A Norse prose translation of the French fabliau was executed by order of the Norwegian king, Hákon Hákonarson, whose reign covers the years 1217-63. Of this translation, 'Möttuls Saga,' a fragment has come down which is as old as 1300; there are also portions of a manuscript which is assigned to about 1400, and two transcripts of this latter, made when it was complete, besides other less important copies. This translation, which is reasonably close and was made from a good exemplar, has been most excellently edited by Messrs Cederschiöld and Wulff, Versions nordiques du Fabliau Le Mantel Mautaillié, Lund, 1877, p. 1.[215] It presents no divergences from the story as just given which are material here.
Not so with the 'Skikkju Rímur,' or Mantle Rhymes, an Icelandic composition of the fifteenth century, in three parts, embracing in all one hundred and eighty-five four-line stanzas: Cederschiöld and Wulff, p. 51. In these the story is told with additions, which occur partially in our ballad. The mantle is of white velvet. Three elf-women had been not less than fifteen years in weaving it, and it seemed both yellow and gray, green and black, red and blue: II, 22, 23, 26. Our English minstrel describes these variations of color as occurring after Guenever had put the mantle on: stanzas 11, 12. Again, there are among the Pentecostal guests a king and queen of Dwarf Land; a beardless king of Small-Maids Land, with a queen eight years old; and a King Felix, three hundred years old, with a beard to the crotch, and a wife, tall and fat, to whom he has been two centuries married,—all these severally attended by generous retinues of pigmies, juveniles, and seniors: I, 28-35; III, 41. Felix is of course the prototype of the old knight pattering over a creed in stanzas 21-24 of the ballad, and he will have his representative in several other pieces presently to be spoken of. In the end Arthur sends all the ladies from his court in disgrace, and his knights to the wars; we will get better wives, he says: III, 74, 75.
The land of Small-Maids and the long-lived race are mentioned in a brief geographical chapter (the thirteenth) of that singular gallimaufry the saga of Samson the Fair, but not in connection with a probation by the mantle, though this saga has appropriated portions of the story. Here the mantle is one which four fairies have worked at for eighteen years, as a penalty for stealing from the fleece of a very remarkable ram; and it is of this same fleece, described as being of all hues, gold, silk, ok kolors, that the mantle is woven. It would hold off from an unchaste woman and fall off from a thief. Quintalin, to ransom his life, undertakes to get the mantle for Samson. Its virtue is tried at two weddings, the second being Samson's; and on this last occasion Valentina, Samson's bride, is the only woman who can put it on. The mantle is given to Valentina, as in the fabliau to Carados's wife, but nevertheless we hear later of its being presented by Samson to another lady, who, a good while after, was robbed of the same by a pirate, and the mantle carried to Africa. From Africa it was sent to our Arthur by a lady named Elida, "and hence the saga of the mantle."[216] Björner, Nordiska Kämpa Dater, cc 12, 14, 15, 21, 22, 24.
There is also an incomplete German version of the fabliau, now credibly shown to be the work of Heinrich von dem Türlin, dating from the earliest years of the thirteenth century.[217] Though the author has dealt freely with his original, there are indications that this, like the Möttulssaga, was founded upon some version of the fabliau which is not now extant. One of these is an agreement between vv 574-6 and the sixth stanza of our ballad. The mantle, in English, is enclosed between two nut-shells;[218] in German, the bag from which it is taken is hardly a span wide. In the Möttulssaga, p. 9, l. 6, the mantle comes from a púss, a small bag hanging on the belt; in Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet, from ein mæzigez teschelîn, and in the latter case the mantle instantaneously expands to full size (Warnatsch); it is also of all colors known to man, vv 5807-19. Again, when Guenever had put on the mantle, st. 10 of our ballad, "it was from the top to the toe as sheeres had itt shread." So in 'Der Mantel,' vv 732, 733:
Unde [== unten] het man in zerizzen,
Oder mit mezzern zesnitten.[219]
The Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, dating from the first years of the thirteenth century, with peculiarities of detail and a partially new set of names, presents the outline of the same story. A sea-fairy sends a maid to Arthur with a magnificent gift, which is, however, conditioned upon his granting a boon. Arthur assents, and the maid takes, from a small bag which she wears at her girdle, a mantle, which is of all colors that man ever saw or heard of, and is worked with every manner of beast, fowl, and strange fish. The king's promise obliges him to make all the court ladies don the mantle, she to have it whom it perfectly fits. More than two hundred try, and there is no absolute fit.[220] But Iblis, Lanzelet's wife, is not present: she is languishing on account of his absence on a dangerous adventure. She is sent for, and by general agreement the mantle is, on her, the best-fitting garment woman ever wore. Ed. Hahn, vv 5746-6135.
The adventure of the Mantle is very briefly reported to Gawain, when on his way with Ydain to Arthur, by a youth who had just come from the court, in terms entirely according with the French fabliau, in Messire Gauvain, ou La Vengeance de Raguidel, by the trouvère Raoul, ed. Hippeau, p. 135 ff, vv 3906-55, and in the Dutch Lancelot, ed. Jonckbloet, Part II, p. 85, vv 12,500-527, poems of the thirteenth century. The one lady whom the mantle fits is in the latter Carados vrindinne, in the other l'amie Caraduel Briefbras.
The Scalachronica, by Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, a chronicle of England and Scotland, 1066-1362, begun in 1355, gives the analysis of many romances, and that of the adventure of the Mantle in this form. There was sent to Arthur's court the mantle of Karodes, which was of such virtue that it would fit no woman who was not willing that her husband should know both her act and her thought.[221] This was the occasion of much mirth, for the mantle was either too short, or too long, or too tight, for all the ladies except Karodes' wife. And it was said that this mantle was sent by the father of Karodes, a magician, to prove the goodness of his son's wife.[222]
Two fifteenth-century German versions of the Mantle story give it a shape of their own. In Fastnachtspiele aus dem fünfzehnten Jahrhundert, II, 665, No 81, 'Der Luneten Mantel,' the amiable Lunet, so well and favorably known in romances, takes the place of the English boy and French varlet. The story has the usual course. The mantle is unsuccessfully tried by Arthur's queen, by the wife of the Greek emperor, and by the queen of Lorraine. The king of Spain, who announces himself as the oldest man present, is willing to excuse his wife, who is the youngest of the royal ladies. She says, If we lack lands and gold, "so sei wir doch an eren reich," offers herself to the test with the fearlessness of innocence, and comes off clear, to the delight of her aged spouse. A meistergesang, Bruns, Beiträge zur kritischen Bearbeitung alter Handschriften, p. 143,[223] 'Lanethen Mantel,' again awards the prize to the young wife of a very old knight. Laneth, a clean maid, who is Arthur's niece, having made herself poor by her bounty, is cast off by her uncle's wife and accused of loose behavior. She makes her trouble known to a dwarf, a good friend of her father's, and receives from him a mantle to take to Arthur's court: if anybody huffs her, she is to put it to use. The queen opens upon Laneth, as soon as she appears, with language not unlike that which she employs of Cradock's wife in stanzas 33, 34 of the ballad. The mantle is offered to any lady that it will fit. In front it comes to the queen's knee, and it drags on the ground behind. Three hundred and fifty knights' ladies fare as ill as the sovereign.[224]
The Dean of Lismore's collection of Gaelic poetry, made in the early part of the sixteenth century, contains a ballad, obscure in places, but clearly presenting the outlines of the English ballad or French fabliau.[225] Finn, Diarmaid, and four other heroes are drinking, with their six wives. The women take too much, and fall to boasting of their chastity. While they are so engaged, a maid approaches who is clad in a seamless robe of pure white. She sits down by Finn, and he asks her what is the virtue of the garment. She replies that her seamless robe will completely cover none but the spotless wife. Conan, a sort of Kay, says, Give it to my wife at once, that we may learn the truth of what they have been saying. The robe shrinks into folds, and Conan is so angry that he seizes his spear and kills his wife.[226] Diarmaid's wife tries, and the robe clings about her hair; Oscar's, and it does not reach to her middle; Maighinis, Finn's wife, and it folds around her ears. MacRea's wife only is completely covered. The 'daughter of Deirg,' certainly a wife of Finn, and here seemingly to be identified with Maighinis, claims the robe: she has done nothing to be ashamed of; she has erred only with Finn. Finn curses her and womankind, "because of her who came that day."