'Quar je vous aim tant bonement,
Que je ne voudroie savoir
Vostre mesfet por nul avoir.
Miex en veuil je estre en doutance.
Por tot le royaume de France,
N'en voudroie je estre cert;
Quar qui sa bone amie pert
Molt a perdu, ce m'est avis.' 818-25.
[215] See also Brynjúlfsson, Saga af Tristram ok Ísönd, samt Möttuls Saga, Udtog, pp 318-26, Copenhagen, 1878. There is a general presumption that the larger part of the works translated for King Hákon were derived from England. C. & W., p. 47.
[216] That is, the current one. The Samson saga professes to supply the earlier history. Samson's father is another Arthur, king of England. An abstract of so much of the saga as pertains to the Mantle is given by Cederschiöld and Wulff, p. 90f. Warnatsch, p. 73 f, shows that the Rímur and Samson had probably a common source, independent of the Möttulssaga.
[217] By Warnatsch, who gives the text with the corresponding passages of the fabliau in a parallel column, pp 8-54: the argument for Heinrich's authorship, pp 85-105. 'Der Mantel' had been previously printed in Haupt and Hoffmann's Altdeutsche Blätter, II, 217, and by Müllenhoff in his Altdeutsche Sprachproben, p. 125. Of this poem, which Warnatsch, pp 105-110, holds to be a fragment of a lost romance of Lanzelet, written before the 'Crône,' only 994 verses are left. Deducting about a hundred of introduction, there are some 782 German against some 314 French verses, an excess which is owing, no doubt, largely to insertions and expansions on the part of Heinrich, but in some measure to the existing texts of the fabliau having suffered abridgment. The whole matter of the church service, with the going and coming, is dispatched in less than a dozen verses in the French, but occupies more than seventy in German, and just here we read in the French:
Ci ne vueil je plus demorer,
Ni de noient fere lone conte,
Si con l'estoire le raconte.
But possibly the last verse should be taken with what follows.
[218] In Hahn, Griechische Märchen, No 70, II, 60 f, a walnut contains a dress with the earth and its flowers displayed on it, an almond one with the heaven and its stars, a hazel-nut one with the sea and its fishes. No 7, I, 99, a walnut contains a complete costume exhibiting heaven with its stars, a hazel-nut another with the sea and its waves. No 67, II, 33, an almond encloses a woman's dress with heaven and its stars on it, a hazel-nut a suit for her husband. In the Grimms' No 113, three walnuts contain successively each a finer dress than the other, II, 142 f, ed. 1857. There are three similar nuts in Haltrich, No 43, and in Volksmärchen aus Venetien, Jahrbuch für r. u. e. Lit., VII, 249, No 12. Ulrich's mantle is worked with all manner of beasts, birds, and sea monsters, on earth or under, and betwixt earth and heaven: Lanzelet, 5820-27.
[219] I cite the text according to Warnatsch. Warnatsch thinks it worth noticing that it is the queen only, in Mantel 771 f, as in our ballad, st. 14, that curses the maker of the mantle; not, as in the fabliau, the gentlemen whose feelings were so much tried. These, like the queen in the ballad, ont maudit le mantel, et celui qui li aporta.