Orfeo asked for the lady bright. ‘Nay’, said the king, ‘that were a foul match, for in her there is no blemish and thou art rough and black’. ‘Fouler still’, said Orfeo, ‘to hear a leasing from a king’s mouth’; and the king then let him go with good wishes, and Orfeo and Erodys went home. The steward had kept the kingdom truly; ‘thus came they out of care’.
It is all as simple as can be; a rescue out of fairyland, through the power of music; the ideas are found everywhere, in ballads and stories. The ending is happy, and nothing is said of the injunction not to look back. It was probably left out when Orpheus was turned into a fairy tale, on account of the power of music; the heart of the people felt that Orpheus the good harper ought not to be subjected to the common plot. For there is nothing commoner in romance or in popular tales than forgetfulness like that of Orpheus when he lost Eurydice; the plot of Sir Launfal e.g. turns on that; he was warned not to speak of his fairy wife, but he was led, by circumstances over which he had no control, to boast of her—
To speke ne mightè he forgo
And said the queen before:
‘I have loved a fairer woman
Than thou ever laidest thine eye upon,
This seven year and more!’
The drama of Lohengrin keeps this idea before the public (not to speak of the opera of Orfeo), and Lohengrin is a medieval German romance. The Breton lay of Orpheus would not have been in any way exceptional if it had kept to the original fable; the beauty of it loses nothing by the course which it has preferred to take, the happy ending. One may refer to it as a standard, to show what can be done in the medieval art of narrative, with the simplest elements and smallest amount of decoration. It is minstrel poetry, popular poetry—the point is clear when King Orfeo excuses himself to the King of Faerie by the rules of his profession as a minstrel; that was intended to produce a smile, and applause perhaps, among the audience. But though a minstrel’s poem it is far from rude, and it is quite free from the ordinary faults of rambling and prosing, such as Chaucer ridiculed in his Geste of Sir Thopas. It is all in good compass, and coherent; nothing in it is meaningless or ill-placed.
Sir Tristrem is a great contrast to Sir Orfeo; not an absolute contrast, for neither is this story rambling or out of compass. The difference between the two is that Sir Orfeo is nearly perfect as an English representative of the ‘Breton lay’—i.e. the short French romantic story like the Lais of Marie de France; while Sir Tristrem represents no French style of narrative poetry, and is not very successful (though technically very interesting) as an original English experiment in poetical form. It is distinctly clever, as it is likewise ambitious. The poet intends to do finer things than the common. He adopts a peculiar stanza, not one of the easiest—a stanza more fitted for lyric than narrative poetry, and which is actually used for lyrical verse by the poet Laurence Minot. It is in short lines, well managed and effective in their way, but it is a thin tinkling music to accompany the tragic story.
Ysonde bright of hewe