of ladies into the side of a cliff and through the rock until he emerges into an Otherworld, in a Middle English Breton lai, where he rescues his wife who had been abducted, from amongst those who have been beheaded and burnt and suffocated. Many ancient Irish tales involve a hero entering a hill of the Sidhe, or crossing a sea to a Land of Youth, or passing down through the waters of a lake into an Otherworld. A Middle English poem, the Isle of Ladies, describes an island where magic apples sustain a multitude of ladies, and only ladies, on an island that is made of glass; like one of the Otherworldly islands that features in the ancient Irish legend, The Voyage of Máel Dúin. In another ancient Irish legend, the Voyage of Bran, a beautiful lady comes to take Bran to one of these islands. "If the Middle English Breton Lay has connections with Celtic folktale, the connections can be easily perceived in Sir Launfal. Folktale Folktale elements inherited from Marie de France's Lanval include the fairy lover, magical gifts, a beauty contest and an offended fay. Sir Launfal adds a number of folktale elements of its own to those inherited from Marie de France's Lanval, including those of a spendthrift knight, combat with a giant, a magical dwarf-servant and "the cyclical return of the mounted warrior's spirit to this world once a year." Contemporary (medieval) social commentary Wealth over worth In a number of ways, Sir Launfal may give literary expression to some contemporary 14th-century concerns as well. Its depiction of a court and a kingdom where wealth is the only measure of standing and social worth, may be a satire on a bourgeois mentality in late-14th-century England. A knight who, through his own generosity, falls into debt and poverty, and consequent misery, is depicted in at least two other late medieval Middle English works, Sir Amadace, and Sir Cleges. Justice Launfal's breaking of his word not to reveal his lover's name may have contemporary medieval significance, since one of the tenets of Courtly love was "the code of avantance, in which the male was to protect his lover’s reputation by not revealing her identity." But there may be much wider concerns expressed in Sir Launfal about legal process and the state of justice in England near the end of the 14th century. "Literary depictions of the