Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/34



WILL tell you a very ancient Breton lay, and as I heard it I will retell it.

"There dwelt a knight in Brittany named Eliduc, brave and courteous, and a right worthy man. A wife he had of gentle blood and bearing. Long time they dwelt together, and faithfully did they love one another. But Eliduc had to seek service afar off, and there he loved a damsel; daughter was she of a king and queen; Guilliadun was her name, and she was the fairest maid of all her land. Now Eliduc's wife was named Guildeluec, and so this lay is sometimes called the lay of Guilliadun and of Guildeluec; but its first name is the lay of Eliduc. What happened, and wherefore this lay was made, I will tell you truthfully."

Thus does Marie de France begin the Lai of Eliduc, which she may have heard either in Brittany or in Western England, and which she wrote down sometime in the second half of the 12th century. 'Tis an adventure, says she, which man ought not to forget, and for this it was the ancient Bretons, full of courtesy (and by courtesy one must understand a fine appreciation of the sentiment of love as it was preached and practised in the courts of France, and of all countries subject to French influence in the 12th and 13th centuries), made the lay. By "Breton" there can be little doubt that Marie meant inhabitants of the present Brittany, the ancient Armorica. As we shall see, the scene of the story is partly Brittany, partly South-Western England. The fact that Marie recognised the lay as a