Dameisele Sauvage, Damsel of the Wilds, Damsel Sauvage
An obscure woman who appears in Chrétien’s Yvain and the Middle English poem Ywain and Gawain.
She informed the Lady of the Fountain, Dame Laudine, in a letter, that King Arthur intended to bring his people to the marvelous spring in Broceliande Forest.
This was taken as a warning; Lunette used the information in urgin Laudine to replace her newly slain husband with his slayer, Ywaine, for protection. It sounds as if the Damosel Sauvage was a spy or at least a secret friend of Laudine’s, though that might be reading too much into a simple explanation of how news spread in those days.
The Damosel Savage is another name for Malory’s Lynette. It could be sort a sort of generic tag, like “the Red Knight”, and so on. Or, assuming that Chrétien’s Lunete became transmogrified into Malory’s Lynette, someone might have misremembered to whom the name “Damosel Sauvage” actually applied.
Sources
Yvain, or Le Chevalier au Lion | Chrétien de Troyes, late 12th century
Ywain and Gawain | 1310–1340