INTRODUCTION
The tales included in this little book of translations are derivedmainly from the "Lays" of Marie de France. I do not professthem to be a complete collection of her stories in verse.The ascription varies. Poems which were included in herwork but yesterday are withdrawn to-day, and new mattersuggested by scholars to take the place of the old. I believeit to be, however, a far fuller version of Marie's "Lays"than has yet appeared, to my knowledge, in English. Marie'spoems are concerned chiefly with love. To complete my bookI have added two famous mediaeval stories on the sameexcellent theme. This, then, may be regarded as a volumeof French romances, dealing, generally, with one aspect ofmediaeval life.
An age so feminist in its sympathies as ours should beattracted the more easily to Marie de France, because she wasboth an artist and a woman. To deliver oneself through anymedium is always difficult. For a woman of the MiddleAges to express herself publicly by any means whatever wasalmost impossible. A great lady, a great Saint or church-woman,might do so very occasionally. But the individualityof the ordinary wife was merged in that of her husband, andfor one Abbess of Shrewsbury or Whitby, for one St. Clare orSt. Hilda, there were how many thousand obscure sisters,who were buried in the daily routine of a life hidden withChrist in God! Doubtless the artistic temperament burstout now and again in woman, and would take no denial.It blew where it listed, appearing in the most unexpectedplaces. A young nun in a Saxon convent, for instance,would write little dramas in Latin for the amusement andedification of the noble maidens under her charge. Thesecomedies, written in the days of the Emperor Otho, can beread with pleasure in the reign of King George, by those whofind fragrant the perfumes of the past. They deal with thepious legends of the Saints, and are regarded with wistfuladmiration by the most modern of Parisian playwrights. Intheir combination of audacity and simplicity they could onlybe performed by Saxon religious in the times of Otho, or bymarionettes in the more self-conscious life of to-day. Or,again, an Abbess, the protagonist of one of the great lovestories of the world, by sheer force of personality, wouldcompose letters to one—how immeasurably her moral inferior,in spite of his genius—expressing with an unexampledpoignancy the most passionate emotions of the heart. Or, totake my third illustration, here are a woman's poems writtenin an age when literature was almost entirely in the hands ofmen. Consider the strength of character which alone inducedthese three ladies to stray from the beaten paths oftheir sex. To the average woman it was enough to be anobject of art herself, or to be the inspiration of masterpiecesby man. But these three women of the Middle Ages—andsuch as they—shunned the easier way, and, in their severalspheres, were by deliberate effort, self-conscious artists.
The place and date of birth of Marie de France are unknown—indeedthe very century in which she lived has beena matter of dispute. Her poems are written in the French ofnorthern France; but that does not prove her necessarily tobe a Frenchwoman. French was the tongue of the EnglishCourt, and many Englishmen have written in the samelanguage. Indeed, it is a very excellent vehicle for expression.Occasionally, Marie would insert English words in her Frenchtext, the better to convey her meaning; but it does not followtherefrom that the romances were composed in England. Itseems strange that so few positiv