Among the incidents of the fine old romance just alluded to,[53] is narrated the death of King Ban, occasioned by grief at the sight of his castle taken and in flames through the treachery of his seneschal. His afflicted queen had left her new-born infant on the margin of a lake, while she went to soothe the last moments of the expiring monarch. On her return, she finds her babe in the arms of a beautiful lady. She entreats her pathetically to restore the orphan babe; but, without heeding her entreaties, or even uttering a single word, she moves to the edge of the lake, into which she plunges and disappears with the child. The lady was the celebrated Dame du Lac: the child was Lancelot, afterwards styled Du Lac. The name of the lady was Vivienne, and she had dwelt "en la marche de la petite Bretaigne." Merlin the demon-born, the renowned enchanter, became enamoured of her, and taught her a portion of his art; and the ill-return she made is well known in the annals of female treachery.[54] In consequence of the knowledge thus acquired she became a fairy; for the author informs us that "the damsel who carried Lancelot to the lake was a fay, and in those times all those women were called fays who had to do with enchantments and charms—and there were many of them then, principally in Great Britain—and knew the power and virtues of words, of stones, and of herbs, by which they were kept in youth and in beauty, and in great riches, as they devised."[55]
The lake was a feerie, an illusion raised by the art which the devil had taught Merlin, and Merlin the lady. The romance says: "The lady who reared him conversed only in the forest, and dwelt on the summit of a hill, which was much lower than that on which King Ban had died. In this place, where it seemed that the wood was large and deep, the lady had many fair houses, and very rich; and in the plain beneath there was a gentle little river well-stored with fish; and this place was so secret and so concealed, that right difficult was it for any one to find, for the semblance of the said lake covered it so that it could not be perceived."[56]
When her young protégé had gone through his course of knightly education, she took him to King Arthur's court, and presented him there; and his subsequent history is well known.
In the romance of Maugis d'Aygremont et de Vivian son Frère, when Tapinel and the female slave had stolen the two children of Duke Bevis of Aygremont, the former sold to the wife of Sorgalant the child which he had taken, whose name was Esclarmonde, and who was about fifteen years of age, and was "plus belle et plus blanche qu'une fée." The slave having laid herself to rest under a white-thorn (aube-spine), was devoured by a lion and a leopard, who killed one another in their dispute for the infant. "And the babe lay under the thorn, and cried loudly, during which it came to pass that Oriande la Fée, who abode at Rosefleur with four other fays, came straight to this thorn; for every time she passed by there she used to repose under that white-thorn. She got down, and hearing the child cry, she came that way and looked at him, and said, 'By the god in whom we believe, this child here is lying badly (mal gist), and this shall be his name;' and from that time he was always called Maugis."
Oriande la Fée brought the child home with her and her damsels; and having examined him, and found, by a precious ring that was in his ear, that he was of noble lineage, "she prayed our Lord that he would be pleased of his grace to make known his origin (nation)." When she had finished her prayer, she sent for her nephew Espiet, "who was a dwarf, and was not more than three feet high, and had his hair yellow as fine gold, and looked like a child of seven years, but he was more than a hundred; and he was one of the falsest knaves in the world, and knew every kind of enchantment." Espiet informed her whose child he was; and Oriande, having prayed to our Lord to preserve the child, took him with her to her castle of Rosefleur, where she had him baptised and named Maugis. She and her damsels reared him with great tenderness; and when he was old enough she put him under the care of her brother Baudris, "who knew all the arts of magic and necromancy, and was of the age of a hundred years;" and he taught what he knew to Maugis.
When Maugis was grown a man, the Fay Oriande clad him in arms, and he became her ami; and she loved him "de si grand amour qu'elle doute fort qu'il ne se departe d'avecques elle."
Maugis shortly afterwards achieved the adventure of gaining the enchanted horse Bayard, in the isle of Boucaut. Of Bayard it is said, when Maugis spoke to him, "Bayard estoit feyé, si entendoit aussi bien Maugis comme s'il (Bayard) eust parlé." On his return from the island, Maugis conquers and slays the Saracen admiral Anthenor, who had come to win the lands and castle of Oriande, and gains the sword Flamberge (Floberge), which, together with Bayard, he afterwards gave to his cousin Renaud.
In Perceforest, Sebille la Dame du Lac, whose castle was surrounded by a river on which lay so dense a fog that no one could see across the water, though not called so, was evidently a fay. The fortnight that Alexander the Great and Floridas abode with her, to be cured of their wounds, seemed to them but as one night. During that night, "la dame demoura enceinte du roy dung filz, dont de ce lignage yssit le roi Artus."[57]
In the same romance[58] we are told that "en lysle de Zellande jadis fut demourante une faee qui estoit appellee Morgane." This Morgane was very intimate with "ung esperit (named Zephir) qui repairoit es lieux acquatiques, mais jamais nestoit veu que de nuyt." Zephir had been in the habit of repairing to Morgane la Faee from her youth up, "car elle estoit malicieuse et subtille et tousjours avoit moult desire a aucunement sçavoir des enchantemens et des conjurations." He had committed to her charge the young Passelyon and his cousin Bennucq, to be brought up, and Passelyon was detected in an intrigue with the young Morgane, daughter of the fay. The various adventures of this amorous youth form one of the most interesting portions of the romance.
In Tristan de Leonois,[59] king Meliadus, the father of Tristan, is drawn to a chase par mal engin et negromance of a fairy who was in love with him, and carries him off, and from whose thraldom he was only released by the power of the great enchanter Merlin.
In Parthenopex of Blois,[60] the beautiful fairy Melior, whose magic bark carries the knight to her secret island, is daughter to the emperor of Greece.
In no romance whatever is the fairy machinery more pleasingly displayed than in Sir Launfal, a metrical romance, composed[61] by Thomas Chestre, in the reign of Henry VI.
Before, however, we give the analysis of this poem, which will be followed by that of another, and by our own imitations of this kind of verse, we will take leave to offer some observations on a subject that seems to us to be in general but little understood, namely, the structure of our old English verse, and the proper mode of reading it.
Our forefathers, like their Gotho-German kindred, regulated their verse by the number of accents, not of syllables. The foot, therefore, as we term it, might consist of one, two, three, or even four syllables, provided it had only one strongly marked accent. Further, the accent of a word might be varied, chiefly by throwing it on the last syllable, as natúre for náture, honoúr for hónour, etc. (the Italians, by the way, throw it back when two accents come into collision, as, Il Pástor Fido[62]); they also sounded what the French call the feminine e of their words, as, In oldè dayès of the King Artoúr; and so well known seems this practice to have been, that the copyists did not always write this e, relying on the skill of the reader to supply it.[63] There was only one restriction, namely, that it was never to come before a vowel, unless where there was a pause. In this way the poetry of the middle ages was just as regular as that of the present day; and Chaucer, when properly read, is fully as harmonious as Pope. But the editors of our ancient poems, with the exception of Tyrwhitt, seem to have been ignorant or regardless of this principle; and in the Canterbury Tales alone is the verse properly arranged.
We will now proceed to the analysis of the romance of Sir Launfal.
Sir Launfal was one of the knights of Arthur, who loved him well, and made him his steward. But when Arthur married the beautiful but frail Gwennere, daughter of Ryon, king of Ireland, Launfal and other virtuous knights manifested their dissatisfaction when she came to court. The queen was aware of