Balin le Savage, in Arthurian romance, a Northumberland knight, brother to Sir Balan, captured in battle and imprisoned for six months by King Arthur.  After his release a damsel came to Camelot crying that none might draw the sword she held unless he were free from "shame, treachery or guile."  The king and all his knights failed in the attempt but Balin succeeded.  He refused to return the sword, whereon the damsel prophesied that it would be his plague—"for with it shall ye slay your best friend and it shall prove your own death."  The Lady of the Lake herself came to Arthur to plead for the sword.  Balin cut off her head with it.  Banished from court he came to a castle where every guest must joust in his turn.  So fierce was his encounter with the appointed knight that both perished living only long enough after receiving their death wound for each to recognize in the other his brother.  This is the story as told by Sir Thomas Malory.  Tennyson in his Idylls of the King, Balin and Balan, varies some of the details, and omits altogether the episode of the slaying of the Lady of the Lake. (Heroes and Heroines of Fiction, Walsh, 1915)