Culhwch and Olwen

This is the oldest Arthurian story that survives, and reading it after the French romances is like stepping through a wall.

Culhwch is cursed by his stepmother to love Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden Chief Giant, whom he has never seen. He rides to Arthur's court to claim a boon — and he does not petition. He claims it as kin, by right, and when the porter tries to keep him out he threatens to give three shouts that will make every pregnant woman in the land miscarry. He is admitted.

Arthur here is not a sovereign presiding over a fellowship. He is the head of a war-band, and the tale's most extraordinary passage is the list of the men Culhwch invokes: over two hundred names, including one who can drink a sea dry, one whose beard is used as a leash, a man so hot he sets things alight in winter, and Cai, who can go nine nights without sleep and hold his breath nine days under water.

Ysbaddaden must die when his daughter marries, so he sets forty impossible bride-price tasks. Most of them are never mentioned again. The great one is the hunt for Twrch Trwyth, a king transformed into a boar, who must be run down across Ireland, Wales and Cornwall so that the comb, razor and shears between his ears can be taken to shave the giant before the wedding.

Men die in that hunt. The boar is finally driven into the sea and vanishes.

There is no courtesy in this story, no fellowship, no oath, no Grail, and no interiority whatsoever. There is a young man with a claim, an enormous cast of impossible retainers, and a hunt. It is the Arthur that existed before anybody in France decided he should have a court.