page_title: Sir Balin
section_title: Wasteland
hierarchical_section_title: Sir Balin / Knight with the Two Swords / Wasteland
caption_attribution_description: English: H. J. Ford's illustration for The Book of Romance by Andrew Lang.
context_page_description: Sir Balin le Savage, also known as the Knight with the Two Swords, is a character in the Arthurian legend. Like Sir Galahad, Sir Balin is a late addition to the medieval Arthurian world. His story, as told by Thomas Malory in Le Morte d'Arthur, is based upon that told in the continuation of the second book of the Post-Vulgate cycle of legend, the Suite du Merlin.
  A knight before the Round Table was formed, Sir Balin lives only for a few weeks following his release from King Arthur's prison and his subsequent slaying of a Lady of the Lake. Just prior to his departure, his destiny is sealed by the arrival of a mysterious damsel bearing a sword that only the "most virtuous" knight in Arthur's court will be able to draw; Balin draws this sword easily. His adventures end when Balin and his brother Balan destroy each other in single combat, fulfilling an earlier prophecy about the destiny of the bearer of the damsel's sword.
  Prior to his tragic end, this ill-fated knight contrives to inflict a "Dolorous Stroke" with the spear that pierced Christ upon the Cross, thus setting the scene for the Post-Vulgate version of the search for the Holy Grail.
context_section_description: Soon after the funeral of the rebel kings, Balin sets out to avenge a man slain by an invisible knight while travelling under his protection. The villain is the brother of the Grail king Pellam, and Balin kills him at a feast in Pellam's castle. Pellam immediately seeks revenge for this act, breaking the weapon Balin used. Searching for a weapon with which to defend himself, Balin unknowingly grabs the Spear of Longinus and stabs Pellam with it: this is the Dolorous Stroke that maims Pellam, turns the Grail kingdom into the Wasteland, and brings the castle down on Balin's and Pellam's heads. Three days pass, then Merlin digs Balin out of the rubble.
  Balin rides through the Wasteland, receiving rebukes for causing such death and devastation; but as the days pass he finds himself in fairer countryside and at last arrives at a castle where he is compelled to fight with its resident defender. This defender is his brother Balan, who has earned this role against his will by killing the previous occupier of the position, in a situation that is reminiscent of that at the Sacred Grove of Nemi, as described by Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough. It recalls, also, the duty that Sir Yvain acquires after defeating the Knight of the Fountain in Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, and one that Sir Tristram briefly assumes in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Neither brother recognises that his opponent is his brother: Balan being in unfamiliar and disguising red armour with an unrecognisable shield; Balin having been persuaded just before the battle to swap his own shield for a better one immediately before the duel. The brothers mortally wound each other, Balin outliving Balan only by a few hours. They are "buryed bothe in one tombe."
  Merlin secures this sword that Balin got from the damsel in a block of stone, from which it is drawn by Galahad at the start of the Grail Quest years later. After Galahad's death, this sword passes to his father Lancelot, who uses it to give Gawain the wound that eventually kills him.
caption: The Death of Balin and Balan, H. J. Ford's illustration for The Book of Romance
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