Marhaus Kills the Giant Taulurd

Marhaus Kills the Giant Taulurd is an episode in which Marhaus answers Earl Fergus’s appeal against a giant who has devastated his lands. The fight turns on the limits of ordinary mounted combat: Marhaus must face Taulurd on foot, survive the destruction of his shield, and use stones to finish the encounter after driving the giant into water. Victory also opens the giant’s castle, where Marhaus frees twenty-four women and twelve knights.

The Earl’s Appeal

After defeating the Duke of the South Marches and his four sons, Marhaus travels with his damsel and reaches Earl Fergus’s lands. Fergus, a young man newly come into his inheritance, tells him that Taulurd is destroying the countryside and has made travel unsafe. The giant has a brother in Cornwall named Taulas, later killed by Tristram when Tristram is out of his mind, linking Fergus’s immediate danger to another strand of the romance.

Marhaus first asks whether Taulurd fights on horseback or on foot. Fergus replies that no horse can carry him. Marhaus therefore chooses to meet him on foot rather than avoid the challenge. The practical question determines the terms of the combat: the giant’s size rules out a mounted fight, but Marhaus accepts the disadvantage and proceeds.

The Fight by the Water

The next morning, one of Fergus’s men guides Marhaus to the giant. Taulurd is sitting beneath a holly tree, with iron clubs and gisarms around him. He takes up an iron club and at the first blow splits Marhaus’s shield in two, putting the knight in serious peril. The shield’s destruction establishes that Marhaus cannot simply absorb Taulurd’s force; he must adapt as the fight develops.

Marhaus strikes off Taulurd’s right arm above the elbow. The giant flees, and Marhaus pursues him to the water, where Taulurd’s height prevents him from wading after his opponent. Marhaus then has Fergus’s man bring him stones and throws them at the giant until Taulurd falls into the water and dies. The victory comes through persistence and a change of means: after the close fight gives way to pursuit, Marhaus uses the terrain and stones to overcome the giant’s reach.

Prisoners, Treasure, and Refusal

After the fight, Marhaus enters the giant’s castle and releases twenty-four women and twelve knights from imprisonment. His victory thus ends not only the threat to Fergus’s lands but also the captivity of people held inside Taulurd’s stronghold. The castle contains so much wealth that Marhaus is never poor again for the rest of his life.

Fergus offers Marhaus half his lands in gratitude, but Marhaus refuses the gift. This refusal distinguishes the reward he accepts from the one he declines: he leaves with the treasure found in the castle, yet will not take a share of the earl’s inheritance. He stays with Fergus for nearly half a year while recovering from the bruising he received in the fight, then takes his leave.

Place in Marhaus’s Adventures

The episode forms one part of Marhaus’s sequence of knightly deeds. After defeating the giant, he meets Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine, along with four other knights from King Arthur’s court, and knocks the four down with a single spear before departing to meet them at an appointed time. The shift from rescuing Fergus’s lands and the castle’s captives to confronting Arthur’s knights extends the episode’s pattern of successive encounters, while its central achievement remains the destruction of Taulurd and the release of his prisoners.