ch make Carnac look like the burial-place of some giant host.
Marie's lays are stories of deep meaning, which each reader must
interpret for himself.

[12] Warnke. _Die lais der Marie de France_, p. lxiii.

It is impossible to do more here than just touch upon Marie's ideal
conception of love, for to realise it fully it is necessary to read
the stories themselves.[13] Allusion has been made to the wounded
knight in the "Lay of Guigemar," who can only be healed through mutual
love sanctified by mutual suffering. In the lay of "The Ash Tree" a
maiden of noble birth, abandoned in infancy and brought up in a
convent, is loved by a lord, and returns his love, and goes with him
to his castle. After a time the knights who owe him fealty complain
that as through his love for his mistress he has neither wife nor
child, he does them wrong, and protest that if he does not wed some
noble lady, they will no longer serve him or hold him for lord. The
knight has to yield to their demands and to consent to accept in
marriage the daughter of a neighbouring noble who had made it known
that he desired him for son-in-law. Neither lover utters any complaint
or reproach, and the needful sacrifice is about to be made. But
fortune, sometimes kind, intervenes ere it is too late, and reveals
the noble birth of the loved one. The knight weds her with great joy,
and to complete this happy picture we read that the other lady
returned with her parents to her own domain, and was there well
bestowed in marriage.

[13] Marie de France, _Seven of her Lays_, trans. E. Rickert,
1901; Warnke, _Die lais der Marie de France_, Halle, 1885;
Hertz, _Spielmannsbuch_, 1905.

This idea of mutual sympathy and sacrifice gives meaning also to the
lay of "The Two Lovers," and to that of "Yonec," but perhaps it is
most simply, yet forcibly, summed up in the lay of "The Honeysuckle,"
an episode taken from the Tristan story. Tristan, hearing that Isolde
is to ride through a certain wood on her way to Tintagel to attend the
Pentecostal Court held by the King, hides in the wood. Here he cuts a
branch of hazel round which honeysuckle has twined, and carving his
name and certain letters on it, he lays it in the way by which the
Queen must pass, knowing that she will recognise it as a sign that her
lover is near, since they have met before in suchwise. The import of
the writing is that he has long been waiting to see her, since without
her he cannot live,