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8 Transcribed from the 1896 George Allen edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
OLD FRENCH ROMANCES DONE INTO ENGLISH BY WILLIAM MORRIS
INTRODUCTION
Many of us have first found our way into the Realm of Romance,
properly so called, through the pages of a little crimson clad volume
of the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne. {1} Its last pages contain the
charming Cante-Fable of Aucassin et Nicolete, which Mr. Walter
Pater's praises and Mr. Andrew Lang's brilliant version have made
familiar to all lovers of letters. But the same volume contains four
other tales, equally charming in their way, which Mr. William Morris
has now made part of English literature by writing them out again for
us in English, reproducing, as his alone can do of living men's, the
tone, the colour, the charm of the Middle Ages. His versions have
appeared in three successive issues of the Kelmscott Press, which
have been eagerly snapped up by the lovers of good books. It seemed
a pity that these cameos of romance should suffer the same fate as
Mr. Lang's version of Aucassin et Nicolete, which has been swept off
the face of the earth by the Charge of the Six Hundred, who were
lucky enough to obtain copies of the only edition of that little
masterpiece of translation. Mr. Morris has, therefore, consented to
allow his versions of the Romances to be combined into one volume in
a form not unworthy of their excellence but more accessible to those
lovers of books whose purses have a habit of varying in inverse
proportion to the amount of their love. He has honoured me by asking
me to introduce them to that wider public to which they now make
their appeal.
I.
Almost all literary roads lead back to Greece. Obscure as still
remains the origin of that genre of romance to which the tales before
us belong, there is little doubt that their models, if not their
originals, were once extant at Constantinople. Though in no single
instance has the Greek original been discovered of any of these
romances, the mere name of their heroes would be in most cases
sufficient to prove their Hellenic or Byzantine origin. Heracles,
Athis, Porphirias, Parthenopeus, Hippomedon, Protesilaus, Cliges,
Cleomades, Clarus, Berinus--names such as these can come but from one
quarter of Europe, and it is as easy to guess how and when they came
as whence. The first two crusades brought the flower of European
chivalry to Constantinople and restored that spiritual union between
Eastern and Western Christendom that had been interrupted by the
great schism of the Greek and Roman Churches. The crusaders came
mostly from the Lands of Romance. Permanent bonds of culture began
to be formed between the extreme East and the extreme West of Europe
by intermarriage, by commerce, by the admission of the nobles of
Byzantium within the orders of chivalry. These ties went on
increasing throughout the twelfth century till they culminated at its
close with the foundation of the Latin kingdom of Constantinople. In
European literature these historic events are represented by the
class of romances represented in this volume, which all trace back to
versions in verse of the twelfth century, though they were done into
prose somewhere in Picardy during the course of the next century.
Daphnis and Chloe, one might say, had revived after a sleep of 700
years, and donned the garb and spoke the tongue of Romance.
II
The very first of our tales illustrates admirably the general course
of their history. It is, in effect, a folk etymology of the name of
the great capital of the Eastern Empire. Constantinople, so runs the
tale, received that name instead of Byzantium, because of the
remarkable career of one of its former rulers, Coustans. M.
Wesselovsky has published in Romania (vi. 1. seq.) the Dit de
l'empereur Constant, the verse original of the story before us, and
in this occur the lines -
Pour ce que si nobles estoit
Et que nobles oevres faisoit
L'appielloient Constant le noble
Et pour cou ot Constantinnoble
Li cytes de Bissence a non.
From which it would appear that we are mistaken in thinking of the
capital of Turkey as the "City of Constantine," whereas it is rather
Constant the Noble, and the name Coustant is further explained as
"costing" too much. Constantinople, therefore, is the city that
costs too much, according to the prophetic etymology of the folk.
The only historic personage with whom this Coustant can be identified
is Constantius Chlorus, the father of Constantine the Great and the
husband of St. Helena, to whom legend ascribes the discovery of the
Holy Rood. But the Coustans of our story never lived or ruled on
land or sea, and his predecessor, Muselinus, is altogether unknown to
Byzantine annals, while their interlaced history reads more like a
page of the Arabian Nights than of Gibbon.
But such a legend could scarcely have arisen elsewhere than at
Constantinople. It is one of those fables that the disinherited folk
have at all times invented to solace themselves for their
disinherison. The sudden and fated rise of one of the folk to the
heights of power occurs sufficiently often to afford material for the
day dreams of ambitious youth. There is even a popular tendency to
attribute a lowly origin to all favourites of fortune, as witness the
legends that have grown up about the early careers of Beckett,
Whittington, Wolsey, none of whom was as ill-born as popular
tradition asserts. Yet such legends invariably grow up in the
country of their heroes, which is the only one sufficiently
interested in their career, so far as the common people are
concerned. Hence the very nature of our story would cause us to
locate its origin on the banks of the Bosphorus.
But once originated in this manner, there is no limit to the travels
it may take. Curiously enough, the very legend before us in all its
details has found a home among the English peasantry. The Rev. S.
Baring-Gould collected in Yorkshire a story which he contributed to
Henderson's Folklore of the Northern Counties, and entitled The Fish
and the Ring. {2} In this legend a girl comes as the unwelcome sixth
of the family of a very poor man who lived under the shadow of York
Minster. A Knight, riding by on the day of her birth, discovers, by
consultation of the Book of Fate, that she was destined to marry his
son. He offers to adopt her, and throws her into the River Ouse. A
fisherman saves her, and she is again discovered after many years by
the Knight, who learns what Fate has still in store for his son. He
sends her to his brother at Scarborough with a fatal letter, ordering
him to put her to death. But on the way she is seized by a band of
robbers, who read the letter and replace it by one ordering the
Baron's son to be married to her immediately on her arrival.
When the Baron discovers that he has not been able to evade the
decree of fate he still persists in his persecution, and taking a
ring from his finger throws it into the sea, saying that the girl
shall never live with his son till she can show him that ring. She
wanders about and becomes a scullery-maid at a great castle, and one
day when the Baron is dining at the castle, while cleaning a great
fish she finds his ring, and all ends happily.
Now on the east wall of the chancel of Stepney Church there is a
monument erected to Dame Rebecca Berry, wife of Thomas Elton, of
Stratford, Bow, and relict of Sir John Berry, 1696. The arms on the
monument are thus blazoned by heralds . . . . "Paly of six on a bend
three mullets (Elton) impaling a fish, and in the dexter chief point
an annulet between two bends wavy." The reference in the impalement
of the blazon is obvious. A local tradition confidently identifies
Dame Berry as the heroine of the Yorkshire legend, though of course
it is ignorant of her connection with the etymology of
Constantinople.
Now this tale, or the first half of it, is but a Yorkshire variant of
one spread throughout Europe. The opening of the twenty-ninth story
of the collection of the Brothers Grimm, and entitled The Devil with
the Three Golden Hairs, is exactly the same, and in their Notes they
give references to many similar European folk-tales. The story is
found in Modern Greece (Von Hahn, No. XX.), and it is, therefore,
possible that the story of King Coustans is the adaptation of a Greek
folk-tale for the purposes of a Folk Etymology. But the letter, "On
delivery, please kill bearer," is scarcely likely to have occurred
twice to the popular imagination, and one is almost brought to the
conclusion that the romance before us was itself either directly or
indirectly the source of all the European Folk-tales in which the
letter "To kill bearer" occurs. And as we have before traced the
Romance back to Constantinople, one is further tempted to trace back
the Letter itself to a reminiscence of Homer's [Greek text which
cannot be reproduced].
I have said above that no Greek original of any of these Romances has
hitherto been discovered. But in the case of King Coustans we can at
any rate get within appreciable distance of it. As recently as 1895
a learned Teuton, Dr. Ernst Kuhn, pointed out, appropriately enough
in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, the existence of an Ethiopic and of
an Arabic version of the legend. He found in one of Mr. Quaritch's
catalogues a description of an illuminated Ethiopic MS., once
belonging to King Theodore of Magdala fame, which from the account
given of several of the illustrations he was enabled to identify as
the story of "The Man born to be King." His name in the Ethiopic
version is Thalassion, or Ethiopic words to that effect, and the
Greek provenance of the story is thereby established. Dr. Kuhn was
also successful in finding an Arabic version done by a Coptic
Christian. In both these versions the story is told as a miracle due
to the interference of the Angel Michael; and it is a curious
coincidence that in Mr. Morris' poetical version of our story in the
"Earthly Paradise" he calls his hero Michael. Unless some steps are
taken to prevent the misunderstanding, it is probable that some
Teutonic investigator of the next century will, on the strength of
this identity of names, bring Mr. Morris in guilty of a knowledge of
Ethiopic.
But for the name of the hero one might have suspected these Oriental
versions of being derived, not from a Greek, but from an Indian
original. Mr. Tawney has described a variant found in the Kathakosa
{3} which resembles our tale much more closely than any of the
European folk-tales in the interesting point that the predestined
bride herself finds the fatal letter and makes the satisfactory
substitution. In the Indian tale this is done with considerable
ingenuity and vraisemblance. The girl's name is Visha, and the
operative clause of the fatal letter is:
"Before this man has washed his feet, do thou with speed
Give him poison (visham), and free my heart from care."
The lady thinks (or wishes) that her father is a bad orthographist,
and corrects his spelling by omitting the final m, so that the letter
reads "Give him Visha," with results more satisfactory to the young
lady than to her father. This variant is so very close to our tale,
while the letter incident in it is so much more naturally developed
than in the romance that one might almost suspect it of having been
the original. But we must know more about the Kathakosa and about
the communication between Byzantium and India before we can
decisively determine which came first.
III
Amis and Amil were the David and Jonathan, the Orestes and Pylades,
of the mediaeval world. Dr. Hofmann, who has edited the earliest
French verse account of the Legend, enumerates nearly thirty other
versions of it in almost all the tongues of Western and Northern
Europe, not to mention various versions which have crept into
different collections of the Lives of the Saints. For their peerless
friendship raised them to the ranks of the martyrs, at any rate, at
Mortara and Novara, where, according to the Legend, they died. The
earliest of all these forms is a set of Latin Hexameters by one
Radulfus Tortarius, born at Fleury, 1063, lived in Normandy, and died
some time after 1122. It was, therefore, possible that the story had
come back with the first crusaders, and the Grimms attribute to it a
Greek original. But in its earliest as well as in its present form,
it is definitely located on Romance soil, while the names of the
heroes are clearly Latin (Amicus and AEmilius). It was, however,
only at a later stage that the story was affiliated to the Epic Cycle
of Charlemagne. On the face of it there is clearly stamped the
impress of popular tradition. Heads are not so easily replaced,
except by a freak of the Folk imagination. It is probably for this
reason that M. Gaston Paris attributes an Oriental origin to the
latter part of the tale, and for the same reason the Benedictine
Fathers have had serious doubts about admitting it into the Acta
Sanctorum. On the other hand, the editors of the French text, the
translation of which we have before us, go so far as to conjecture
that there is a historic germ for the whole Legend in certain
incidents of the War of Charlemagne against Didier. But as the whole
connection of the Legend with the Charlemagne Cycle is late, we need
not attribute much importance to, indeed, we may at once dismiss
their conjecture.
These disputes of the pundits cannot destroy the charm of the Legend.
Never, even in antiquity, have the claims of friendship been urged
with such a passionate emphasis. The very resemblance of the two
heroes is symbolic of their similarity of character; the very name of
one of them is Friend pure and simple. The world is well lost for
friendship's sake on the one side, on the other nearest and dearest
are willingly and literally sacrificed on the altar of friendship.
One of the most charming of the Fioretti tells how St. Francis
overcame in himself the mediaeval dread at the touch of a leper, and
washed and tended one of the poor unfortunates. He was but following
the example of Amil, who was not deterred by the dreaded sound of the
"tartavelle"--the clapper or rattle which announced the approach of
the leper {4}--from tending his friend.
Here again romance has points of contact with the folk tale. The end
of the Grimms' tale of Faithful John is clearly the same as that of
Amis and Amile. {5} Once more we are led to believe in some
dependence of the Folk-Tale on Romance, or, vice versa, since an
incident like that of resuscitation by the sacrifice of a child is
not likely to occur independently to two different tellers of tales.
The tale also contains the curious incident of the unsheathed sword
in bed, which, both in romances and folk-tales, is regarded as a
complete bar to any divorce court proceedings. It is probable that
the sword was considered as a living person, so that the principle
publico was applied, and the sword was regarded as a kind of
chaperon. {6} It is noteworthy that the incident occurs in Aladdin
and the Wonderful Lamp, which is a late interpolation into the
Arabian Nights, and may be due there to European influence. But
another incident in the romance suggests that it was derived from a
folk-tale rather than the reverse. The two bowls of wood given to
the heroes at baptism are clearly a modification of that familiar
incident in folk-tales, where one of a pair leaves with the other a
"Lifetoken" {7} which will sympathetically indicate his state of
health. As this has been considerably attenuated in our romance, we
are led to the conclusion that it is itself an adaptation of a folk-
tale.
IV
The tale of King Florus--the gem of the book--recalls the early part
of Shakespeare's Cymbeline and the bet about a wife's virtue, which
forms the subject of many romances, not a few folk-tales, and at
least one folk-song. The Romance of the Violet, by Gerbert de
Montruil, circa 1225, derives its name from the mother's mark of the
heroine, which causes her husband to lose his bet. This was probably
the source of Boccaccio's novel (ii. 9), from which Shakespeare's
more immediately grew. The Gaelic version of this incident,
collected by Campbell (The Chest, No. ii.), is clearly not of folk
origin, but derived directly or indirectly from Boccaccio, in whom
alone the Chest is found. Yet it is curious that, practically, the
same story as the Romance of the Violet is found among folk-songs in
modern Greece and in Modern Scotland. In Passow's collection of
Romaic Folk Songs there is one entitled Maurianos and the King, which
is in substance our story; and it is probably the existence of this
folk-song which causes M. Gaston Paris to place our tale among the
romances derived from Byzantium. Yet Motherwell in his Minstrelsy
has a ballad entitled Reedisdale and Wise William, which has the bet
as its motive. Here again, then, we have a connection between our
romance and the story-store of European folk, and at the same time
some slight link with Byzantium.
V
The tale of "Oversea" has immediate connection with the Crusades,
since its heroine is represented to be no other than the great
grandmother of Saladin. But her adventures resemble those of
Boccaccio's Princess of Babylon (ii. 7), who was herself taken from
one of the Greek romances by Xenophon of Ephesus. Here again, then,
we can trace back to Greek influence reaching Western Europe in the
twelfth century through the medium of the Crusades. But the tale
finds no echo among the folk, so far as I am aware, and is thus
purely and simply a romance of adventure.
This, however, is not the only story connected with the Crusades in
which the Soudan loves a lady of the Franks. Saladin is credited by
the chatty Chronicle of Rheims with having gained the love of
Eleanor, wife of Louis VII., when they were in Palestine on the
Second Crusade. As Saladin did not ascend the throne till twenty
years later, chronology is enabled to clear his memory of this piece
of scandal. But its existence chimes in with such relations between
Moslem and Christian as is represented in our story, which were
clearly not regarded at the time with any particular aversion by the
folk; they agree with Cardinal Mazarin on this point.
VI
So much for the origin of our tales. Yet who cares for origins
nowadays? We are all democrats now, and a tale, like a man, is
welcomed for its merits and not for its pedigree. Yet even democracy
must own, that pedigree often leaves its trace in style and manner,
and certainly the tales before us owe some of their charm to their
lineage. "Out of Byzantium by Old France" is a good strain by which
to produce thoroughbred romance.
Certainly we breathe the very air of romance in these stories. There
is none of your modern priggish care for the state of your soul. Men
take rank according to their might, women are valued for their beauty
alone. Adventures are to the adventurous, and the world is full of
them. Every place but that in which one is born is equally strange
and wondrous. Once beyond the bounds of the city walls and none
knows what may happen. We have stepped forth into the Land of
Faerie, but at least we are in the open air.
Mr. Pater seems to regard our stories as being a premonition of the
freedom and gaiety of the Renaissance rather than as especially
characteristic of the times of Romance. All that one need remark
upon such misconception is that it only proves that Mr. Pater knew
less of Romance Literature than he did of his favourite subject. The
freshness, the gaiety, the direct outlook into life are peculiar
neither to Romance nor Renaissance; their real source was the esprit
Gaulois. But the unquestioning, if somewhat external, piety, the
immutability of the caste system, the spirit of adventure, the
frankly physical love of woman, the large childlike wonder, these are
of the essence of Romance, and they are fully represented in the
tales before us. Wonder and reverence, are not these the parents of
Romance? Intelligent curiosity and intellectual doubt--those are
what the Renaissance brought. Without indulging in invidious
comparisons between the relative value of these gifts, I would turn
back to our stories with the remark that much of the wonder which
they exhibit is due to the vague localisation which runs through
them. Rome, Paris, Byzantium, form spots of light on the mediaeval
map, but all between is in the dim obscure where anything may occur,
and the brave man moves about with his life in his hands.
We thus obtain that absence or localisation which helps to give the
characteristic tone to mediaeval romance. Events happen in a sort of
sublime No Man's Land. They happen, as it were, at the root of the
mountains, on the glittering plain, and in short, we get news from
Nowhere. It seems, therefore, peculiarly appropriate that they
should be done into English in the same style and by the same hand
that has already written the annals of those countries of romance.
Writing here, in front of Mr. Morris's versions, I am speaking, as it
were, before his face, and must not say all that I should like in
praise of the style in which he has clothed them, and of its
appropriateness for its present purpose. I should merely like to
recall the fact that it was used by him in his versions of the Sagas
as long ago as 1869. Since then it has been adopted by all who
desire to give an appropriate English dress to their versions of
classic or mediaeval masterpieces of a romantic character. We may
take it, I think, that this style has established itself as the only
one suitable for a romantic version, and who shall use it with ease
and grace if not its original inventor?
If their style suits Mr. Morris, there is little doubt that their
subject is equally congenial. I cannot claim to be in his confidence
on the point, but it is not difficult, I fancy, to guess what has
attracted him to them. Nearly all of them, we have seen, are on the
borderland between folk-tale and romance. It is tales such as these
that Mr. Morris wishes to see told in tapestry on the walls of the
Moot-Hall of the Hammersmith of Nowhere. It was by tales such as
these that he first won a hearing from all lovers of English
literature. The story of Jason is but a Greek setting of a folk-tale
known among the Gaels as the Battle of the Birds, and in Norse as the
Master Maid. Many of the tales which the travellers told one another
in the Earthly Paradise, such as The Man Born to be King (itself
derived from the first of our stories), The Land East of the Sun and
West of the Moon, and The Ring given to Venus, are, on the face of
them, folk-tales. Need I give any stronger recommendation of this
book to English readers than to ask them to regard it as a sort of
outhouse to that goodly fabric so appropriately known to us all as
The Earthly Paradise?
JOSEPH JACOBS.
THE TALE OF KING COUSTANS THE EMPEROR
This tale telleth us that there was erewhile an Emperor of Byzance,
which as now is called Constantinople; but anciently it was called
Byzance. There was in the said city an Emperor; pagan he was, and
was held for wise as of his law. He knew well enough of a science
that is called Astronomy, and he knew withal of the course of the
stars, and the planets, and the moon: and he saw well in the stars
many marvels, and he knew much of other things wherein the paynims
much study, and in the lots they trow, and the answers of the Evil
One, that is to say, the Enemy. This Emperor had to name Musselin;
he knew much of lore and of sorceries, as many a pagan doth even yet.
Now it befell on a time that the Emperor Musselin went his ways a
night-tide, he and a knight of his alone together, amidst of the city
which is now called Constantinople, and the moon shone full clear.
And so far they went, till they heard a Christian woman who travailed
in child-bed in a certain house whereby they went. There was the
husband of the said woman aloft in a high solar, and was praying to
God one while that she might be delivered, and then again another
while that she might not be delivered.
When the Emperor had hearkened this a great while, he said to the
knight: "Hast thou heard it of yonder churl how he prayeth that his
wife may be delivered of her child, and another while prayeth that
she may not be delivered? Certes, he is worser than a thief. For
every man ought to have pity of women, more especially of them that
be sick of childing. And now, so help me Mahoume and Termagaunt! if
I do not hang him, if he betake him not to telling me reason
wherefore he doeth it! Come we now unto him."
They went within, and said the Emperor: "Now churl, tell me of a
sooth wherefore thou prayedst thy God thus for thy wife, one while
that she might be delivered, and another while that she might be
delivered not. This have I will to wot."
"Sir," said he, "I will tell thee well. Sooth it is that I be a
clerk, and know mickle of a science which men call Astronomy. Withal
I wot of the course of the stars and of the planets; therefore saw I
well that if my wife were delivered at the point and the hour whereas
I prayed God that she might not be delivered, that if she were
delivered at that hour, the child would go the way of perdition, and
that needs must he be burned, or hanged, or drowned. But whenas I
saw that it was good hour and good point, then prayed I to God that
she might be delivered. And so sore have I prayed God, that he hath
hearkened my prayer of his mercy, and that she is delivered in good
point. God be heried and thanked!"
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