A shaded pathway, where my feet,
Bruised mint and fennel savouring sweet,
to a secluded lawn. Here he sees one whose name is “Gladness”:
Gently swaying, rose and fell
Her supple form, the while her feet
Kept measured time with perfect beat:
•••••
While minstrels sang, the tambourine
Kept with the flute due time I ween.
•••••
Then saw I cunning jugglers play,
And girls cast tambourines away
Aloft in air, then gaily trip
Beneath them, and on finger-tip
Catch them again.
In every garden there was a fountain or sheet of water with a small channelled way carrying the water to the castle and through the women’s apartment. Sometimes these waterways were made use of by the lover as a means of communication with his beloved, as we read in the romance of Tristan and Isolde, where Tristan, to apprise his mistress that he is at their trysting-place in the garden, drops into the water small pieces of bark and twigs, which are quickly carried to the chamber where Isolde is waiting and watching. And one eventide a perilous encounter befalls. Tristan has been banished the Court, for evil tongues have whispered in King Mark’s ear of his love for Isolde, and have further whispered of secret meetings in the garden, beside the fountain. Now near the fountain is a pine-tree, into which King Mark resolves to climb, and perchance to discover the meeting of the lovers. As daylight fades, Tristan scales the wall, and hastens to throw into the water the little signals for his lady. But as he stoops over the pool he sees, reflected in its clear surface, the image of the king, with bow ready bent. Can he stop the floating twigs as they are hurried along on their mission? No. The water carries them away out of sight, and Isolde must come. She comes, but Tristan does not go to meet her as was his wont, but remains standing by the water. She wonders at her lover’s seeming unconcern, but as she approaches him, suddenly, in the bright moonlight, she, too, sees in the water the reflection of the king, and the lovers are saved.
A pine-tree is so often mentioned as a special feature in a mediæval garden that one is led to think that its use may either have been a survival from the days of Tree Worship, seeing that the tree was sacred to Adonis, Attis, and Osiris[44] (all, perhaps, varying forms of one and the same divinity), or have been suggested by some northern Saga. It makes its appearance in the Chanson de Roland, which has come down to us in a thirteenth-century form, incorporating the earlier Epic of Roland, probably composed towards the end of the eleventh century. In this we find mention of it when Charlemagne, after he is said to have taken Cordova, retires to a garden with Roland and Oliver and his barons, the elder ones amusing themselves with chess and tric-trac, and the younger ones with fencing, the king meanwhile looking on, seated under a pine-tree. Later in the day tents are set up, in which they pass the night, and in the early morning Charlemagne, after hearing mass, again sits under the pine-tree to take counsel of his barons.
In the Roman de la Rose, the fateful fountain of Narcissus is described as being beneath a pine-tree, which is represented as being taller and fairer than any that mortal eye had seen since the glorious pine of Charlemagne’s time, showing that here at least the poet is making use of tradition.
Photo. Brückmann.
FLEMISH MASTER.