In Arthurian legend, Gringolet is Sir Gawain

Gawain

Gawain is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table who appears very early in the Arthurian legend's development. He is one of a select number of Round Table members to be referred to as the greatest knight, most notably in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight...

's horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

. A sturdy charger, Gringolet was known far and wide for his ability in combat. He appears in very many romances

Romance (genre)

As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...

 in several different languages, and the prominent translator and Arthurian scholar D.D.R. Owen suggested that the French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 name Gringolet derived from either the Welsh

Welsh language

Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

  gwyn calet ("white-hardy"), or ceincaled ("handsome-hardy"). His earliest appearance is in Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Perhaps he named himself Christian of Troyes in contrast to the illustrious Rashi, also of Troyes...

' Erec and Enide

Erec and Enide

Erec and Enide is the first of Chrétien de Troyes' five romance poems, completed around 1170. It is one of three completed works by the author...

; in that poem he is borrowed by Sir Kay

Sir Kay

In Arthurian legend, Sir Kay is Sir Ector's son and King Arthur's foster brother and later seneschal, as well as one of the first Knights of the Round Table. In later literature he is known for his acid tongue and bullying, boorish behavior, but in earlier accounts he was one of Arthur's premier...

 to joust against Erec

Erec

Sir Erec, the son of King Lac, is a Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend. He features in numerous Arthurian tales , but he is most famous as the protagonist in Chrétien de Troyes' first romance, Erec and Enide...

. Even Gringolet cannot prevent Kay from losing to the protagonist. In the Lancelot-Grail

Lancelot-Grail

The Lancelot–Grail, also known as the Prose Lancelot, the Vulgate Cycle, or the Pseudo-Map Cycle, is a major source of Arthurian legend written in French. It is a series of five prose volumes that tell the story of the quest for the Holy Grail and the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere...

 Cycle, Gawain wins Gringolet from a Saxon

Saxons

The Saxons were a confederation of Germanic tribes originating on the North German plain. The Saxons earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein...

 warrior; a different story of the acquisition is given in Wolfram von Eschenbach

Wolfram von Eschenbach

Wolfram von Eschenbach was a German knight and poet, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of his time. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry.-Life:...

's Parzival

Parzival

Parzival is a major medieval German romance by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, in the Middle High German language. The poem, commonly dated to the first quarter of the 13th century, is itself largely based on Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, the Story of the Grail and mainly centers on the Arthurian...

, where the horse bears the mark and comes from the stable of the Grail castle.

In the Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

 poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance outlining an adventure of Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table. In the poem, Sir Gawain accepts a challenge from a mysterious warrior who is completely green, from his clothes and hair to his...

, Gawain sets out atop Gringolet in search of the Green Chapel. Lines 600-604 of the poem describe Gringolet's ornate appearance in being readied for the journey:

The bridle was embossed and bound with bright gold;

So were the furnishings of the fore-harness and the fine skirts.

The crupper and the caparison accorded with the saddle-bows,

And all was arrayed on red with nails of richest gold,

Which glittered and glanced like gleams of the sun.