tells the following story. Riding from his court at Carlisle in search of adventure, King Arthur discovers a castle where he is welcomed by a bevy of ladies and their queen Guendolen. Canto 2: (Lyulph's tale continues) King Arthur passes three months with Guendolen before returning to his duties at Carlisle in spite of her attempt to detain him with a potion. Fifteen years later, Gyneth, the daughter of King Arthur and Guendolen, arrives at Carlisle to claim her father's protection. The knights do battle for her hand, but when the strife develops out of control Gyneth refuses to stop it by dropping her warder: to punish her Merlin appears and decrees that she must sleep in the valley of Saint of John until a knight is able to find and wake her. (As the canto ends Arthur suspends his lay and engages in a satirical characterisation of the upper-class fops that are about to invade the woodland sanctuary as noon approaches.) Introduction to Canto 3: Arthur is moved to resume his lay which Lucy (now his wife) has on two former occasions twice requested in vain. Canto 3: After a long vigil in the valley of Saint John, Sir Roland de Vaux is rewarded by achieving entry to the castle. He survives a series of perils and temptations before releasing Gyneth. Conclusion: Arthur tells Lucy that no knight since De Vaux has ever seen the castle. Reception The reviewers of The Bridal were generally approving, with six of the articles favourable and only one hostile: The Port Folio (Philadelphia) took the work to be an inferior imitation of Scott. Only one of the reviewers knew that Scott was the author: Drakard's Paper had heard of the authorship of the fragment published in the Edinburgh Annual Register. There was general appreciation of the poem's tenderness, elegance, delicacy, and clarity, if it lacked something of the spirit of Scott's acknowledged poems. The third canto tended to be found predictable and monotonous. References External links The Bridal of Triermain, full text at the Internet Archive See also Sleeping Beauty 1813 poems Scottish poems Poetry by Walter Scott Arthurian literature in English Cumbria in fiction