Mors fu Balduf, mors fu Colgrin
Et Cheldric s'en ala fuiant.[354]
In such taunts is recognised the ferocity of the primitive epics, those of the Greeks as well as those of the northern nations. Thus spoke Patroclus to Cebrion when he fell headlong from his chariot, "with the resolute air of a diver who seeks oysters under the sea."
After Layamon, translations and adaptations soon become very plentiful, metrical chronicles, like the one composed towards the end of the thirteenth century by Robert of Gloucester,[355] are compiled on the pattern of the French ones, for the use and delight of the English people; chivalrous romances are also written in English. The love of extraordinary adventures, and of the books that tell of them, had crept little by little into the hearts of these islanders, now reconciled to their masters, and led by them all over the world. The minstrels or wandering poets of English tongue are many in number; no feast is complete without their music and their songs; they are welcomed in the castle halls, they can now, with as bold a voice as their French brethren, bespeak a cup of ale, sure not to be refused:
At the beginning of ure tale,
Fil me a cuppe of ful god ale,
And y wile drinken her y spelle
That Crist us shilde all fro helle![356]
They stop also on the public places, where the common people flock to hear of Charlemagne and Roland[357]; they even get into the cloister. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, nearly all the stories of the heroes of Troy, Rome, France, and Britain are put into verse:
For hem that knowe no Frensche · ne never underston.[358]
"Men like," writes shortly after 1300, the author of the "Cursor Mundi":
Men lykyn jestis for to here
And romans rede in divers manere
Of Alexandre the conqueroure,
Of Julius Cesar the emperoure,
Of Grece and Troy the strong stryf
There many a man lost his lyf,
Of Brute that baron bold of hond,
The first conqueroure of Englond,
Of Kyng Artour....
How Kyng Charlis and Rowlond fawght
With Sarzyns nold they be cawght,
Of Trystrem and Isoude the swete,
How they with love first gan mete ...
Stories of diverce thynggis,
Of pryncis, prelatis and of kynggis,
Many songgis of divers ryme,
As English Frensh and Latyne.[359]
Some very few Germanic or Saxon traditions, such as the story of Havelok, a Dane who ended by reigning in England, or that of Horn and Rymenhild,[360] his betrothed, had been adopted by the French poets. They were taken from them again by the English minstrels, who, however, left these old heroes their French dress: had they not followed the fashion, no one would have cared for their work. Goldborough or Argentille, the heroine of the romance of Havelok, was originally a Valkyria; now, under her French disguise, she is scarcely recognisable, but she is liked as she is.[361]
Some English heroes of a more recent period find also a place in this poetic pantheon, thanks again to French minstrels, who make them fashionable by versifying about them. In this manner were written, in French, then in English, the adventures of Waltheof, of Sir Guy of Warwick, who marries the beautiful Felice, goes to Palestine, kills the giant Colbrant on his return, and dies piously in a hermitage.[362] Thus are likewise told the deeds of famous outlaws, as Fulke Fitz-Warin, a prototype of Robin Hood, who lived in the woods with the fair Mahaud,[363] as Robin Hood will do later with Maid Marian.[364] Several of these heroes, Guy of Warwick in particular, enjoyed such lasting popularity that it has scarcely died out to this day. Their histories were reprinted at the Renaissance; they were read under Elizabeth, and plays were taken from them; and when, with Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, novels of another kind took their place in the drawing-room, their life continued still in the lower sphere to which they had been consigned. They supplied the matter for those popular chap books[365] that have been reprinted even in our time, the authors of which wrote, as did the rhymers of the Middle Ages "for the love of the English people, of the people of merry England." Englis lede of meri Ingeland.[366]