her husband only a fortnight. Their son Rembrun or Raynbrun is credited in continuations of the romance with much the same career as his father.
These legends seem to embody incoherently several Anglo-Saxon traditions of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The central feature is the fight of Guy and the Danish giant, Anlaf's champion, before Winchester in the reign of Athelstan. It has been suggested that this episode is a tradition of the great battle of Brunanburh, fought by Athelstan against Anlaf of Denmark in 937. There are difficulties in the identification. The site of Brunanburh is not positively known, but it certainly was not at or near Winchester, where Guy is said in the romance to have slain Colbrand, and where the scene of the alleged combat has been identified in local tradition. We know, indeed, from authentic history that the Danes under Anlaf never besieged Athelstan in that city. But Olaf (Tryggvason) of Denmark—Olaf and Anlaf are practically identical names—undoubtedly threatened Winchester in the reign of Ethelred in 993, and it is possible that the tradition embodied in the romance may spring from a popular confusion between the two Danish invasions. According to the Danish 'Egilssage' (of the eleventh or twelfth century) Athelstan was aided at the battle of Brunanburh by two brothers, northern vikings of repute, named respectively Egil and Thorolf; but the attempt made by George Ellis [q. v.] to identify Guy with Egil is philologically absurd.
The name Guy is probably of Teutonic origin. It may possibly be a Norman reproduction of the Anglo-Saxon name 'Wigod,' or some other combination of the Anglo-Saxon 'wig,' i.e. war. Guy's father, Siward, is described in the romance as lord of Wallingford. An historical Wigod of Wallingford was cupbearer to Edward the Confessor, and was in favour with William the Conqueror, while his daughter and granddaughter (Matilda, wife (1) of Miles Crespin, and (2) Brian Fitzcount) held the lordship of Wallingford till the reign of Henry II.
Another shadowy historical confirmation of the romance may lie in the fact that an historical Siward, a grandson of Alwin, who was sheriff of Warwickshire shortly before the Norman conquest, had, according to documents quoted by Dugdale, a daughter of the unusual name of Felicia (Guy's mistress in the romance is Felice). The historical Siward's family seems, moreover, to have at some time alienated land to Wigod of Wallingford.
It is clear, nevertheless, that the mass of details in the romance is pure fiction. It was during the thirteenth century that the story in the original Norman-French verse became generally familiar in both France and England, and was translated into English. The oldest manuscript of the French poem is in the library at Wolfenbüttel (cf. G. A. Herbing's description of this manuscript, Wismar, 1848), and may be as early as the end of the thirteenth century. The oldest English version—the Auchinleck MS. in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh—is of little later date. (This manuscript was first printed by the Abbotsford Club in 1840, and has been reprinted by Professor Zupitza for the Early English Text Society.) 'Sir Gye of Warwike' is referred to as a knight 'of grete renowne' in Hampole's prologue to 'Speculum
