Arthurian tale of Perceval (the Didot Perceval) and by Paien de Maisières in his early-13th-century Arthurian poem La Mule sans frein, The Mule Without a Bridle. Perhaps Cardiff and Carlisle have become conflated. Fionn mac Cumhail, however, in the legends and tales of ancient Ireland, which have many similarities with the very earliest (8th–12th century) Welsh fragments of stories of Arthur, is often beset by distortions in space and time and is often led by a deer towards a magical encounter with the Sidhe, the fairy folk, the inhabitants of the Otherworld, and it is certainly something of this sort that these two Arthurian knights and a bishop now experience. Bishop Baldwin knows this habitation. The Carle of Carlisle has the custom of killing all those who spend the night in his castle. But it is raining, the wind is picking up and the brash Sir Kay has already rejected Sir Gawain's suggestion that they spend the night in the forest. He knocks on the gate with such force that the knocker nearly falls off and following an ominous warning by the gatekeeper, they are allowed entry. They are led into a hall where four wild animals are sitting beside a central hearth. A bull, a boar, a lion and a bear. These animals approach the guests menacingly, but are shouted at so fiercely by their master that they crawl away beneath a table in terror. A giant rises from his chair and comes over to his guests, welcomes them, offers them wine, which they accept. He is brought a four-gallon goblet for himself and sends it back, demanding one that holds nine gallons of wine instead. He is twenty-seven feet tall. "Nine taylloris yerdus he was hyghtyt Anf therto leggus longe and wyghtht Or ellus wondor hit wer. Ther was no post in that hall Grettyst growand of hem all, But his theys were thycker." 'He was nine tailor's yards in height and his legs were proportionately long and powerful – otherwise he would have looked ridiculous! There was not a pillar in the hall whose circumference exceeded that of his thighs.' The Green Knight who enters King Arthur's court on New Year's Day in the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is something of a giant: "... his lyndes and his lymes so longe and so grete, half etayn in erde I hope that he were