ame sense of
delight as do delicate ivories or dainty embroidery. Sometimes, it is
true, she scarcely, despite all this outward charm, seems to touch the
world of fact. Yet in this ideal atmosphere which she so essentially
made her own, she contrives to convey such a sense of reality, that
for the moment we are wholly possessed by it and carried away, without
questioning, into her fairyland. And a beautiful fairyland it is,
where love triumphs for the most part, not in heedless ecstasy along
flower-bestrewn ways, but through self-sacrifice and suffering
mutually accepted and mutually endured. Listen to the words spoken to
the knight Guigemar, wounded by a chance arrow as he rides through a
wood. "Never shalt thou be healed of thy wound, not even by herb, or
root, or leach, or potion, until thou art healed by her who, for love
of thee, shall suffer such great pain and sorrow as never woman has
suffered before: and thou shalt bear as much for her." Equality in
love! Such is the vital note struck amid the artificial and
soul-enfeebling atmosphere of mediaeval love-poetry! This is the note
which Marie set ringing down the centuries whilst her manuscripts lay
unused on library shelves. This is Marie's gift to the world, and this
it is that gives her stories immortality. Not only do they possess
this immortality in themselves, but they have also been immortalised
by poets and writers both in days long past and in those more within
our ken. All who know her stories will recall Chaucer's indebtedness
to incidents and descriptions in them, and coming to our own time, we
find Sir Walter Scott taking his ballad of "Lord Thomas and Fair
Annie" from the lay of "The Ash Tree," although it is possible, as has
been suggested,[12] that his ballad may have been founded on some
Scotch folk-song having a common origin with Marie's lay. When her
lays were first published in Germany in 1820, Goethe wrote thus: "The
mist of years that mysteriously envelops Marie de France makes her
poems more exquisite and precious to us." Yes, it is this
all-pervading mystery which, though so tantalising, is yet so
attractive. It is in vain that, in studying them, we try to penetrate
somewhat beyond our normal atmosphere, for we only find ourselves lost
in vague possibilities and hazy distances. Brittany has kept her
secret concerning such of these lays as were hers just as jealously as
she has kept her secret of the long avenues of great lichened stones
whi