In his recent article, 'From Grail Quest to Inquest', Professor Bloch has analysed the legal aspects of the two trials by combat described in the Mort Artu with special reference to the picture they give of the workings of feudal justice in the early thirteenth century. Professor Bloch has earned the gratitude of all Arthurians by his sensitive and minute analysis of the legal background and implications of these two duels which provide a major part of the structural framework of the romance. In his discussion of the second duel, however, that between Lancelot and Gauvain, there seems to me to be some misinterpretation of the French text in the matter of the exact form of the oaths sworn by the combatants before the battle so that it seems worth looking at this particular question in more detail.

When the terms of the battle are discussed outside...