Assumption of Our Lady

Assumption of Our Lady is a feast day used in the account of Gareth’s tournament to set its date and draw Arthur’s court and knights to the castle near the Isle of Avilion. The feast links a religious observance to a public contest whose arrangements also offer a way to discover Gareth’s whereabouts and identity.

The Feast as a Tournament Date

When Dame Liones is asked where Gareth may be found, she proposes that a tournament be proclaimed for the feast at her castle. Her announced terms promise that the knight who proves himself best will receive her and her lands; if he is already married, his wife will receive precedence, a gold coronet set with valuable stones, and a white gerfalcon. The proposal turns the feast into both a public challenge and a means of drawing Gareth into view.

Preparations and the Gathering

Arthur approves the plan, and he and Dame Liones make provision for the tournament. The proclamation travels through England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, the out islands, Brittany, and other countries. Knights are invited to choose either the castle’s side or Arthur’s, and the event is set two months ahead. Many knights join the castle’s party, among them Palamides, Tristram, and Dinadan. Gareth, though central to the arrangements, chooses to take no greater place than that of an ordinary knight.

The Feast Day and the Contest

Arthur arrives two days before the feast, accompanied by courtly ceremony and entertainment; Guenever and the Queen of Orkney are also present. On Assumption Day, after mass and matins, heralds sound the call to the field and the encounters begin. Epinogrus meets Sagramore, while Palamides encounters Gawaine; both pairs break their spears, and Gawaine and Palamides fall with their horses before knights from either side rescue them. Safere and Sagwarides then fight Agravaine and Gaheris, knocking them down, while Uwaine defeats Malgrine. The feast day thus provides the announced occasion for a tournament that quickly becomes a test of the competing parties’ strength.

Narrative Function

The date is more than a marker on the calendar: it gives Liones’s plan a known deadline and gathers a broad company of knights around Gareth’s concealed presence. The contest’s public terms promise reward and recognition, while the tournament’s opening combats begin to disclose the skill and allegiances of those assembled. In the evidence here, the feast’s particular role is to anchor that tournament; no further ritual meaning for the date is stated.