 The motto is inscribed, as "hony soyt qui mal pence", at the end of the text in the sole surviving manuscript in the British Library, albeit in a later hand.In the poem, a girdle, very similar in its erotic undertones to the garter, plays a prominent role.A rough equivalent of the Order's motto 
has been identified in Gawain's exclamation "corsed worth cowarddyse and couetyse boþe" ("cursed be both cowardice and coveting", v. 2374).