OF SIX MEDIÆVAL WOMEN
since they are perhaps among the first stories, given literary form, which tell of love "for love's sake only,"—love unqualified and unquestioning. They form, perhaps, the only collection of lays now extant, and it is to them, therefore, that we must turn to get some idea of the style of narration that gradually replaced the taste for the epic as Norman influence grew and spread in England. Beside the sensualism of the Chansons de Geste, the sentiment expressed in them may seem naïve; beside the gallantry of the Provençal poetry, it may seem primitive; but nevertheless it is, in its very simplicity, the profoundest note that can be struck in this world of men and women. Marie makes no pretence to originality, but even if she did not possess the supreme gift of creating beauty, she at least possessed the lesser gift of perceiving it where it existed and of making it her own, and her stories glow with colour, and enchant by their simple yet dramatic appeal to the imagination. She declares that The Lays were made "for remembrance" by "Le ancien Bretun curteis," and that "Folks tell them to the harp and the rote, and the music is sweet to hear." Doubtless it was this sweet music which both soothed and thrilled even before the words were understood, for on sad and festive days alike, the sweet lays of Brittany were always to be heard.
La reine chante doucement,
La voiz acorde a l'estrument:
Les mains sont belles, li lais bons,
Douce la voiz et bas li tons.
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