GIRFLET

[Arthurian] A minor knight of the Round Table. In the Vulgate Cycle he fights with Arthur against Mordred. When Arthur is mortally wounded he asks Girflet to throw the sword Excalibur in a nearby lake. When he does so, a hand emerges from the water, seizes Excalibur, and vanishes. In subsequent texts, Girflet is killed when Lancelot rescues Guinevere from the stake, and it is Bedivere who throws Excalibur into the water. Girflet appears in many texts, among which Chrétien de Troyes's Erec et Enide and Perceval, Béroul's Tristan, the prose Tristan, Hunbaut, La Vengeance Raguidel, and the Vulgate Cycle.