Guingamor, Lanval, Tyolet, Bisclaveret: Four lais rendered into English prose

The cover image was restored by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
No. III
UNREPRESENTED IN MALORY'S MORTE D'ARTHUR
Second Impression, 1910
The previous volumes which have been published in this series have contained versions belonging to what we may call the conscious period of romantic literature; the writers had not only a story to tell, but had also a very distinct feeling for the literary form of that story and the characterisation of the actors in it. In this present volume we go behind the work of these masters of their craft to that great mass of floating popular tradition from which the Arthurian epic gradually shaped itself, and of which fragments remain to throw here and there an unexpected light on certain features of the story, and to tantalise us with hints of all that has been lost past recovery.
All who have any real knowledge of the Arthurian cycle are well aware that the Breton lais , representing as they do the popular tradition and folk-lore of the people among whom they were current, are of value as affording indications of the original form and meaning of much of the completed legend, but of how much or how little value has not yet been exactly determined. An earlier generation of scholars regarded them as of great, perhaps too great, importance. They were inclined indiscriminately to regard the Arthurian romances as being but a series of connected lais . A later school practically ignores them, and sees in the Arthurian romances the conscious production of literary invention, dealing with materials gathered from all sources, and remodelled by the genius of a Northern French poet.
A special feature of these Breton lais , to be noted in this connection, is that they often combine two features which are more generally found apart, and which, as represented by their most famous mediæval forms, are wont to be considered by us as belonging to two different families of tradition, i.e. , the Tannhäuser legend (the carrying off of a knight by the queen of the other world), and the Lohengrin legend (the rupture of a union between a mortal and an immortal, and the penalties incurred by the former by the transgression of a prohibition imposed by the latter). Two of the stories given in this volume, Guingamor and Lanval , in common with others which will be found noted in Dr. Schofield's studies, combine both motifs .