No More Learning

274 (#294) ############################################

274
The Arthurian Legend
writers, the Tristram story, like the rest, was subjected to the
inevitable process of chivalric decoration; but it has managed to
preserve better than the others its bold primitive characteristics.
Its original existence in the form of scattered popular lays is, to
some extent, attested by one of the poems of Marie of France
Le Chèvrefeuille (The Honeysuckle)-recording a pretty stratagem
of Tristan during his exile from king Mark's court, whereby he
succeeded in obtaining a stolen interview with Iseult. Nor was it
the Tristram legend alone that was thus preserved in popular lays
from a period anterior to that of the great romantic efflorescence
of Arthurian story. Many isolated poems dealing with characters
and incidents subsequently drawn into the Arthurian medley must
have been based upon traditions popularised by the rude art of
some obscure minstrels, or story-tellers, "Breton" or other. One
of the best known examples of such poems is Marie of France's lay
of Lanval, a Celtic fairy-tale quite unconnected, originally, with
the Arthurian court. Even more ambitious works, such as the
Chevalier au Lion, or Yvain, and the Erec, of Chrétien, were almost
certainly founded upon poems, or popular tales, of which the
primitive versions have been irretrievably lost. For the Welsh
prose romances of The Lady of the Fountain and of Geraint-
the heroes of which, Owein and Geraint, correspond respectively to
Chrétien's Yvain and Erec—while resembling the French poems in
their main incidents, cannot be satisfactorily accounted for except
on the supposition that the stories embodied in them originally
existed in a much older and simpler form than that in which they
are presented by Chrétien.
In this necessarily cursory review of an extensive and compli-
cated subject, a good deal has been claimed for Celtic sources and
Celtic influence; and it may not be out of place to conclude with
an attempt to summarise, very briefly, the actual debt of English
literature to the early literature of the Celtic peoples. Upon few
subjects has there been, in our time, so much vague and random
writing as upon so-called Celtic “traits” and “notes” in English
imaginative literature. Renan and Matthew Arnold, in two famous
essays, which, in their time, rendered a real service to letters by
calling attention to the buried literary treasures of Wales and
Ireland, set a fashion of speculating and theorising about “the
Celt” as perilous as it is fascinating. For, after all, no critical
method is more capable of abuse than the process of aesthetic
literary analysis which seeks to distinguish the Celtic from the


## p. 275 (#295) ############################################

-
Celtic Literature
275
other ingredients in the genius of the greater English writers, and
which sounds Shakespeare, or Byron, or Keats for the Celtic "note. ”
While there is no difficulty about admitting that the authentic
literature of the Celts reveals a “sentiment,” a “natural magic,” a
“turn for style," and even a “Pindarism” and a “Titanism,”1 which
are all its own, it is a very different matter to assign a Celtic
source to the supposed equivalents of these things in later English
poetry. An example of the peculiar dangers besetting such
speculations is furnished by Matthew Arnold's own observations
about Macpherson and the Celtic “melancholy. ” The Ossianic
poems, whatever their original Gaelic sources may have been,
reflect far more of the dour melancholy peculiar to the middle
eighteenth century than of anything really characteristic of the
primitive Celtic temperament. Matthew Arnold is, indeed, able to
parallel the laments over the desolation of the halls of Balclutha,
and so on, with extracts from the old Welsh poet, Llywarch Hên.
But even Llywarch's anguish as he contemplates the vanished
glories of the hall of Kyndylan is by no means peculiar to the
Celt. The same melancholy vein is found in the early poetry of
other races; it appears in the Old English poems of The Seafarer
and The Wanderer, and even in the ancient poetry of the east, for
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep,
And Bahrám, that great Hunter-the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head but cannot break his Sleep.
The direct influence of Celtic literature upon that of England
amounts, on any strict computation, to very little. And this is only
natural when we remember that the two languages, in which the
chief monuments of that literature are preserved—Welsh and Irish
-present difficulties which only a very few intrepid English
linguists have had the courage and the patience to surmount.
Thus it happens, for example, that the greatest of all the medieval
Welsh poets-Davyd ap Gwilym, a contemporary of Chaucer—is
only known to English readers by fragmentary notices, and
indifferent translations, supplied by George Borrow. A few tanta-
lising, and freely translated, scraps—for they are nothing more
from the Welsh bards are due to Gray; while Thomas Love Peacock
has treated, in his own peculiar vein of sardonic humour, themes
borrowed from ancient Welsh poetry and tradition. Above all,
there remains the singularly graceful translation of the Welsh
1 These are some of Matthew Arnold's “notes” of the Celtic genius in The Study
of Celtic Literature.
18-2


## p. 276 (#296) ############################################

276
The Arthurian Legend
Mabinogion by Lady Charlotte Guest. The literature of Ireland
has, at a quite recent date, been much better served by translators
than that of Wales, and several admirable English versions of
Irish poems and prose tales are making their influence felt upon
the literature of the day. So far, however, as the older Celtic
literature is concerned, it is not so much its form that has told to
any appreciable extent upon English writers as its themes and its
spirit. The main channel of this undoubted Celtic influence was
that afforded by the Arthurian and its kindred legends. The
popularity of the “matter of Britain” came about at a time when
there was, comparatively, much more intimate literary commerce
between the European nations than there is now. The Normans
succeeded in bringing Britain and France at least into much closer
contact than has ever existed between them since; and it was
France that controlled the literary destinies of Europe during the
great romantic period of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It
would be rash to endeavour to apportion between the south of
France and the northern “Celtic fringe” their respective contri-
butions to all that is denoted by the ideals of chivalry. But, in
the mist which still overhangs the subject, we do seem to discern
with fair distinctness that it was the conjunction of these ap-
parently diverse racial tendencies, directed by the diplomatic
genius of the Normans, that gave us our vast and picturesque body
of Arthurian romance. Through all the various strains of Arthurian
story we hear
the horns of Elfand faintly blowing;
and it is quite possible that, to the Celtic wonderland, with its
fables of “the little people,” we owe much of the fairy-lore which
has, through Shakespeare and other poets of lower degree, enriched
the literature of England Chaucer, at any rate, seemed to have
very little doubt about it, for he links all that he knew, or cared
to know, about the Arthurian stories with his recollections of
the fairy world :
In th' olde dayes of the king Arthour,
Of which that Britons speken greet honour,
Al was this land fulfild of fayerye;
The elf-queen, with hir joly companye
Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede.
So let us believe, with the poets, and leave the British Arthur in
his unquestioned place as the supreme king of fairy-land.


## p. 277 (#297) ############################################

CHAPTER XIII
METRICAL ROMANCES, 1200-1600
Men speke of romances of prys,
Of Horn child and of Ypotys,
Of Bevis and sir Gy,
Of sir Libeux and Pleyn-damour;
But sir Thopas, he bereth the flour
Of royal chivalry.
SIR TÆOPAS.
It is hard to understand the process of change that made so
much difference between Old and Middle English story-telling.
At first, one is inclined to account for it by the Norman con-
quest, and, no doubt, that is one of the factors; the degradation
of the English and their language naturally led to a more popular
and vulgar sort of narrative literature. Beowulf was composed
for persons of quality, Havelok for the common people. Old
English narrative poetry was, in its day, the best obtainable ;
English metrical romances were known by the authors, vendors
and consumers of them to be inferior to the best, i. e. to the French;
and, consequently, there is a rustic, uncourtly air about them. Their
demeanour is often lumbering, and they are sometimes conscious
of it. The English look to the French for instruction in good
manners and in the kinds of literature that belong properly to a
court. In the old times before the Conquest they had the older
courtliness which was their own, and which is represented in the
Old English epic remains, Beowulf, Waldhere and other poems.
But it will not do to regard the Conquest as a full and complete
explanation of the difference, because the same kind of change is
found in other Teutonic countries where there was no political
conquest. In Denmark and Sweden and Germany and the Nether-
lands there are to be found riming romances of the same sort as
the English, written about the same time. In Germany, it is true,
the romantic school of the early thirteenth century is much more
refined than anything in England before the days of Chaucer and
Gower; but, besides the narrative work of the great German poets


## p. 278 (#298) ############################################

278
Metrical Romances, 1200—1500
of that time there are many riming tales that may very well be
compared with English popular romances; while in Denmark and
Sweden there is a still closer likeness to England. There the
riming narrative work is not a bit more regular or courtly than
in England; there is the same kind of easy, shambling verse, the
same sort of bad spelling, the same want of a literary standard.
But in those countries there was no Norman conquest; so that it
will not do to make the political condition of the English account-
able for the manners of their popular literature. The Norman
conquest helped, no doubt, in the depression of English literature,
but like things happened in other countries without a foreign
conqueror. Just as all the Teutonic languages (except that of
Iceland) pass from the Old to the Middle stage, so in litera-
ture there is a parallel movement in Germany, England and
Denmark from an earlier to a later medieval type. In all the
Teutonic countries, though not at the same time in all, there was
a change of taste and fashion which abandoned old epic themes
and native forms of verse for new subjects and for riming
measures. This meant a great disturbance and confusion of literary
principles and traditions ; hence, much of the new literature was
experimental and undisciplined. It took long for the nations to
find a literary standard. The Germans attained it about 1200;
the English in the time of Chaucer; the Danes and Swedes not
until long after the close of the Middle Ages. The progress
from Old to Middle English narrative verse is not to be under-
stood from a consideration of England alone; it is part of a
general change in European fashions, a new mixture of Teutonic
and Roman elements, not to speak of Celtic and oriental strains
in the blending.
In the history of English narrative poetry there is a great gap
of two centuries between The Battle of Maldon and Layamon's
Brut, with very little to fill it or even to show what sort of things
have been lost, what varieties of story-telling amused the English
in the reign of Harold Godwinsson or of Henry I. In France,
on the other hand, these centuries are rich in story books still
extant; and, as the English metrical romances depend very largely
upon the French, the history of them may to some extent be ex-
plained from French history; though often more by way of contrast
than of resemblance.
In France, the twelfth century witnessed a very remarkable
change of taste in stories which spread over all Europe and
affected the English, the Germans and other peoples in different


## p. 279 (#299) ############################################

279
French Influences
ways. The old national epics, the chansons de geste, were dis-
placed by a new romantic school, which triumphed over the old
like a young Olympian dynasty over Saturn and his peers, or like
the new comedy of the restoration over the last Elizabethans.
The chansons de geste were meant for the hall, for Homeric
recitation after supper; the new romances were intended to be
read in my lady's bower; they were for summer leisure and day-
light, as in the pretty scene described by Chrétien de Troyes in
his Chevalier au Lion, and translated into English :
Thurgh the hal sir Ywain gase
Intil ane orcherd, playn pase;
His maiden with him ledes he:
He fand a knyght, under a tre,
Opon a clath of gold he lay;
Byfor him sat a ful fayr may;
A lady sat with tham in fere.
The mayden red, at thai myght here,
A real romance in that place,
But I ne wote of wham it was;
Sho was but fiftene yeres alde.
The knyght was lorde of al that halde,
And that mayden was his ayre;
She was both gracious gode and fayrel.
These French romances were dedicated to noble ladies, and repre-
sented everything that was most refined and elegant in the life
of the twelfth century. Furthermore, like other later romantic
schools, like Scott and Victor Hugo, authors travelled wide for
their subjects. The old French poet's well-known division of stories
according to the three “matters ”—the “matter of France,” the
“matter of Britain” and the matter of Rome the great”2–
very imperfectly sums up the riches and the variety of French
romantic themes, even when it is understood that the “matter
of Rome” includes the whole of antiquity, the tales of Thebes and
Troy, the wars of Alexander. It is true that (as in later romantic
schools) the variety of scene and costume does not always prevent
monotony. The romantic hero may be a knight of king Arthur's
court, or may take his name from Protesilaus or Palaemon or
Archytas; the scene in one story may be Logres or Lyonesse, in
another Greece or Calabria ; it does not really make much differ-
ence. So Mrs Radcliffe's heroes, or Victor Hugo's, are of the same
sort, whether their scene be in the Pyrenees or in Italy. But,
1 Ywain and Gawain, 11. 3081 sqq.
• Ne sont que trois matières à nul home attendant,
De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant.
Jean Bodel, Chanson de Saisnes.


## p. 280 (#300) ############################################

280 Metrical Romances, 1200-1500
nevertheless, the freedom of wandering over the world in search of
plots and characters was exhilarating and inspiriting in the twelfth
century in France; there was great industry in fiction, a stirring
literary competition. The following ages very largely lived on the
products of it, to satisfy their own wants in the way of romance.
The leaders of this school, Benoit de Ste More and Chrétien
de Troyes, with their followers, were courtly persons, authors of
fashionable novels, bent on putting into their work the spirit and
all the graces of gentle conversation as it was then understood,
more particularly the refinements of amatory sentiment, such as
was allegorised in the next century in The Romaunt of the Rose.
This sort of thing could not be equally appreciated or appropriated
in all countries. Some people understood it, others could not.
The great houses of Germany were very quick to learn from
French masters and to rival them in their own line. Hartmann
von Aue translated Chrétien freely—the romance of Enid, the
tale of Yvain. Wolfram von Eschenbach in his Parzival may
borrow the substance, but the rendering, the spirit, is his own,
removed far from any danger of comparison with the French
school, because it has a different kind of nobility. In England
things were otherwise, and it was not till the age of Chaucer and
Gower that there was any English narrative work of the finer sort,
with the right courtly good manners and a proper interest in
sentimental themes. The English of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries were generally unable to make much of the “finer shades"
in their French authors. They can dispose of romantic plots and
adventures, they are never tired of stories; but they have difficulty
in following the eloquent monologues of passionate damsels ; the
elegant French phrasing annoyed them just as one of the later
French successors of Chrétien, the heroic romance of Le Grand
Cyrus, affected Major Bellenden. Even the more ambitious of the
English romances generally fall far short of the French and cannot
keep up with their elaborate play of rhetoric and emotion. There
is only one English version of a romance by Chrétien, Ywain
and Gawain. This is comparatively late; it belongs to the
time of Chaucer; it is not rude; on the contrary, it is one of the
most accomplished of all the riming tales outside the work of
Chaucer and Gower. But it cuts short the long speeches of the
original. Chrétien's Yvain (Le Chevalier au Lion) has 6818 lines;
the English version, 4032. Hartmann, on the other hand, spins his
story out to 8166 lines, being thoroughly possessed with admira-
tion of the French ways of thinking. The English romances of


## p. 281 (#301) ############################################

Translators' Difficulties
281
Ipomedon (there are two in rime, besides a prose version) show
well the difficulties and discrepancies, as will be explained later.
William of Palerne is an example of a different sort, showing
how hard it was for the English, even as late as the middle of the
fourteenth century, to understand and translate the work of the
French romantic school. The English poet takes up the French
Guillaume de Palerme, a sophisticated, sentimental story written
in the fluent, unemphatic, clear style which perhaps only Gower
could rightly reproduce in English. This is turned into alliterative
verse, with rather strange results, the rhetoric of the English
school being utterly different from the French : quaint in diction,
inclined to be violent and extravagant, very effective in satirical
passages (as Piers Plowman was to show) or in battle scenes
(as in the Morte Arthure), but not well adapted for polite and
conventional literature. The alliterative poets were justified when
they took their own way and did not try to compete with the
French. Their greatest work in romance is Sir Gawayne and the
Grene Knight, written by a man who understood his business and
produced new effects, original, imaginative, without trying to copy
the manner of the French artists.
At the same time, while the great, the overruling, French
influence is to be found in the ambitious literary work of Chrétien
de Troyes and his peers, it must not be forgotten that there was
also a simpler but still graceful kind of French romance, with
which the English translators had more success. This is best
represented in the work of Marie de France; and, in English, by
the shorter romances which profess to be taken from Breton lays,
such as Launfal, Orfeo and the Lai le Freine. Here, the scale is
smaller, and there is no superabundance of monologue and senti-
mental digression. The clear lines of the original could be followed
by the English without too much difficulty; for the English, though
long inferior to the French in subtlety, were not bunglers, except
when they ventured on unfamiliar ground without the proper
education.
Briefly and roughly, the history of the English romances might
be put in this way. About the year 1200 French literature came
to dominate the whole of Christendom, especially in the matter of
stories ; not only sending abroad the French tales of Charlemagne
and Roland, but importing plots, scenery and so forth, from many
lands, Wales and Britanny, Greece and the further east, and giving
new French forms to them, which were admired and, as far as
possible, borrowed by foreign nations, according to their several


## p. 282 (#302) ############################################

282 Metrical Romances, 1200—1500
tastes and abilities. The English took a large share in this trade.
Generally speaking, their taste was easily satisfied. What they
wanted was adventures; slaughter of Saracens, fights with dragons
and giants, rightful heirs getting their own again, innocent
princesses championed against their felon adversaries. Such
commodities were purveyed by popular authors, who adapted
from the French what suited them and left out the things in
which the French authors were most interested, viz. the orna-
mental passages. The English romance writers worked for
common minstrels and their audiences, and were not particular
about their style. They used, as a rule, either short couplets or
some variety of that simple stanza which is better known to most
readers from Sir Thopas than from Horn Childe or Sir Libeaus.
Sir Thopas illustrates and summarises, in parody, all the ways of
the popular romance for a long time before Chaucer and for long
after his death. Of course there are many differences in particular
cases, and Sir Thopas, with all his virtue, does not so far outshine
the others as to make them indistinguishable. Beves is not exactly
the same kind of thing as Sir Guy, and the story of Sir Libeaus
has merits of its own not to be confounded with those of the other
heroes. Nevertheless, they are all of one kind, and their style
is popular and hackneyed. The authors were well enough pleased
to have it so; they did not attempt to rival their eminent French
masters.
But there were exceptions. One finds ambition at work in
English poets even in days when French literature might have
appeared so strong and so exalted as to dishearten any mere
English competitor. The English Sir Tristrem is a specimen of
literary vanity; the English author is determined to improve upon
his original, and turns the simple verse of his French book into
rather elaborate lyrical stanzas. And, again, it was sometimes
possible for an Englishman to write gracefully enough without
conceit or emphasis ; as in Ywain and Gawain, already quoted.
And the alliterative romances are in a class by themselves.
Chaucer and Gower disturb the progress of the popular romance,
yet not so much as one might expect. Chaucer and Gower, each
in his own way, had challenged the French on their own ground;
they had written English verse which might be approved by
French standards; they had given to English verse the peculiar
French qualities of ease and grace and urbanity. A reader to
whom the fifteenth century was unknown would, naturally, look for
some such consequences as followed in the reign of Charles II from


## p. 283 (#303) ############################################

Matter and Form
283
the work of Dryden and his contemporaries—a disabling of the
older schools, and a complete revolution in taste. But, for what-
ever reason, this was not what actually followed the age of Chaucer.
The fifteenth century, except for the fact that the anarchy of
dialects is reduced to some order, is as far from any literary good
government as the age before Chaucer. It is rather worse, indeed,
on account of the weaker brethren in the Chaucerian school who
only add to the confusion. And the popular romances go on very
much as before, down to the sixteenth century, and even further.
The lay of the last minstrel is described by Sir Walter Scott, in
prose, in a note to Sir Tristrem :
Some traces of this custom remained in Scotland till of late years.
A satire on the Marquis of Argyle, published about the time of his death,
is said to be composed to the tune of Graysteel, a noted romance reprinted
at Aberdeen so late as the beginning of the last century. Within the memory
of man, an old person used to perambulate the streets of Edinburgh, singing,
in a monotonous cadence, the tale of Rosewal and Lilian, which is, in all the
forms, a metrical romance of chivalry.
It is possible to classify the romances according to their sources
and their subjects, though, as has been already remarked, the
difference of scenery does not always make much difference in
the character of the stories. The English varieties depend so
closely on the French that one must go to French literary history
for guidance. The whole subject has been so clearly summarised
and explained in the French Medieval Literature of Gaston Paris'
that it is scarcely necessary here to repeat even the general facts.
But, of course, although the subjects are the same, the English
point of view is different; especially in the following respects.
The “matter of France” includes the subjects of the old French
epics. These, being national, could not bear exportation so well
as some of the other "matters. ” It is only in France that the Song
of Roland can be thoroughly understood and valued. Yet Roland
and Charlemagne were honoured beyond the Alps and beyond the
sea. The Karlamagnus Saga is a large book written in Norway
in the thirteenth century, bringing together in a prose version all
the chief stories of the cycle. One section, Olif and Landres, was
found "in the English tongue in Scotland” by a Norwegian envoy
who went there in 1284 after the death of king Alexander III.
Roland was almost as popular in Italy as in France. He appears
also in English, though not to very great advantage. The favourite
· La Littérature française au moyen âge (with bibliography); also Esquisse his.
torique de la litt. fr. au inoyen âge; English transiation of this latter, Dent, 1903.


## p. 284 (#304) ############################################

284 Metrical Romances, 1200—1500
story from the French epics was that of Oliver and Fierabras, where
the motive is not so much French patriotism as the opposition
between Christian and infidel.
In the “matter of Britain” the English had a better right to
share. They accepted at once the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth
and made king Arthur into an English national hero, the British
counterpart of Charlemagne. The alliterative Morte Arthure,
derived from Geoffrey, is a kind of political epic, with allusions
to contemporary history and the wars of Edward III, as George
Neilson has sufficiently proved'. This touch of allegory, which one
need not be afraid to compare with the purpose of the Aeneid
or of The Faerie Queene, makes it unlike most other medieval
romances; the pretence of solidity and historical truth in Geoffrey
is not suitable for mere romantic purposes. Quite different is the
Arthur who merely sits waiting for adventures, being "somewhat
child-geared,” as the poet of Sir Gawayne says. In most of the
stories, Arthur is very unlike the great imperial monarch and
conqueror as presented by Geoffrey and his followers. He has
nothing particular to do, except to be present at the beginning
and end of the story; the hero is Sir Perceval, Sir Ywain, Sir
Gawain, or the Fair Knight Unknown (Sir Libeaus); unfortu-
nately not Sir Erec (Geraint), in any extant English poem before
Tennyson. In this second order, the proper Arthurian romances
as distinguished from the versions or adaptations of Geoffrey,
England had something to claim even before the English rimers
began their work; for some of the French poems certainly, and
probably many now lost, were written in England. This is a
debatable and difficult part of literary history; but, at any rate,
it is plain that the more elaborate French Arthurian romances
were not the only authorities for the English tales. Chrétien's
Yvain is translated into English ; but the French romance of
The Fair Unknown is probably not the original of the English
story of Sir Libeaus which, like the old Italian version, would
seem to have had a simpler and earlier form to work upon. Like-
wise, the English Sir Perceval must, surely, come from something
older and less complicated than Chrétien's Conte del Graal. It is
at least a fair conjecture that these two romances belong to an
earlier type, such as may have been hawked about in England by
French or French-speaking minstrels; and, without any conjecture
at all, they are different in their plots (not merely in their style)
from the French work of Renaud de Beaujeu in the one case, and
* Huchown of the Awle Ryale, Glasgow, 1902, pp. 59–66.


## p. 285 (#305) ############################################

Sources and Subjects
285
Chrétien de Troyes in the other. Sir Gawayne and the Grene
Knight, again, cannot be referred to any known French book
for its original; and, in this and other ways, the English
rendering of the “matter of Britain” goes beyond the French, or,
to be more precise, is found to differ from the existing French
documents.
The "matter of Rome the great," that is, classical antiquity, is
well represented in English. There are several poems in rime
and alliterative verse on Alexander and on Troy, some of them
being fragmentary. The tale of Thebes, though often referred
to, does not appear fully told till Lydgate took it up, nor the
romantic version of the Aeneid (Roman d'Enéas) before Caxton's
prose.
The classification under the three “matters” of France, Britain
and Rome is not exhaustive; there are many romances which fall
outside these limits. Some of them are due to French invention ;
for the twelfth century romantic school was not content always to
follow merely traditional fables; they drew largely on older stories,
fairy tales and relics of mythology; but, sometimes, they tried
to be original and at least succeeded in making fresh combinations,
like a modern novelist with his professional machinery. Perhaps
the English poet of Sir Gawayne may have worked in this way,
not founding his poem upon any one particular romance, but taking
incidents from older stories and arranging them to suit his purpose.
In French, the Ipomedon of Hue de Rotelande is an excellent
specimen of what may be called the secondary order of romance,
as cultivated by the best practitioners. The author's method is
not hard to understand. He is competing with the recognised and
successful artists; with Chrétien de Troyes. He does not trouble
himself to find a Breton lay, but (like an Elizabethan dramatist
with no Spanish or Italian novel at hand) sets himself to spin his
own yarn. He has all the proper sentiments, and his rhetoric and
rimes are easy work for him. For theme, he takes the proud young
lady and the devoted lover; the true love beginning “in her absence,"
as the Irish story-tellers expressed it, before he has ever seen
the princess; telling of his faithful service in disguise, his apparent
slackness in chivalry, his real prowess when he “bears the gree” in
three days of tournament, with three several suits of armour, the
white, the red and the black. The incidents are not exactly new;
but it is a good novel of its kind, and successful, as the English
versions prove, for longer than one season. Hue de Rotelande
takes some trouble about his details. He does not (like Chrétien


## p. 286 (#306) ############################################

286 Metrical Romances, 1200-1500
in his Cligès) attach his invention to the court of Arthur. He
leaves Britain for new ground, and puts his scene in Apulia and
Calabria—which might as well have been Illyria or Bohemia. And
he does not imitate the names of the Round Table; his names are
Greek, his hero is Hippomedon. In the same way Boccaccio, or
his lost French original, took Greek names for his story of
Palamon, and let it grow out of the wars of Thebes. So also
Parthenopex de Blois, who was translated into English (Partonope),
is Parthenopaeus. William of Palerne, without this classical
prestige of name, is another example of the invented love-story,
made by rearranging the favourite commonplaces. Another senti-
mental romance, Amadas and Ydoine, was well known in England,
as is proved by many allusions, though no English version is
extant; the poem was first composed, like Ipomedon, in Anglo-
French? .
Further, there were many sources besides Britain and Rome
for authors in want of a plot. The far east began very early to
tell upon western imaginations, not only through the marvels of
Alexander in India, but in many and various separate stories. One
of the best of these, and one of the first, as it happens, in the list
of English romances, is Flores and Blancheflour. It was ages
before The Arabian Nights were known, but this is just such a
story as may be found there, with likenesses also to the common
form of the Greek romances, the adventures of the two young
lovers cruelly separated. By a curious process it was turned, in
the Filocolo of Boccaccio, to a shape like that of Greek romance,
though without any direct knowledge of Greek authors. The
Seven Sages of Rome may count among the romances; it is an
oriental group of stories in a setting, like The Arabian Nights
-a pattern followed in the Decameron, in Confessio Amantis
and in The Canterbury Tales.
Barlaam and Josaphat is the story of the Buddha, and Robert
of Sicily, the “proud king," has been traced back to a similar
origin. Ypotis (rather oddly placed along with Horn and the
others in Sir Thopas) is Epictetus; the story is hardly a romance,
it is more like a legend. But the difference between romance and
legend is not always very deep; and one is reminded that Greek
and eastern romantic plots and ideas had come into England long
before, in the Old English Saints' Lives.
There is another group, represented, indeed, in French, but not
in the same way as the others. It contains The Gest of King Horn
· Gaston Paris in An English Miscellany, Oxford, 1901, p. 386.


## p. 287 (#307) ############################################

Sources and Subjects
287
and The Lay of Havelok the Dane; both of these appear in French,
but it is improbable that any French version was the origin of the
English. These are northern stories; in the case of Havelok there
is fair historical proof that the foundation of the whole story lies
in the adventures of Anlaf Cuaran, who fought at Brunanburh;
“Havelok," like "Aulay," being a Celtic corruption of the Scan-
dinavian Anlaf or Olaf.
In Horn it is not so easy to find a definite historical beginning;
it has been suggested that the original Horn was Horm, a Danish
viking of the ninth century who fought for the Irish king Cearbhall,
as Horn helped king Thurston in Ireland against the Payns, i. e.
the heathen invaders with their giant champion. Also, it is believed
that Thurston, in the romance, may be derived from the Norwegian
leader Thorstein the Red, who married a grand-daughter of
Cearbhall. But, whatever the obscure truth may be, the general
fact is not doubtful that Horn's wanderings and adventures are
placed in scenery and conditions resembling those of the ninth and
tenth centuries in the relations between Britain and Ireland. Like
Havelok, the story probably comes from the Scandinavian settlers
in England; like Havelok, it passed to the French, but the French
versions are not the sources of the English. There must have been
other such native stories ; there is still an Anglo-Norman poem of
Waldef extant, i. e. Waltheof, and the story of Hereward the Wake
is known, like that of Waltheof also, from a Latin prose tale. The
short tale of Athelston may be mentioned here, and also the
amazing long romance of Richard Coeur de Lion, which is not
greatly troubled with the cares of the historian.
• The varieties of style in the English romances are very great,
under an apparent monotony and poverty of type. Between
Sir Beves of Hamtoun and Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight
there is as wide an interval as between (let us say) “Monk” Lewis
and Scott, or G. P. R. James and Thackeray. There are many
different motives in the French books from which most of the
English tales are borrowed, and there are many different ways of
borrowing.
As regards verse, there are the two great orders, riming and
blank alliterative. Of riming measures the most usual are the
short couplet of octosyllabic lines, and the stanza called rime
couée, rithmus caudatus.
King Horn is singular in its verse, an example of one stage in
the development of modern English metres. It is closely related
in prosody to Layamon's Brut, and might be described as carrying


## p. 288 (#308) ############################################

288 Metrical Romances, 1200—1500
through consistently the riming couplet, which Layamon inter-
changes with blank lines. The verse is not governed by the
octosyllabic law; it is not of Latin origin; it has a strange
resemblance to the verse of Otfried in Old High German and
to the accidental riming passages in Old English, especially in
the more decrepit Old English verse:
Thanne him spao the godě king:
Wel bruc thu thi nevening;
Horn thu go wel schüllè
Bi dalěs and bi hüllè;
Horn thu ludo sunè
Bi dalès and bi dunè;
So schal thi namẽ springò
Fram kyngò to kyngè,
And thi fairnesse
Abutě Westernessd,
The strengthe of thinð honde
In to evrech londèi
There is no other romance in this antique sort of verse. In the
ordinary couplets just such differences may be found as in modern
usage of the same measure. Havelok and Orfeo, King Alisaunder
and Ywain have not exactly the same effect. Havelok, though
sometimes a little rough, is not unsound; the poem of Ywain and
Gawain is nearly as correct as Chaucer; The Squire of Low Degree
is one of the pleasantest and most fluent examples of this verse in
English. There is a pause at the end of every line, and the effect
is like that of some ballads:
The squyer her hente in armes two,
And kyssed ber an hundreth tymes and mo.
There was myrth and melody,
With harpe, gytron and sautry,
With rote, ribible and clokarde,
With pypes, organs and bombarde,
With other mynstrelles them amonge,
With sytolphe and with santry songe,
With fydle, recorde and dowcemere,
With trompette and with claryon clere,
With dulcet pipes of many cordes,
In chambre revelyng all the lordes,
Unto morne that it was daye 2.
Besides the short couplet, different types of common metre are
used; very vigorously, with full rimes, in Sir Ferumbras-
Now bygynt a strong batayl betwene this knyghtes twayne,
Ayther gan other hard assayle bothe wyth myght and mayne;
They hewe togadre wyth swerdes dent, faste with bothen bondes,
Of helmes and sheldes that fyr outwent, so sparkes doth of brondes 3;
i Ll. 205 sqq.
* LL 1067 sqq.
* LL 602 sqg.


## p. 289 (#309) ############################################

Forms of Verse
289
and without the internal rime, in The Tale of Gamelyn, the verse
of which has been so rightly praised'.
Sir Thopas might be taken as the standard of the rithmus
caudatus, but Sir Thopas itself shows that variations are admitted,
and there are several kinds, besides, which Chaucer does not
introduce.
In later usage this stanza is merely twofold, as in Drayton's
Nymphidia or in The Baby's Début. In early days it was commonly
fourfold, i. e. there are four caudae with the same rime:
And so it fell upon a daye
The palmare went to the wode to playe,
His mirthes for to mene;
The knightes brake up his chamber dore
And fand the gold right in the flore
And bare it unto the quene;
And als sone als scho saw it with sighte,
In swoning than fell that swete wighte
For soho had are it sene!
Scho kissed it and said, “ Allas!
This gold aughte Sir Isambras,
My lord was wont to bene 3. 9
Sometimes there are three lines together before each cauda, as
in Sir Perceval and Sir Degrevant and others:
Lof, lythes to me
Two wordes or thre
Off one that was fair and fre,
And felle in his fighte;
His righte name was Percyvelle,
He was fosterde in the felle,
He dranke water of the welle,
And gitte was he wyghte!
His fadir was a noble mano
Fro the tyme that he begane;
Miche worchippe he wane
When he was made knyghte;
In Kyng Arthures haulle,
Beste by-luffedo of alle
Percyvelle they gane hym calle,
Who so redis ryghte.
While, as this example shows, there are different lengths of line,
they are not all in eights and sixes. Sir Libeaus, particularly,
makes very pretty play with a kind of short metre and a peculiar
sequence of the rimes:
That maide knelde in halle
Before the knightes alle
And seide: My lord Arthour!
A cas ther is befalle,
Worse withinne walle
Was never non of dolour!
1 Saintsbury, English Prosody, 1, p. 195.
Sir Isumbras, 11. 641 sqq.
E. L. I. CH. XIII.
19


## p. 290 (#310) ############################################

290
Metrical Romances, 1200-1500
My lady of Sinadoune
Is brought in strong prisoun
That was of greet valour;
Sche praith the sende her a knight
With harte good and light
To winne her with honour1.
The cauda is usually of six syllables; but there is a variety
with four, found in part of Sir Beves:
That erl is hors began to stride
His scheld he hang upon is side
Gert with swerd;
Moste non armur on him come
Himself was boute the ferthe some
Toward that ferd.
Allas that he nadde be war
Of is fomen that weren thar
Him forte schende;
With tresoun worth he thor islawe
And i-brouht of is lif-daw
Er he hom wende.
The rime couée is a lyrical stanza, and there are other lyrical
forms. One of the romances of Octavian is in the old Provençal and
old French measure which, by roundabout ways, came to Scotland,
and was used in the seventeenth century in honour of Habbie
Simson, the piper of Kilbarchan, and, thereafter, by Allan Ramsay,
Fergusson and Burns, not to speak of later poets.
The knyght was glad to skape so,
As every man is from hys foo;
The mayster lette ten men and moo
That ylke day,
To wende and selle that chyld hem fro
And that palfray .
The riming Mort Arthur is in a favourite eight-line stanna.
Sir Tristrem, in most ways exceptional, uses a lyrical stave, like
one of those in the collection of Laurence Minot, and very unlike
anything that was permissible in the French schools of narrative at
that time. It may be remembered, however, that the Italian
romances of the fourteenth century and later used a form of verse
that, at first, was lyrical, the ottava rima; there are other affinities
in Italian and English popular literature, as compared with the
French, common qualities which it would be interesting to study
further
The French originals of these English romances are almost
universally in short couplets, the ordinary verse for all subjects,
L. 145 sqq. Ll. 199 sqq. LL. 879 sqq. "Gaston Paris, opp. citt.


## p. 291 (#311) ############################################

Forms of Verse
291
after the chansons de geste had grown old-fashioned'. On the
whole, and considering how well understood the short couplet
was in England even in the thirteenth century, e. g. in The Owl and
the Nightingale, it is rather surprising that there should be such
a large discrepancy between the French and the English forms.
There are many anomalies; thus, the fuller version of Ipomedon,
by a man who really dealt fairly and made a brave effort to get the
French spirit into English rime, is in rime couée; while the shorter
Ipomedon, scamped work by some poor hack of a minstrel, is in the
regular French couplet. It should be noted here that rime couée
is later than couplets, though the couplets last better, finally
coming to the front again and winning easily in Confessio Amantis
and in The Romaunt of the Rose. There are many examples of re-
writing: tales in couplets are re-written in stanzas; Sir Beves, in
the earlier part, is one, Sir Launfal is another. Horn Childe is
in the Thopas verse; it is the same story as King Horn, though
with other sources, and different names and incidents.
In later times, the octosyllabic verse recovers its place, and,
though new forms are employed at the close of the Middle Ages,
such as rime royal (e. g. in Generydes) and the heroic couplet
(in Clariodus and Sir Gilbert Hay's Alexander), still, for simple
popular use, the short verse is the most convenient, as is proved by
the chap-book romances, Sir Eger and Roswall and Lilian-also,
one may say, by Sir David Lyndsay's Squire Meldrum. The curious
riming alliterative verse of the Awntyrs of Arthure and Rauf
Coilyear lasts well in Scotland; but it had never been thoroughly
established as a narrative measure, and, though it is one of the
forms recognised and exemplified in king James VI's Art of
Poesie, its "tumbling verse” is there regarded as most fit for
“flytings,” which was, indeed, its usual function in the end of
its days.
Alliterative blank verse came up in the middle of the four-
teenth century and was chiefly used for romance, Piers Plow-
man being the only considerable long poem to be compared in
weight with The Troy Book or The Wars of Alexander, though
there are others of less compass which are still remarkable enough.
Where the verse came from is not known clearly to anyone and
can only be guessed. The facts are that, whereas the old verse
1 There are exceptions; thus the French-or Anglo-Norman-Beves is in an epic
measure; and, of course, some of the English romances are borrowed from French
epics, like Roland, and Sir Ferumbras, and the alliterative poem of the Swan-Knight
(Chevelete Assigne) which, though romantic enough in subject, belongs technically, in
the original French, to the cycle of Godfrey of Bouillon.
19-2


## p. 292 (#312) ############################################

292 Metrical Romances, 1200-1500
begins to show many signs of decay before the Conquest, and
reappears after the Conquest in very battered shapes, in Layamon
and The Bestiary and The Proverbs of Alfred, the new order, of
which William of Palerne is the earliest, has clearly ascertained
some of the main principles of the ancient Teutonic line, and adheres
to them without any excessive difficulty. The verse of these allite-
rative romances and of Langland, and of all the rest down to Dunbar
and the author of Scotish Feilde, is regular, with rules of its own;
not wholly the same as those of Old English epic, but partly so,
and never at all like the helpless medley of Layamon. It must have
been hidden away somewhere underground-continuing in a purer
tradition than happens to have found its way into extant manu-
scriptstill, at last, there is a striking revival in the reign of
Edward III. There are some hints and indications in the meantime.
Giraldus the untiring, the untamed, with his quick wit and his lively
interest in all manner of things, has a note comparing the Welsh and
the English love of alliteration-as he compares the part-singing of
Wales with that of the north country. He gives English examples:
Good is togedere gamen and wisdom,
a regular line, like those of the fourteenth century and unlike the
practice of Layamon. Plainly, many things went on besides what
is recorded in the surviving manuscripts. At any rate, the result in
the fourteenth century alliterative poems is a noble one.
The plots of the romances are, like the style of them, not so
monotonous as at first appears. They are not all incoherent, and
incoherence is not found exclusively in the minstrels' tales; there
are faults of composition in some of Chaucer's stories (eg. The
Man of Law's Tale), as manifest as those which he satirised in
Sir Thopas. A great many of the romances are little better than
hackneyed repetitions, made by an easy kaleidoscopic shufiling of
a few simple elements. Perhaps Sir Beves is the best example of
the ordinary popular tale, the medieval book of chivalry with all
the right things in it. It might have been produced in the same
way as The Knight of the Burning Pestle, by allowing the audience
to prescribe what was required. The hero's father is murdered,
like Hamlet's; the hero is disinherited, like Horn; he is wooed by
a fair Paynim princess; he carries a treacherous letter, like Hamlet
again, "and beareth with him his own death"; he is separated
from his wife and children, like St Eustace or Sir Isumbras; and
exiled, like Huon of Bordeaux, for causing the death of the king's
son. The horse Arundel is like Bayard in The Four Sons of


## p. 293 (#313) ############################################

Traditional Plots
293
Aymon, and the giant Ascapart is won over like Ferumbras”. In
the French original there was one conspicuous defect—no dragon.
But the dragon is supplied, most liberally and with great success,
in the English version. It makes one think of a good puppet-show;
for example, the play of Don Gayferos, which drew Don Quixote
into a passion. “Stay, your worship, and consider that those Moors
which your worship is routing and slaying are not real Moors, but
pasteboard! ” Saracens are cheap in the old romances; King Horn
rode out one day and bagged a hundred to his own sword. Yet
there are differences; in Sir Ferumbras, which is no very ambitious
poem, but a story which has shared with Sir Beves and Sir Guy
the favour of simple audiences for many generations, there is
another kind of fighting, because it comes from the Old French
epic school, which gives full particulars of every combat, on the
same scale as the Iliad. So far, the work is more solid than in
Sir Beves. There are worse things, however, than the puppet-show
of chivalry. The story of Guy of Warwick, for instance, is some-
thing of a trial for the most reckless and most “Gothic" reader;
instead of the brightly coloured figures of Sir Beves or King Horn
and their adversaries, there is a doleful, stale religion in it, a most
trashy mixture of asceticism (like the legend of St Alexius), with
the most hackneyed adventures. Not that commonplace adventures
need be dull; sometimes even an increased acquaintance with
parallels and variants and so forth may heighten the interest; as
when Horn returns in disguise and sits down in the "beggars' row. ”
It is natural to think of the beggars at the foot of the hall in the
Odyssey; there is the same kind of scene in an Irish popular tale
(Blaiman"), where a recognition takes place like that of King Horn.
In comparing them, one seems to get, not, indeed, any clear theory
of the way in which the ideas of stories are carried about the world,
but a pleasant sense of the community of stories, so to speak, and
of the relation between stories and real life, in different ages and
places.
Traditional plots like those of the fairy tales appear in
medieval romances; not often enough, one is inclined to say, and
not always with any distinct superiority of the literary to the
popular oral version. One example is Sir Amadas, which is the
story of the grateful ghost, the travelling companion, The Old
1 A resemblance has been traced between Sir Beves and some things in Firdasi.
The east had its books of chivalry like the west, and nearly at the same time. Cf.
Deutschbein, Englische Sagengeschichte,
* Curtin, Hero Tales of Ireland.


## p. 294 (#314) ############################################

294 Metrical Romances, 1200-1500
Wives' Tale. This story, one of the best known in all languages,
has a strange power to keep its elements free of contamination.
It is found in many mixed forms, it is true, but some of the latest
folklore versions are distinct and coherent. There is an Irish
version (Beauty of the World, given by Larminie in Gaelic and
English) which, when compared with Sir Amadas, seems to prove
that the authors of the metrical romances might possibly have done
better if they had attended to the narrative, like the simple tellers
of fairy tales, without troubling themselves as to the rhetoric of the
French school. Another example of the same sort can be obtained
by comparing Sir Perceval with some of the folklore analogues.
Sir Perceval is one of the simplest of the old romances : it seems
at first almost like a rude burlesque of the Conte del Graal. It is
now commonly thought to be taken from an earlier lost French
version of the same subject. However that may be, it shows the
common roughness of the English as compared with the French
tales ; it is full of spirit, but it is not gentle. Percival in this
romance is not like the Percival of Wolfram or of Malory; he is a
rollicking popular hero who blunders into great exploits. The
style, even for this sort of motive, is rather too boisterous. Again,
in this case, as with Sir Amadas, there may be found a traditional
oral rendering of some of the same matters which, in point of
style, is better than the English metrical romance. The scene
of the discourteous knight breaking in and insulting the king is
found in the west Highland tale of The Knight of the Red Shield,
in Campbell's collection, and it is told there with greater command
of language and better effect.
“Breton lays" have been mentioned; the name meant for
the English a short story in rime, like those of Marie de France,
taken from Celtic sources. Some of these were more complex than
others, but they were never spun out like the romances of Beves
and Guy, and the best of them are very good in the way they
manage their plot. Moreover, there is something in them of that
romantic mystery which is less common in medieval literature than
modern readers generally suppose ; it is not often to be found in
the professional fiction of the Middle Ages. But the Breton lays
are nearer than other romances to the popular beliefs out of
which romantic marvels are drawn, and they retain something
of their freshness. The best in English are Sir Orfeo and Sir
Launfal. The first of these, which is the story of Orpheus, is a
proof of what can be done by mere form, the classical fable is
completely taken over, and turned into a fairy tale; hardly any-


## p. 295 (#315) ############################################

295
Fairy Tales
thing is left to it except what it owes to the Breton form
(of thought and expression). It is a story like that of young
Tamlane in the ballad, a rescue from the fairy, for Pluto has
become the fairy king, and everything ends happily; Eurydice is
brought back in safety. There is nothing wrong in the description
of it as a “Breton lay,” for it is wholly such a tale as the Bretons,
and many other people, might have told without any suggestion
from Greek or Latin. The English poem (no original is extant
in French) is an utterly different thing from the rambling tales
of chivalry. It has much of the quality that is found in some
of the ballads; and, in time, through some strange fortune, it
became itself a ballad, and was found in Shetland, not very long
ago, with a Norse refrain to it?
The different versions of Launfal-Landavall in couplets,
Launfal Miles of Thomas Chestre, in rime couée, and the de-
generate Sir Lambewell of the Percy M8—have been carefully
studied and made to exhibit some of the ordinary processes of
translation and adaptation. They come from Marie de France-
Thomas Chestre took something from the lay of Graelent besides
the main plot of Lanval. The story is one of the best known; the
fairy bride
The kingo's daughter of Avalon,
That is an isle of the fairie
In ocean full fair to see-
and the loss of her, through the breaking of her command. The
Wedding of Sir Gawain, which, in another form, is The Wife of
Bath's Tale, is from the same mythical region, and has some of
the same merits.
The romance of Sir Libeaus," the fair unknown," the son of
Sir Gawain, is of different proportions, less simple and direct than
Orfeo or Launfal. But it keeps some of the virtues of the fairy
tale, and is one of the most pleasing of all the company of Sir
Thopas. Adventures are too easily multiplied in it, but it is not a
mere jumble of stock incidents. It is very like the story of Gareth
in Malory, and, along with Gareth, may have suggested some things
to Spenser, for the story of the Red Cross Knight. Also, the
breaking of the enchantment in the castle of Busirane may owe
something to Sir Libeaus: there seems to have been an old
printed edition of Libius Disconius, though no printed copy is
extant. The plot is a good one, the expedition of a young and
untried knight to rescue a lady from enchantment; it is a pure
* Child, Ballads, No. 19.


## p. 296 (#316) ############################################

296
Metrical Romances, 1200—1500
romance of knight errantry, very fit to be taken as an example of
that order, and, possibly, the best of all the riming tales that keep
simply to the familiar adventures of books of chivalry. Sir Libeaus
takes a long time to reach the palace of the two enchanters
“clerkes of nigremauncie"-who keep the lady of Sinaudon under
their spells in the shape of a loathly worm. But the excursions
and digressions have some spirit in them, and no confusion.
The elements of the plot in Sir Gawayne and the Grene
Knight are as ancient and unreasonable as are to be found in any
mythology. No precise original has been found in French; but
the chief adventure, the beheading game proposed by the Green
Knight to the reluctant courtiers of king Arthur, occurs often in
other stories. It comes in one of the stories of Cuchulinn in Irish”;
it comes, more than once, in the French romances; e. g. in La Mule
sans Frein, one of the best of the shorter stories, a strange old-
fashioned chivalrous pilgrim's progress; and this, too, sets out
from king Arthur's court, and the hero is Gawain. The beheading
"jeopardy" is a most successful piece of unreason; "you may cut
off my head, if only I may have a stroke at you some other day. "
Sir Gawain cuts off the Green Knight's head; the Green Knight
picks it up; he summons Gawain to travel and find him by an
appointed day, and submit his neck to the return-stroke. This is
good enough, one would imagine, for a grotesque romance; one
hears the reader quoting aegri somnia and reaffirming his con-
tempt for the Middle Ages. Yet this romance of Sir Gawayne is
very different from the ordinary books of chivalry; it is one of the
most singular works of the fourteenth century, and it is one of the
strongest, both in imagination and in literary art. The author
loses nothing of the fantastic value of his plot; on the contrary, he
does everything possible to heighten the effect of it, to a grotesque
sublimity; while, at the same time, he is concerned, as Shakespeare
often is, to transform the folklore with which he is working, and
make it play into his moral scheme. He is a great moralist and
he can use allegory; but, in his treatment of this story, his
imagination is generally too strong for abstract methods. He
succeeds (a very remarkable feat) in making his readers accept
strange adventures as part of a reasonable man's life; not
smoothing away or suppressing absurdities, but getting out of
them everything possible in the way of terror and wonder; and
i See also Chapter xv, where this romance is further considered as part of the
work of the author of Pearl.
2 Cf. Bricriu's Feast, edited by G. Henderson for the Irish Texts Society.


## p. 297 (#317) ############################################

Gawain and Tristram
97
using mockery also, like that of the northern myths of Thor and the
giants. Allegory comes in, but accidentally, in the description of
Gawain's shield and its device, the “pentangle,” with its religious
motive-Gawain as the servant of Our Lady; thus adding some-
thing more to the complexity of the work. It is a different thing
from the simple beauty of the fairy tales; and, on the other
hand, the common futilities of the minstrels are kept at a
safe distance by this author. His landscape is not that of the
ordinary books; Sir Gawain is not sent wandering in the con-
ventional romantic scenery, but in the highlands of Wales in
winter, all well known and understood by the poet, with thorough
enjoyment of the season, “the flaky shower and whirling drift. "
This is not quite exceptional, for, though the winter passages of
the Scottish Chaucerians are later, the alliterative poets generally
were good at stormy weather, but there is none equal to the poet
of Sir Gawayne in this kind of description. The three hunting
scenes of the hart, the boar and the fox-serve to bring out his
talent further, while the way they are placed in contrast with the
Christmas revels in the castle, show, at any rate, the writer's care
for composition; symmetry of this sort may not be very difficult,
but it is not too common at this time. The temptation of Sir
Gawain and the blandishments of the lady may have been suggested
by the French romance of Ider; but, as in the case of the other
ordeal—the beheading game-the English poet has given his own
rendering.
Sir Tristrem is a great contrast to Sir Gawayne, though both
works are ambitious and carefully studied. The author of Sir
Gawayne took some old wives' fables and made them into a mag-
nificent piece of Gothic art; the other writer had one of the
noblest stories in the world to deal with, and translated it into
thin tinkling rimes.
Ysonde of heighe priis,
The maiden bright of howe,
That wored fow and griis
And scarlet that was newe,
In warld was non so wiis
Of crafto that men knewe,
Withouten Sir Tramtris
That al games of growe
On grounde.
Hom longeth Tramtris the trewe.
For heled was his wounde.
The author is so pleased with his command of verse that he loses


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298
Metrical Romances, 1200-1500
all proper sense of his tragic theme. Tristram and Iseult had to
wait long for their poet, in England.