Sir Gawain and Cú Chulainn
Tales of heroes who have to fight the temptation of lust and treasure in order to overcome evil have been around since the dawn of mankind. Humanity has always been fascinated by the powerful and otherworldly, concepts they had to contest in their everyday lives. After all, the common notion was that there must be someone out there to glorify, someone who possessed qualities no man could ever possess yet who still had to face the same temptations everyone else faced. Examples of this can be found in the Aeneïd, in which Aeneas is forced to leave his loved one behind to follow his leaders orders. They also appear in the Táin Bó Cuialgne and the Fled Bricrenn, in which the mighty hero Cú Chulainn is faced with the consequences of his own arrogance. Something similar happens to Sir Gawain in the romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, who cannot resist a challenge from a brutal and menacing opponent. When looking at the tales of Cú Chulainn and Sir Gawain more closely, an even greater amount of striking similarities between three sets of characters that appear in the two tales can be noticed. The tale of Cú Chulainn has acted as a predecessor to the plotlines and characters of medieval Arthurian romances, in particular to those that appear in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
To begin with, Sir Gawain strongly resembles the Irish hero Cú Chulainn, as both are Irish knights with a taste for battle honour and independence. Cú Chulainn is undoubtedly