“Et je fais sçavoir à tous lecteurs de ce Livret que les choses que je dis avoir vues et sues sont enregistrés icy, afin que vous pouviez les regarder selon vostre bon sens, s’il vous plaist.” HERE IS APPENDED THE EPILOGUE THAT MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN AFFIXED TO THE BOOK WHICH HE HAD MADE ACCORDING TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY; AND WHICH (IN CONSEQUENCE) HE DARED NOT APPRAISE.
 
The Epilogue
 
A Son Livret
 
Intrepidly depart, my little book, into the presence of that most illustrious lady who bade me compile you. Bow down before her judgment. And if her sentence be that of a fiery death, I counsel you not to grieve at what cannot be avoided.
 
But, if by any miracle that glorious, strong fortress of the weak consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pass thence, my little book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live out your little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your appointed season perish and be forgotten. Thus may you share your betters’ fate, and be at one with those famed comedies of Greek Menander and all the poignant songs of Sappho. Et quid Pandoniae—thus, little book, I charge you to poultice your more-merited oblivion—quid Pandoniae restat nisi nomen Athenae?
 
Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with those who will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and protest assertions which are only fables. To these you will reply that I, your maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of the most high and noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at and about her house of Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person with Dame Katharine, then happily remarried to a private gentleman of Wales; and so obtained the matter of the ninth story and of the tenth authentically. You will say also that Messire de Montbrison afforded me the main matter of the sixth and seventh stories, and many of the songs which this book contains; and that, moreover, I once journeyed to Caer Idion and talked for some two hours with Richard Holland (whom I found a very old and garrulous and cheery person), and got of him the matter of the eighth tale in this dizain, together with much information as concerns the sixth and the seventh. And you will add that the matter of the fourth and fifth tales was in every detail related to me by my most illustrious mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this information from her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady, and one that was in youth Dame Philippa’s most dear associate. For the rest you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book to be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say) even in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me.
 
I have pieced together these tales about the women who intermarried, not very enviably, with the demon-tainted blood of Edward Longshanks, because it seems to me that these tales, when they are rightly considered, compose the initial portion of............