OF SIX MEDIAEVAL WOMEN 



or perhaps in but one tower of it, whilst her 

 lord went forth to the chase or to war, his 

 home-coming meaning merely the wine-cup 

 and war-songs, or tedious epic. Many a one 

 must have read or listened to Marie's love idylls, 

 and longed, and perhaps even hoped, as in the story 

 of" Yonec," that a fair and gentle knight, in the 

 form of some beautiful bird, might fly in at her 

 window and bring her some diversion from the 

 outside world. With nothing before us but her 

 own poems and the scant recognition of Denys 

 Pyramus, she seems like some old portrait in 

 which the delicate pigments that once glowed in 

 the face and made it live have, owing to their 

 very delicacy, long since faded away, leaving 

 behind only the stronger and less volatile colours 

 of the dark background from which we in vain 

 try to wrest more than one or two fragments of 

 the secret it holds. 



Judging from internal evidence, it would seem 

 that Marie was born in Normandy, about the 

 middle of the twelfth century, but settled in 

 England, where since the Conquest, and indeed 

 since the time of Edward the Confessor, many 

 Norman families had made their home. Not only 

 does she make occasional use of English words, 

 and translate from English into French the fables 

 known as ^Esop's, but in the prologue to her 

 Lays, which she dedicates to " the noble King/' 

 generally considered to be Henry the Second, 

 she expresses fear lest her work should not find 

 favour in a foreign land. In this prologue she 



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