all manner of indignity and insult, which he bears with the patient and resourceful courtesy, his characteristic in mediæval romance. Whilst the time of probation lasts, no harsh word, no impatient gesture, escapes him. But when he has accomplished the feat of the Ford Perillous he feels that he has done enough, and taking his lady-love to task he lectures her, as a grave middle-aged man might some headstrong girl, upon the duties of a well-bred woman and upon the wrong she has done knighthood in his person. To point the moral he winds up, at mid-day in the open forest, with a proposition which the repentant scornful one can only parry by the naïve remark, "Seldom she had found it warm in the embrace of a mail-clad arm." Not only was it the lady's duty to yield after a proper delay, but at times she might even make the first advances and be none the worse thought of. Blanchefleur comes to Perceval's bed with scarce an apology.[1] Orgueilleuse, overcome with admiration at the Red Knight's prowess, offers him her love. True, she has doubts as to the propriety of her conduct, but when she submits them to Gawain, the favoured lover for the time being, he unhesitatingly approves her—Perceval's fame was such that had he accepted her proffered love she could have suffered naught in honour.
Customs such as these, and a state of feelings such as they imply, are so remote from us, that it is difficult to realise them, particularly in view of the many false statements respecting the nature of chivalrous love which have obtained currency. But we must bear in mind that the age was pre-eminently one of individual prowess. The warlike virtues were all in all. That a man should be brave, hardy, and skilful in the use of his weapons was the
- ↑ The greater delicacy of the Welsh tale has already been noted. "To make him such a offer before I am wooed by him, that, truly, can I not do," says the counterpart of Blanchefleur in the Mabinogi. "Go my sister and sleep," answers Peredur, "nor will I depart from thee until I do that which thou requirest." I cannot help looking upon the prominence which the Welsh story-teller has given to this scene as his protest against the strange and to him repulsive ways of knightly love. The older, mythic nature of Peredur's beloved, who might woo without forfeiting womanly modesty, in virtue of her goddesshood, had died away in the narrator's mind, the new ideal of courtly passion had not won acceptance from him.
