Lay, which I heard sung by the minstrel to the music of his
rote. Marie's part consisted in reshaping this ancient material in her
own rhythmic and coloured words. Scholars tell us that the essence of
her stories is of Celtic rather than of Breton origin. It may be so;
though to the lay mind this is not a matter of great importance one
way or the other; but it seems better to accept a person's definite
statement until it is proved to be false. The Breton or Celtic
imagination had peculiar qualities of dreaminess, and magic and
mystery. Marie's mind was not cast in a precisely similar mould.
Occasionally she is successful enough; but generally she gives the
effect of building with a substance the significance of which she does
not completely realise. She may be likened to a child playing with
symbols which, in the hand of the enchanter, would be of tremendous
import. Her treatment of Isoude, for example, in "The Lay of the
Honeysuckle," is quite perfect in tone, and, indeed, is a little
masterpiece in its own fashion. But her sketch of Guenevere in "The
Lay of Sir Launfal" is of a character that one does not recall with
pleasure. To see how Arthur's Queen might be treated, we have but
to turn to the pages of a contemporary, and learn from Chrestien de
Troyes' "Knight of the Cart," how an even more considerable poet
than Marie could deal with a Celtic legend. The fact is that Marie's
romances derive farther back than any Breton or Celtic dream. They
were so old that they had blown like thistledown about the four
quarters of the world. Her princesses came really neither from Wales
nor Brittany. They were of that stuff from which romance is shaped.
"Her face was bright as the day of union; her hair dark as the night
of separation; and her mouth was magical as Solomon's seal." You can
parallel her "Lays" from folklore, from classical story and antiquity.
Father and son fight together unwittingly in "The Lay of Milon";
but Rustum had striven with Sohrab long before in far Persia, and
Cuchulain with his child in Ireland. Such stories are common property.
The writer takes his own where he finds it. Marie is none the less
admirable because her stories were narrated by the first man in Eden;
neither are Boccaccio and the Countess D'Aulnoy blameworthy since they
told again what she already had related so well. Marie, indeed, was an
admirable narrator. That was one of her shining virtues. As a piece of
artful tale telling, a specim