Mandeville's travels : the Cotton version
Mandeville, John, Sir., British Library. Manuscript. Cotton Titus C.16.
Hamelius, Paul, 1868-1922.

Eddere.—H.: teste, probably right; the head ofPage  2:34 Medusa. Brussels, 10420-5: bieste, possibly the origin of Cotton's adder or snake. Sir G. Warner has identified the story with the classic myth of the Gorgon's head. It is the Arthurian episode of the Laide Semblance, discussed by O. Sommer in The Structure of the Livre d'Artus, 1914, p. 19: King Riom of Ireland, who holds all the earth down to the Terre des Pastures [Iceland?] says that no man can pass beyond the latter country until the Laide Semblance is removed from the stream where it was set by Judas Maccabeus, to show that he had conquered the earth so far. … He who removes it will have to carry it to the Gulf of Sathenie, so that it may never be seen. For its kind is such that all who see it with their eyes must be in peril.—In the Vulgate version of the Livre d'Artus, ed. by O. Sommer, Vol. VIII. (1913), p. 150, a fair lady asks Artus for a knight to remove the Laide Semblance "ce est uns cors formez petit aus[s]i come uns enfes de trois anz, qui fu engendrez dun cheualier en une femme morte quil amoit par amors, et est en semblance de fame" (p. 158). Grex brings the Laide Semblance in a barrel to his lady, who has barrel and figure locked in a box of oakwood. Tempests never stop, and Arthur asks the advice of his clerks. Helias declares that the figure must be thrown back into the sea that surrounds the earth, in a place known to Merlin only. Merlin gets the box from the lady and throws it into the "go[u]ffre de Satellie." There it still lies. When it emerges and beholds ships, they all are in danger of shipwreck.—Other versions have been listed: Benedict of Peter-borough (ed. Stubbs, II. 195), Roger Hoveden (ed. Stubbs, III. 158), Walter Map (ed. T. Wright, p. 176), where it is named Henno cum Dentibus (Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales, 1891, p. 342). A summary is found in P. Paris, Romans de la Table Ronde, II., 1868, p. 193. The connection with the myth of Medusa is obvious in Map: "Gorgoneum praetendit ostentum, obrigescunt miseri, vident instar Medusae malitiam." Quoted by Runeberg (Études sur la Geste Rainouart, 1905, p. 90), who also instances the Bataille Loquifer (tête de Desramé), and Stricker's Daniel vom blüenden Tal. (Hist. Litt. Fr. XXX. 136). Runeberg holds that the legend was brought from the East by the Crusaders, and passed through various stages.—E. Freymond: Beiträge zur Kenntnis der altfranzösischen Artusromane in Prosa. Zs. f. fr. Sprache, Abhandl., Vol. XVII., 1895.—J. Kohler: Der Ursprung der Melusinensage, 1895. The fairy Melusine was the ancestress of the house of Lusignan, the royal house of Cyprus.