‘The Green Knight’: Who Is Winifred, the Beheaded Ghost?

This post contains mild spoilers for The Green Knight. 

In The Green Knight, Sir Gawain (a smoldering Dev Patel) embarks on a quest to receive a blow from a mystical knight whom he beheaded one year prior. As the tale goes, Sir Gawain must journey from his home to the Green Chapel, the faraway place where the Green Knight set up the second half of their beheading game. Along the way, Sir Gawain stumbles upon a series of obstacles, each more dangerous and beguiling than the last in writer-director David Lowery’s utterly fantastical treatment of the original 14th-century poem. One such obstacle arrives in the form of a mysterious ghost, who wakes up Sir Gawain when he tries to sleep in her abandoned home.

The ghost is Winifred (Erin Kellyman), a religious icon who is not part of the original poem; an iconic well named in her honor is mentioned in it, though, which inspired Lowery to weave her story into the legend. 

In the film, Sir Gawain—exhausted and half-mad—stumbles upon her lakeside home and realizes it’s empty. He carries himself to the bedroom and falls asleep, until Lady Winifred wakes him up, inquiring about his intrusion. But she does not want him to leave. Instead, she has a favor to ask: Can Sir Gawain retrieve her head from the lake? 

It’s then that Gawain realizes the lady might be of the spiritual realm. He puts his hand out to touch her, but she stops him. “What are you doing?” she asks sternly, a surprising moment of comic relief and a pivot on convention. The cookie-cutter version of this film would have seen Gawain put his hand right through her ghostly visage, scream, and bolt out of there like a cartoon character.

Lady Winifred’s reticence, though, is connected to the trauma of her gruesome death. She reveals that a local prince tried to rape her, then broke into her home in the middle of the night and beheaded her as she lay in her bed, later tossing her head into the water. Her narrative runs parallel to Gawain’s; she too is an unwitting victim of a beheading game, albeit of a different, much darker sort.

Lowery’s version of this story is based on the real story of St. Winifred of Wales, a seventh-century woman who was pursued by a prince named Caradog. As the tale goes, around the year 630, Winifred attempted to escape him by fleeing to her uncle’s church. Caradog pursued her and cut off her head. In the legend, a natural spring shot up in the place where her head fell. Then Lady Winifred’s uncle, Saint Beuno, emerged from the church and put her head back on her body, miraculously bringing her back to life. The ground then opened up and swallowed Caradog. 

The legend of St. Winifred was captured and popularized in 1138 by Prior Robert of Shrewsbury, who wrote about her life. “She was effectively a Welsh super saint whose cult extended beyond the Welsh border,” said Jane Cartwright, a professor at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David who is editing a translation of the saint’s life, in a 2016 interview with the BBC. In the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Winifred isn’t mentioned outright, but she is alluded to in a line where the titular hero rides his horse up past North Wales and a place called Holy Head, presumed to be the well. 

That spring, now known as St. Winifred’s Well, became a formal religious site around the 12th century, renowned for the water’s healing powers. It has since become a place of pilgrimage, housed by a chapel that was built in the 15th century. The site, which is still open to visitors from all over the world, was visited over the years by figures like King Richard I and King Henry V. The latter’s pilgrimage to the well is particularly memorable. 

King Henry V prayed for St. Winifred’s protection ahead of the Battle of Agincourt between France and England. Though France’s army dwarfed England’s, King Henry’s forces prevailed. In gratitude, the king walked from Shrewsbury to the Well, making a pilgrimage to give his thanks to the saint. Though his exact route is unknown, many have attempted to retrace his steps over the years; as recently as 2016, a group of walkers, including one dressed up as King Henry V, walked the route to the well, making a day of it that included talks on St. Winifred and a medieval festival. 

Lowery doesn’t dive into all that lore in The Green Knight, keeping his focus firmly on Sir Gawain. But by including her story in the film, he momentarily links the pair, weaving two legends into the same epic story. 

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