[694] Leon Gautier, in his Chevalerie, makes the chansons de geste his chief source.

[695] 1006-1016.

[696] 1051 sqq. and 1700 sqq.

[697] 1851-1868.

[698] 1940-2023.

[699] 2164 sqq.

[700] Raoul de Cambrai, cited by Gautier, Chevalerie, p. 75.

[701] Unless indeed Oberon, the fairy king, be a romantic form of the Alberich of the Nibelungen (Gaston Paris).

[702] See Gaston Paris, Lit. française, etc., chaps. iii. and v.; and Émile Littré in vol. 22 of the Histoire littéraire de la France. For examples of these romans, see Langlois, La Société française au XIII^e siècle d’après dix romans d’aventure (2nd ed., Paris, 1904).

[703] Chrétien, Cligés, line 201 sqq.

[704] The Old French from vol. ii. of P. Paris, Romans de la Table Ronde, p. 96. One sees that the coronation is a larger knighting, and kingship a larger knighthood.

[705] Romans de la Table Ronde, iii. 96. This scene closely parallels that between Bernier and Raoul de Cambrai, instanced above.

[706] See the first part of vol. iii. of Romans de la Table Ronde, especially pp. 113-117.

[707] It would be easy to go on drawing illustrations of the actual and imaginative elements in chivalry, until this chapter should grow into an encyclopedia. They could so easily be taken from many kinds of mediaeval literature in all the mediaeval tongues. The French has barely been touched upon. It affords an exhaustless store. Then in the German we might draw upon the courtly epics, Gottfried of Strassburg’s Tristan or the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach; or on the Nibelungenlied, wherein Siegfried is a very knight. Or we might draw upon the knightly precepts (the Ritterlehre) of the Winsbeke and the Winsbekin (printed in Hildebrand’s Didaktik aus der Zeit der Kreuzzüge, Deutsche Nat. Litt.). And we might delve in the great store of Latin Chronicles which relate the mediaeval history of German kings and nobles. In Spanish, there would be the Cid, and how much more besides. In Italian we should have latter-day romantic chivalry; Pulci’s Rotta di Roncisvalle; Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato; Ariosto’s Orlando furioso; still later, Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, which takes us well out of the Middle Ages. And in English there is much Arthurian romance; there is Chevy Chace; and we may come down through Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, to the sunset beauty of Spenser’s Fairie Queen. This glorious poem should serve to fix in our minds the principle that chivalry, knighthood, was not merely a material fact, a ceremony and an institution; but that it also was that ultra-reality, a spirit. And this spirit’s ideal creations—the ideal creations of the many phases of this spirit—accorded with actual deeds which may be read of in the old Chronicles. For final exemplification of the actual and the ideally real in chivalry, the reader may look within himself, and observe the inextricable mingling of the imaginative and the real. He will recognize that what at one time seems part of his imagination, at another will prove itself the veriest reality of his life. Even such wavering verity of spirit was chivalry.

[708] See Gaston Paris in Journal des savants, 1892, pp. 161-163. Of course the English reader cannot but think of the brief secret marriage between Romeo and Juliet.

[709] Marriage or no marriage depends on the plot; but occasionally a certain respect for marriage is shown, as in the Eliduc of Marie de France, and of course far more strongly in Wolfram’s Parzival. In Chrétien’s Ivain the hero marries early in the story; and thereafter his wife acts towards him with the haughty caprice of an amie; Ivain, at her displeasure, goes mad, like an ami. The romans d’aventure afford other instances of this courtly love, sometimes illicit, sometimes looking to marriage. See Langlois, La Société française au XIII^e siècle d’après dix romans d’aventure.

[710] On Provençal poetry see Diez, Poesie der Troubadours (2nd ed. by Bartsch, Leipzig, 1883); id., Leben und Werke der Troubadours; Justin H. Smith, The Troubadours at Home (New York and London, 1899); Ida Farnell, Lives of the Troubadours (London).

[711] Cf. Gaston Paris, t. 30, pp. 1-18, Hist. lit. de la France; Paul Meyer, Romania, v. 257-268; xix. 1-62. “Trouvère” is the Old French word corresponding to Provençal “Troubadour.”

[712] On this work see Gaston Paris, Romania, xii. 524 sqq. (1883); id. in Journal des savants, 1888, pp. 664 sqq. and 727 sqq.; also (for extracts) Raynouard, Choix des poésies des Troubadours, ii. lxxx. sqq.

[713] On origins and sources see, generally, Gaston Paris, Tristan and Iseult (Paris, 1894), reprinted from Revue de Paris of April 15, 1894; W. Golther, Die Sage von Tristan und Isolde (Munich, 1887).

[714] Cf. generally, J. L. Weston, The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac (London, 1901, David Nutt).

[715] See Gaston Paris, Romania, xii. 459-534.

[716] Paulin Paris, Romans de la Table Ronde, iv. 280 sqq.

[717] See Paulin Paris, Romans de la Table Ronde, iv. Guinevere’s woman-mind is shown in the following scene. On an occasion the lovers’ sophisticated friend, the Dame de Malehaut, laughs tauntingly at Lancelot:

“‘Ah! Lancelot, Lancelot, dit-elle, je vois que le roi n’a plus d’autre avantage sur vous que la couronne de Logres!’

“Et comme il ne trouvait rien à répondre de convenable, ‘Ma chère Malehaut, dit la reine, si je suis fille de roi, il est fils de roi; si je suis belle, il est beau; de plus, il est le plus preux des preux. Je n’ai donc pas à rougir de l’avoir choisi pour mon chevalier’” (Paulin Paris, ibid. iv. 58).

[718] Galahad’s mother was Helene, daughter of King Pelles (roi pêcheur), the custodian of the Holy Grail. A love-philter makes Lancelot mistake her for Guinevere; and so the knight’s loyalty to his mistress is saved. The damsel herself was without passion, beyond the wish to bear a son begotten by the best of knights (Romans, etc., v. 308 sqq.).

[719] “For what is he that may yeve a lawe to lovers? Love is a gretter lawe and a strengere to himself than any lawe that men may yeven” (Chaucer, Boece, book iii. metre 12).

[720] As in Chrétien’s Cligés, 6751 sqq., when Cligés is crowned emperor and Fenice becomes his queen, then: De s’amie a feite sa fame—but he still calls her amie et dame, that he may not cease to love her as one should an amie. Cf. also Chrétien’s Erec, 4689.

[721] See also Gawain’s words to Ivain when the latter is married—in Chrétien’s Ivain, 2484 sqq.

[722] As a matter of fact, in those parts of Wolfram’s poem which are covered by Chrétien’s unfinished Perceval le Gallois, the incidents are nearly identical with Chrétien’s. For the question of the relationship of the two poems, and for other versions of the Grail legend, see A. Nutt, Studies in the Legend of the Holy Grail (Folk-Lore Society Publications, London, 1888); Birch-Hirshfeld, Die Graal Sage; Einleitung to Piper’s edition of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Stuttgart, Deutsche Nat. Litteratur; Einleitung to Bartch’s edition in Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1875). These two editions of the poem are furnished with modern German glossaries. There is a modern German version by Zimmrock, and an English translation by Jessie L. Weston (London, D. Nutt, 1894).

[723] In other versions of the Grail legend there is much about the virgin or celibate state, and also plenty of unchastity and no especial esteem for marriage.

[724] The Fisher King (roi pêcheur) was the regular title of the Grail kings. See e.g. Pauline Paris, Romans de la Table Ronde, t. i. p. 306.

[725] E.g. the love-potion in the tale of Tristan.