[220] Not even for Ginovere hübsch unde guot, or Enîte diu reine. The queen has always been heedful of her acts, and has never done anything wrong: doch ist siu an den gedenken missevarn, Heaven knows how. Ulrich is very feeble here.
A remark is here in place which will be still more applicable to some of the tests that are to be spoken of further on. Both the French fabliau and the English ballad give to the mantle the power of detecting the woman that has once done amiss, a de rien messerré. We naturally suppose that we understand what is meant. The trial in the fabliau is so conducted as to confirm our original conception of the nature of the inquest, and so it is, in the case of Arthur's queen, Kay's lady, and the old knight's wife, in the ballad. But when we come to the charmingly pretty passage about Cradock's wife, what are we to think? Is the mantle in a teasing mood, or is it exhibiting its real quality? If once to have kissed Cradock's mouth before marriage is once to have done amiss, Heaven keep our Mirandas and our Perditas, and Heaven forgive our Juliets and our Rosalinds! ("Les dames et demoiselles, pour être baisées devant leur noces, il n'est pas la coutume de France," we know, but this nice custom could hardly have had sway in England. Is then this passage rendered from something in French that is lost?) But the mantle, in the ballad, after indulging its humor or its captiousness for a moment, does Cradock's wife full justice. The mantle, if uncompromising as to acts, at least does not assume to bring thoughts under its jurisdiction. Many of the probations allow themselves this range, and as no definite idea is given of what is charged, no one need be shocked, or perhaps disturbed, by the number of convictions. The satire loses zest, and the moral effect is not improved.
[221] Nul femme que [ne] vouloit lesser sauoir à soun marry soun fet et pensé. T. Wright, in Archæologia Cambrensis, January, 1863, p. 10. Mr Wright gives one of the texts of Cort Mantel, with an English translation. We are further told, in Scalachronica, that this mantle was afterwards made into a chasuble, and that it is "to this day" preserved at Glastonbury. Three versions of the fabliau testify that Carados and his amie deposited the mantle in a Welsh abbey. The Skikkju Rímur say that the lady presented it to the cloister of Cologne; the Möttulssaga has simply a monastery (and, indeed, the mantle, as described by some, must have had a vocation that way from the beginning). "Item, in the castel of Douer ye may see Gauwayn's skull and Cradok's mantel:" Caxton, in his preface to Kyng Arthur, 1485, I, ii, in Southey's ed.; cited by Michel, Tristan, II, 181, and from him by Warnatsch.
[222] For this enchanter see Le Livre de Karados in Perceval le Gallois, ed. Potvin, II, 118 ff. It is not said in the printed copy that he sent the mantle [horn].
[223] Another copy, assigned to the end of the 14th century, from the Kolmar MS., Barisch, p. 373, No LXIX (Warnatsch).
[224] Warnatsch shows, p. 75 f, that the fastnachtspiel must have been made up in part from some version of the Mantle story which was also the source of the meisterlied, and in part from a meisterlied of the Horn, which will be mentioned further on.
[225] The Dean of Lismore's Book, edited by Rev. Thomas M'Lauchlan, p. 72 of the translation, 50/51 of the original. Repeated in Campbell's Heroic Gaelic Ballads, p. 138 f, 'The Maid of the White Mantle.' Mr Campbell remarks: "This ballad, or the story of it, is known in Irish writings. It is not remembered in Scotland now." Mr Wright cites this poem, Archæologia Cambrensis, p. 14 f, 39 f.
[226] Cf. Arthur in the Lai du Corn and Fraw Tristerat Horn, a little further on.
[227] Wolf at first speaks of the lai as being made over into the fabliau, in regular court style, ganz nach höfischer Weise, about the middle of the 13th century; then goes on to say that even if the author of the fabliau followed another version of the story, he must have known the jongleur's poem, because he has repeated some of the introductory lines of the lai. This excellent scholar happened, for once, not to observe that the first fourteen lines of the lai, excepting the fourth, which is questionable, are in a longer metre than the rest of the poem, in eights and sevens, not sixes, and the first three of the lai, which agree with the first three of the fabliau, in the eight-syllable verse of the latter; so that it was not the author of the fabliau that borrowed. Warnatsch (who has also made this last remark) has noted other agreements between lai and fabliau, p. 61. Both of these acknowledge their derivation from an earlier dit, estoire, not having which we shall find it hard to determine by which and from what the borrowing was done.
[228] Montpellier MS.