Biket, Robert

(Robert Biquet)

(fl. 1150–1175)

   Robert Biket is known only as the author of a late 12th-century Anglo-Norman poem called Lai du cor (“The Lai of the Horn”). The poem is a 580-line text of the type known as a Breton LAI—a short ROMANCE of the sort promulgated by Breton MINSTRELS and made popular by MARIE DE FRANCE. After Marie, Robert is one of only two other writers of Breton lais whose names we know. Like many extant Breton lais, Robert’s is set in the court of King ARTHUR. In the story Arthur is hosting a great feast at Caerleon, and each king, great baron, or knight present is accompanied by his lady or his wife. A youth enters bearing a highly ornate ivory drinking horn that he presents to Arthur as a gift of the king of Moraine.An inscription on the horn declares that an “evil fay” had cast a spell on the horn such that no man could drink from it unless his wife was completely true to him, and had never even thought about being with another man. The horn would empty its contents all over anyone whose wife was unfaithful.

   The king immediately attempts to drink from the horn, and is soaked with wine down to his shoes.He makes a move to attack Guenevere with a knife before he is restrained by GAWAIN and others who reason with him that no woman alive could pass such a test, since all women would at least have thought about another man. The queen convinces Arthur that the cause of his failure with the horn is a small ring she gave a boy many years earlier.

   Arthur is appeased, but to avoid being the only one shamed insists that all the men present be made to drink from the horn. All try to drink, and all are drenched with wine, so that Arthur laughs and forgets his wrath. Finally the horn comes to a knight named Caradoc, whose wife encourages him to drink and fear not. He stands and drinks down the entire horn full of wine, at which all present are astonished. Arthur rewards him by giving Caradoc the territory of Cirencester to hold perpetually and by making him a gift of the precious horn.

   Lacy points out that the Lai du cor is remarkable because of its verse form—hexasyllabic (six-syllable) rhymed couplets—and because of its “humorous irreverence toward Arthur” (Lacy 1991). One finds this sort of “chastity test” in several Arthurian romances, but “The Lai of the Horn” is the earliest and best-known occurrence of it.

   Bibliography

   ■ Biket,Robert. The Anglo-Norman Text of Le Lai du Cor. Edited by C. T. Erickson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1973.

   ■ Lacy, Norris J. “Robert Biket.” In The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, edited by Norris J. Lacy, 38. New York: Garland, 1991.