Hybrid creatures are particularly fascinating in light of new scholarly attention on monsters and monstrosity.  While many of these creatures fall into other categories, (such as griffins) or appear throughout medieval Arthuriana (such as the Questing Beast), other hybrids appear only once.  Several notable ones are considered here.
 
In the Alliterative Morte Arthure, the giant of Mont Saint-Michel is described as an amalgamation of animals, monstrous through his hybridity.  He snarls like a greyhound, has skin like a frog, is flat mouthed like a flounder, has spots like a boar, and is fat like a pig (in addition to being five fathoms long) (ll. 1074-1103).  The giant's monstrosity is not limited to this physical description; he has tubs full of Christian children roasting.  Arthur, of course, kills him in battle.  The lengthy description of this monstrous giant is not unlike descriptions of loathly hags common in other medieval Arthurian works, yet here it is reflective of the cannibal giant's threatening (and inhuman) true nature rather than being an externally imposed punishment.
 
However, it would be an oversimplification to read all hybrids in medieval Arthurian texts as monstrous.  In the Middle English Ywain and Gawain, Colgrevance encounters many animals when he goes forth into a fair forest, including lions, bears, bulls, boars, and others who attack him.  Then he is confronted by a hideous man with animalistic features, such as ears like an elephant, a nose...

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Hybrid creatures are particularly fascinating in light of new scholarly attention on monsters and monstrosity.  While many of these creatures fall into other categories, (such as griffins) or appear throughout medieval Arthuriana (such as the Questing Beast), other hybrids appear only once.  Several notable ones are considered here.
 
In the Alliterative Morte Arthure, the giant of Mont Saint-Michel is described as an amalgamation of animals, monstrous through his hybridity.  He snarls like a greyhound, has skin like a frog, is flat mouthed like a flounder, has spots like a boar, and is fat like a pig (in addition to being five fathoms long) (ll. 1074-1103).  The giant's monstrosity is not limited to this physical description; he has tubs full of Christian children roasting.  Arthur, of course, kills him in battle.  The lengthy description of this monstrous giant is not unlike descriptions of loathly hags common in other medieval Arthurian works, yet here it is reflective of the cannibal giant's threatening (and inhuman) true nature rather than being an externally imposed punishment.
 
However, it would be an oversimplification to read all hybrids in medieval Arthurian texts as monstrous.  In the Middle English Ywain and Gawain, Colgrevance encounters many animals when he goes forth into a fair forest, including lions, bears, bulls, boars, and others who attack him.  Then he is confronted by a hideous man with animalistic features, such as ears like an elephant, a nose like a cat, and teeth like boar's tusks (ll. 240-270).  The man is the keeper of the forest's beasts (perhaps making his form, a type of amalgamation of the creatures that Colgrevance has seen, appropriate).  Though the man may look frightening, he is not an enemy to be defeated like the giant of Mont Saint-Michel.  Rather, the encounter is a marvel, and it leads Colgrevance to another marvel; it is the keeper of the beasts, with his magical ability to summon and tame all the forest's creatures, who tells Colgrevance of the magical well essential to the romance's plot.
 
This use of the marvelous, shocking hybrid to lead a knight to his next adventure appears in French texts as well; in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle's History of the Holy Grail, the narrator describes an animal that is "variegated in every way: it had the head and neck of a sheep, and these were as white as new snow; and it had the feet, legs, and thighs of a dog, and all this was as black as coal; and it had the breast and body and rump of a fox and the tail of a lion" (1.6).  The narrator follows this creature, which leads him first to a religious house where he can spend the night, then to a place where he is fed and sheltered, and then finally to a letter telling him he will finish his quest that night.  That night, he then arrives at a chapel where he saves a man who has been possessed by the devil.  These miraculous happenings are part of the narrator's justification for writing down the story of the Holy Grail.
 
Hybrid creatures fill roles as dramatically different as their forms; instruments of God or of magic, or foes to be destroyed, they are as mysterious and alarming to modern readers as they are to the knights who encounter them.  Yet their presence in these works reflects a continual fascination with the unusual, the hybrid, and the imaginative.

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