[10] Migne, Patrol. Lat. lxxiii.
A TWELFTH-CENTURY ROMANCE-WRITER,
MARIE DE FRANCE
“Marie ai nom, si sui de France.” Thus, more than seven centuries ago, wrote Marie de France. What an unpretentious autobiography! Yet these few simple words, which seem to tell so little, but in reality suggest so much, are the counterpart of her work, and form its fitting crown.
But who was this modest writer, and why does her work interest us to-day? Around Marie de France there must always remain an atmosphere of doubt and mystery, since she is only mentioned by an anonymous thirteenth-century poet, and by one of her contemporaries—an Anglo-Norman poet, Denys Pyramus by name—who speaks of her in the most flattering terms, and from whom we learn that her lays were much appreciated by the noblesse, especially the ladies. That these should take rare delight in them may well be, seeing how monotonous life must have been to many a woman shut up with her maidens and her needlework in a dismal castle, or perhaps in but one tower of it, whilst her lord went forth to the chase or to war, his home-coming meaning merely the wine-cup and war-songs, or tedious epic. Many a one must have read or listened to Marie’s love idylls, and longed, and perhaps even hoped, as in the story of “Yonec,” that a fair and gentle knight, in the form of some beautiful bird, might fly in at her window and bring her some diversion from the outside world. With nothing before us but her own poems and the scant recognition of Denys Pyramus, she seems like some old portrait in which the delicate pigments that once glowed in the face and made it live have, owing to their very delicacy, long since faded away, leaving behind only the stronger and less volatile colours of the dark background from which we in vain try to wrest more than one or two fragments of the secret it holds.
Judging from internal evidence, it would seem that Marie was born in Normandy, about the middle of the twelfth century, but settled in England, where since the Conquest, and indeed since the time of Edward the Confessor, many Norman families had made their home. Not only does she make occasional use of English words, and translate from English into French the fables known as Æsop’s, but in the prologue to her Lays, which she dedicates to “the noble King,” generally considered to be Henry the Second, she expresses fear lest her work should not find favour in a foreign land. In this prologue she also gives her reason for abandoning classical translation, which, as a Latin scholar, she had contemplated making, not only for the use of the less learned, but also, as she tells us, for personal discipline, since “he who would keep himself from sin, should study and learn and undertake difficult tasks. In suchwise he may the more withdraw him and save himself from much sorrow.” The twelfth century was a time of extraordinary intellectual activity, and Marie tells us that she suffered from what we are apt to regard as a special evil of our own day—the overcrowding of the literary market. So she wisely turned aside from the Classics and the crowd, and set herself to give literary expression to the old Celtic folk-lore, hitherto perhaps unrecorded save in song.
Of Marie’s work that has come down to us we have The Fables, already mentioned, dedicated to Count William, surnamed Longsword, and son of Henry the Second and Fair Rosamond;[11] The Lays, dedicated to the king, Henry the Second, and doubtless read by Fair Rosamond in her retreat at Woodstock; and The Purgatory of St. Patrick, translated from the Latin at the request of an anonymous benefactor. Of these only The Lays need here concern us, as it is in them that our interest lies, since they are perhaps among the first stories, given literary form, which tell of love “for love’s sake only,”—love unqualified and unquestioning. They form, perhaps, the only collection of lays now extant, and it is to them, therefore, that we must turn to get some idea of the style of narration that gradually replaced the taste for the epic as Norman influence grew and spread in England. Beside the sensualism of the Chansons de Geste, the sentiment expressed in them may seem naïve; beside the gallantry of the Provençal poetry, it may seem primitive; but nevertheless it is, in its very simplicity, the profoundest note that can be struck in this world of men and women. Marie makes no pretence to originality, but even if she did not possess the supreme gift of creating beauty, she at least possessed the lesser gift of perceiving it where it existed and of making it her own, and her stories glow with colour, and enchant by their simple yet dramatic appeal to the imagination. She declares that The Lays were made “for remembrance” by “Le ancien Bretun curteis,” and that “Folks tell them to the harp and the rote, and the music is sweet to hear.” Doubtless it was this sweet music which both soothed and thrilled even before the words were understood, for on sad and festive days alike, the sweet lays of Brittany were always to be heard.
La reine chante doucement,
La voiz acorde a l’estrument:
Les mains sont belles, li lais bons,
Douce la voiz et bas li tons.
Photo. Macbeth.