ich and bataild stout;
The butrass come out of the diche,
Of rede gold y-arched riche;
The bousour was anowed al,
Of ich maner deuers animal;
Within ther wer wide wones
Al of precious stones,
The werss piler onto biholde,
Was al of burnist gold:
Al that loud was ever light,
For when it schuld be therk and night,
The riche stonnes light gonne,
Bright as doth at nonne the sonne
No man may tel, no thenke in thought.
The riche werk that ther was rought.

* * * * *

Than he gan biholde about al,
And seighe ful liggeand with in the wal,
Of folk that wer thidder y-brought,
And thought dede and nere nought;
Sum stode with outen hadde;
And some none armes nade;
And sum thurch the bodi hadde wounde;
And sum lay wode y-bounde;
And sum armed on hors sete;
And sum astrangled as thai ete;
And sum war in water adreynt;
And sum with fire al for schreynt;
Wives ther lay on childe bedde;
Sum dede, and sum awedde;
And wonder fere ther lay besides,
Right as thai slepe her undertides;
Eche was thus in this warld y-nome,
With fairi thider y-come.[A]
There he seize his owhen wiif,
Dame Heurodis, his liif liif,
Slepe under an ympe tree:
Bi her clothes he knewe that it was he,
And when he had bihold this mervalis alle,
He went into the kinges halle;
Then seigh he there a semly sight,
A tabernacle blisseful and bright;
Ther in her maister king sete,
And her quen fair and swete;
Her crounes, her clothes schine so bright,
That unnethe bihold he hem might.
_Orfeo and Heurodis, MS._

[Footnote A: It was perhaps from such a description that Ariosto adopted
his idea of the Lunar Paradise, containing every thing that on earth was
stolen or lost.]

_Orfeo_, as a minstrel, so charms the Fairy King with the music of
his harp, that he promises to grant him whatever he should ask. He
immediately demands his lost _Heurodis_; and, returning safely with
her to Winchester, resumes his authority; a catastrophe, less pathetic
indeed, but more pleasing, than that of the classical story. The
circumstances, mentioned in this romantic legend, correspond very
exactly with popular tradition. Almost all the writers on daemonology
mention, as a received opinion that the power of the daemons is most
predominant at noon and midnight. The entrance to the Land of Faery is
placed in the wilderness; a circumstance, which c