A year and a day

Often I read that all one has to do to find out some bit of information is to google it. Maybe I'm just not very good at phrasing my query properly, but more often than not all I get back is irrelevancy, triviality and repetition. My most recent attempt concerned the language in Gawain and the Green Knight. This is one of my favourite stories from the period of Grail literature. I was reminded of it because a number of articles in my regular readings brought it up. One of the writers described the language as moderately challenging. Hah! Here's how it starts, as nearly as I remember:

Sithen the assaut was sesed at Troye
The borgh brittened and brent to brandez and askes
The tulk that the trammes of tresoune there wrought
Was tried for his treacherie,
The trewest on erthe...

I can pretty well read it now, with good comprehension of maybe 60% of it, very poor comprehension of another 10% and of most of the rest I'm pretty shaky. I don't take to it quite as readily as to Chaucer who wrote about the same time. The dialect is different. Even today some English dialects sound like foreign languages, and the Gawain poet's language was far closer to Old English than Chaucer's. Old English really has to be studied as a foreign language and there aren't really that many texts to read. So I tried to find a source that would help reduce the opacity of the text. But all I found were essays like "Colonialism and the Green Knight," and the "Wicca symbolism in the Green Knight." Colonialism? In 14th Century English Midlands? Wicca, a bogus invention of silly Neopagans? Obviously departments of medieval studies have descended into triviality as much as classics departments.
So I gave up. I don't really enjoy playing with my computer like some people do. Too bad, because I love our English language, and I love the Green Knight story. I went through my Grail literature phase about twenty years ago and it's still a favourite of mine. Along with Wolfram's Parsifal it seems to stand out from all the others for its strangeness. The strangeness is more than a function of the differences between our modern world and the medieval period. It hints at cultural currents that have largely been ignored by mainstream histories, perhaps because of a lack of records.
One of the elements I find especially curious in most of the Grail romances is the significance of sisters' sons. There are no indications that either Germanic or Latin cultures would be interested in sisters' sons and in the medieval context it would not even make any sense. So why these references? My uneducated guess: evidence of a matrilineal succession of kingship. It would be an interesting way of doing it, changing the psychology of inheritance if a king's son does not stand to inherit the throne. On the other hand, which sister's son gets the nod? Might be bloody.
The story revolves around a strange visitor to Arthur's court at the celebrations for the New Year. But Arthur
"...Wolde never ete
Upon such a dere day, er hym devised were
of sum aventurus thyng an uncouthe tale,.."
And sure enough a giant knight, green of complexion and dressed all in green enters the hall on his horse and challenges the assembled company to deal him a blow. Poor Gawain gets the nod, and finds that it is his task to cut off the knight's head with one blow of the Green Knight's huge ax on the condition that Gawain himself will have to withstand a blow from the Green Knight.
Dutifully, Gawain agrees to the condition and lops off the man's head. At that, the Green Knight picks up his own head by the hair, mounts his charger, and enjoins Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel in a year and a day to await the returning blow.
All very strange and mysterious, and I think worth the trouble of learning to read in the original version.
Happy New Year to all.