When romance "is in," and, after Geoffrey of Monmouth, romance was in, every other kind of literature "is out"; is unfashionable and little regarded. The English rhyming chroniclers, and even religious writers such as the author of the "Cursor Mundi," felt constrained to make their works resemble fiction as nearly as possible; owing to the supremacy of French romances and English translations and adaptations of French romances, in the late twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.
Many of these productions grouped themselves round the Table of King Arthur, "matter of Britain"; others dealt with "matter of Rome," that is all the ancient world; others with "matter of France"; others with legends or fancies, English or foreign. Their subject was often the chivalrous theory and practice of love, as a kind of religion, a fantastic semi-idealized devotion to the beloved, who, as a rule, was another man\'s wife. This breach of recognized religion and morality was often set down to fate, to the power that the Anglo-Saxons named Wyrd.
The two greatest cycles of romantic love are found in the lives of Tristram and Iseult (the wife of King Mark of Cornwall, and aunt by marriage of Tristram), and of Lancelot and Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur. Tristram (whose name seems to be altered from the Welsh name Drysdan), has but little original connexion with the Court of Arthur, though he is a mythical hero of a very old Welsh "triad". He and Iseult love each other because they have by mischance drunk together of a love potion intended for Mark and his wife; their love is fatal and inevitable, and immortal.
Lancelot, on the other hand, has been sent to bring the bride[Pg 61] Guinevere to Arthur, and they fall in love before the lady has seen her lord. Every one knows their joys and sorrows, from Malory\'s "Morte d\'Arthur," (1470)—a prose selection and compilation of "the French books," which excels them and supersedes them—and from the poems of Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and Mr. Swinburne.
The romances of love and tournament are pervaded and darkened by the influence of the Celtic Merlin, the enchanter and prophet whom men call Devil\'s son; he represents Destiny. A wide circle of romances, "Merlin" and the "Suite de Merlin," attributed to Robert de Borron, at the end of the twelfth century, are concerned with him.
As if to counteract the fanaticism of love which, in the romances, becomes a non-moral counter-religion, the mysterious story of the Holy Grail came into literature, French, German, and English. The Grail is perhaps originally one of the many magical things of Celtic legend, a vessel as rich in food inexhaustible as the purse of Fortunatus in gold, but conceived by the romance writers to be a mystic dish or cup, used by our Lord before His passion, and still existing, but only to be seen by the pure of heart, such as Sir Percival, and Sir Galahad, the maiden son of Lancelot.
By accident or design the romances fall into a tragic sequence: the youth of Arthur, and his unconscious sin; the mysterious birth of Merlin; the fatal loves of Lancelot and Guinevere; the coming of the Grail and the search for the Grail by many knights; the failure of all but Galahad and Percival; the falling of Lancelot and Guinevere to their old love again; and the sorrows and treacheries that precede and lead up to the king\'s last battle in the west, and his passing to Avilion.
France and Ireland, like England, have their own romances on the adventures of knights under the feudal sway of a chief king; in France, Charlemagne; in Ireland, Conchobar or Fionn; in England, Arthur, and in all these cases the king becomes much less interesting than his knights, such as Roland and Oliver in France; Cuchulain and Diarmaid in Ireland; Lancelot, Tristram, Gawain, and Percival in England. Yet Arthur, at first and at the last, is the supreme as well as the central figure in the epic, or[Pg 62] cycle, of romances. These are a great treasury of brilliant imaginations, rising from Celtic traditions of unknown antiquity, and then transfigured, first by the chivalrous counter-religion of love; next by the reaction to celibacy, and the yearning after some visible and tangible Christian relic and sign, "the vision of the Holy Grail". From this hoard of mediaeval fancies later poets have taken what they could, have placed the jewels in settings of their own fashioning.
The romance writers were by no means restricted to "matter of Britain," with Celtic traditions; or to "matter of France," the epics of Charlemagne and his peers, or even to "matter of Rome," ranging through all antiquity. Material came in from popular tales of all countries, and from recent historical events, as in the romance of Richard C?ur de Lion. In the fifteenth century there was a romance of Jeanne d\'Arc, as fantastic as any; the matter of it survives partly in the prose of the "Chronique de Lorraine," and has drifted into "Henry VI," Pt. I. In France the most famous and fashionable novelists of the late twelfth century were Chrétien de Troyes and Beno?t de Ste.-Maure, author of the great romance of Troy, whose manner, long-winded and elaborately courtly, was strangely revived by the French romancers of the years preceding Molière.
Tristram.
The earliest English romances, or novels of chivalrous adventures, are couched in metre. Among the first is "Sir Tristrem" (usually spelled Tristram); certainly this has been the most popular in modern times. Sir Walter Scott edited it, from the copy in the Auchinleck Manuscript (a collection of early poems once in the possession of Boswell of Auchinleck, father of Dr. Johnson\'s Boswell).[1]
Sir Walter was persuaded that "Sir Tristrem" was written from local Celtic tradition, by the famed Thomas of Ercildoune, called[Pg 63] the Rhymer. Thomas, who dwelt at Ercildoune (Earlstone on Leader water), was a neighbour, as it were, of Scott at Abbotsford; he died between 1286 and 1299, and he had great though obviously accidental fame, as a prophet.
The poem on Tristram begins with the words,
I was at Erceldoune
With Thomas spake I there,
There heard I rede in roune
Who Tristram gat and bare,
(that is, "I heard who the father and mother of Tristram were")
Who was King with croun;
And who him fostered yare;
And who was bold baroun.
As their elders ware,
Bi yere:—
Thomas tells in toun,
This auventours as thai ware.
The English poet uses this difficult stanza in place of the simple rhymes of a French original which knew nothing of Ercildoune. In similar stanzas, of French origin as usual, the whole romance is told. Throughout "Tomas" is mentioned as the source of the story—"as Tomas hath us taught".
There are fragments of an earlier French romance in which Tomas is also quoted as the source, and an early German version, by Godfrey of Strasbourg refers to Thomas of Britanie.
Scott was well aware that the story of Tristram was popular in France long before the time of Thomas of Ercildoune, but he liked to believe that Thomas collected Celtic traditions of Tristram from the people of Leaderdale and Tweeddale, though they, by 1220-1290, were English in blood and speech.
In the romance, Tristram is peerless in music, chess-playing, the fine art of hunting, and of cutting up the deer; and his main virtue is constancy to Iseult, wife of his uncle, King Mark. This unfortunate prince is not the crafty avenger of his own wrongs, as in Malory\'s "Morte d\'Arthur," but a guileless, good-natured being, constantly and ludicrously deceived. Iseult is treacherous and cruel, but everything is forgiven to her, and, as the manuscript, is defective, we do not know how the poet handled the close of[Pg 64] the tale, the episode of the other Iseult "of the white hands". Scott finished the tale in the metre and language of the original. Tristram is dying in Brittany, only Iseult of Cornwall can heal him, as only ?none could heal Paris. Tristram sends for her, the vessel is to carry white sails if it bears her; black, if it does not. The idea is from the Greek saga of Theseus. The second Iseult, wife of Tristram, falsely reports that the sails of the vessel are black. Tristram dies, and Iseult of Cornwall falls dead when she beholds him.
Swiche lovers als thei
Neer shall be moe,"
concludes Sir Walter.
Havelok.
In "Havelok" we naturally expect, thinking of our historical hero Havelock, to find a true English romance. The scene is partly in England, the tale is of a Danish king\'s son kept out of his own by one of the most fearsome guardians of romance (who chops up the hero\'s little sisters), is saved by the thrall Grim, who was ordered to murder him, and, after adventures as a kitchen lad, marries an English princess who is in the hands of another usurper. The story is truly English in sentiment and style. The poet curses Godard, the murderous oppressor of Havelok, in a thoroughly satisfactory fashion. The noble birth of the hero is recognized by the "battle-flame" of the ancient Irish romances; the flame with which Athene crowns Achilles in Homer shines round Havelok. This light warns Grim not to drown Havelok, and teaches the oppressed lady whom he wins that her wooer is no kitchen-knave but a prince in disguise. The story has abundance of spirit, and may be read with more pleasure than the romance of the perfidies of Iseult. It is written in no affected and entangled rhymes, but in rhyming couplets.
King Horn.
In "King Horn" we have a novel that must have been reckoned most satisfactory. The course of true love is interrupted by accidents which caused the utmost anxiety to the[Pg 65] readers, who probably looked at the end to see "if she got him". "He" was Prince Horn, son of Murry, King of Saddene; the realm is "by west," and is invaded by Saracens. They spare Horn, for his beauty\'s sake, but launch him in a boat with his friends, Athulf and Fikenhild; his land they overrun, and disestablish the Church, being themselves professors of the Moslem religion. Horn drifts to the shore of the realm of Westerness, under King Aylmar. Here the king\'s daughter Rymenhild, falls in love with Horn, but cannot have an opportunity of declaring her passion. In the romances the lady, as a rule, begins the wooing. By Athelbrus, the steward, Athulf is brought to her bower, apparently in the dark, for she addresses him as Horn.
"Horn" quoth she, "well long
I have thee loved strong."
Athulf undeceives her; Horn is brought, in the absence of King Aylmar: Rymenhild again speaks the secret of her heart, and when Horn alludes to their unequal ranks, she faints away—one of the earliest faints executed by any heroine in English fiction. Horn kisses her into consciousness, and she devises that he shall be knighted. The king consents, giving him a ring which secures him from "dread of dunts," sends him to win glory. Horn at once kills a hundred Saracens. But Fikenhild, his false friend, finds Horn consoling Rymenhild for a dream of a great fish that burst her landing net. Fikenhild, in jealousy, warns King Aylmar, who discovers Horn and his daughter embracing. Horn is exiled, and bids Rymenhild wait seven years, and then marry if she will. Like the daughter of "that Turk," in "The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman," she "takes a vow and keeps it............