riding a black horse. Ipomadon dons black armour and rides out on a black horse, to challenge Lyoline to single combat for the hand of the Proud. The battle is long and hard, goes on for hundreds of lines, but at last, Ipomadon is victorious. Lyoline lies dead at his feet. But now a very curious thing happens, and one that Hue de Rotelande is happy to remain inexplicable, although the author of this Middle English tail-rhyme romance tries to convince us that it is through a lingering uncertainty on Ipomadon's part, a lack of certainty that he has truly accorded with the Proud's vow. Ipomadon goes to Lyoline's tent, takes up his banner and declares that Lyoline is victorious! Since their horses were slain from under them, we are told, nobody in the city has had any idea which knight is which: "He [Ipomadon] wold no lengur byde, To wallys gan he ryde And cryed lowed on hight: 'Haue done and dight you, damysell, Now may ye se yourself full well That Lyolyne ys wyght! Wete ye well I am hee; Tomorowe into Yndde ye shall wyth me For I haue slayne youre knight!'" It is only with the arrival of Cabanus, who is intent upon rescuing the Proud himself, that Ipomadon is made to abandon this ludicrous disguise, to reveal his true self and to learn to his joy who Cabanus really is—his long lost brother. And on this joyful note, the romance ends with the Proud and her champion Ipomadon, her 'strange young man', at last in one another's arms. Late-medieval influences upon the Anglo-Norman Ipomedon Ipomedon was written by Hue de Roteland in around 1180 or 1190. He states that he translated it out of a Latin manuscript, which is generally regarded as a hoax on his part. It was at one point believed to be inspired by a Byzantine source, but now appears to be an invented tale, but one nevertheless showing many motifs common to the romance genre. Sir Lancelot In the 1170s Chretien de Troyes wrote a romance called The Knight of the Cart in which an unknown knight, only much later revealed to be Sir Lancelot, travels into a land to which the only access is via a 'Sword Bridge' and an 'Underwater Bridge'. Near the end of this tale, having achieved the release of many people from King Arthur's court who