One day Launfal rode out in poor attire into the forest, and sat him under a tree to rest. After a while, two fair
damsels, beautifully attired and bearing a gold basin and a silk towel, approached him, and bade him come speak with their lady, Dame Triamour, daughter to the King of Olyroun, king of fairy. Launfal was led to where the lady lay, and "all his love in her was light."
On the morrow she promised him rich presents, and said she would come to him whenever he wished for her in a secret place; but he was never to boast of her love. Her presents came to him at the mayor's house of Caerleon, and he spent his riches charitably.
The King, hearing of an exploit of Launfal's, summoned him back to court. The Queen tempted him, but he repulsed her by saying he loved a fairer woman; this of course lost him Triamour. Guinevere (by a trick common in romances) accused Launfal to Arthur; but he was saved from disgrace by the appearance of Triamour, who then carried him off into fairy-land to Olyroun.
The romance of Sir Orpheo, a mediaeval version of the classical story of Orpheus and Eurydice, has come down to us in three manuscripts,[[65]] two of which are not quite complete, which are to be assigned to the fifteenth century at latest.
As in the case of Launfal, it is doubtless a translation from the French; but as there is no extant original, this can only be presumed. Orpheus becomes Orpheo or Orfeo, and Eurydice becomes Erodys, Heurodis, or Meroudys; in the last the initial letter may be due to the m in "dame," the word preceding it.
The story is told as follows.
In all the world there was no better harper than King Orfeo [Sir Orpheo], and no fairer lady than dame Meroudys. On a morning in the beginning of May, the queen went forth with her ladies to an orchard, and fell asleep under an "ympe"[[66]] tree till it was long past noon. When her ladies woke her, she cried aloud, tore her clothes, and disfigured herself with her nails. They sought assistance and put her to bed in her chamber, whither the king came to visit her, and ask her what might help her. She told him how in her sleep she had been bidden by a knight to come and speak with his lord the king; she refused, but the king came to her, with a hundred knights and a hundred ladies in white on white steeds, and his crown was all of precious stones. He bore her away to a fair palace, and showed her his possessions. Then he took her back, but bade her be beneath the tree on the morrow, when she should go with them and stay with them for ever.
King Orfeo was greatly distressed, and none could advise him. On the morrow he took his queen and ten hundred
knights to guard her beneath the ympe tree; but in vain, she was away with the fairy, and they knew not whither. King Orfeo in grief called together his barons and knights and squires, and bade them obey his high steward as regent; he himself went forth barefoot and in poor attire into the wilderness, with naught but his harp.