Marie de France

Marie de France, a poetess of whom but little is known with any degree of certainty, save that she lived in England under Henry III., and translated into French from an English version of a Latin translation of the Greek the Ysopet, a collection of 103 moralised fables, in octosyllabic couplets, 'for the love of Count William' (supposed to be William Longsword of Salisbury). These fables are natural and happy, as well as graceful in versification, and give their authoress a place in that line of descent which ended with La Fontaine. But her greatest work was the twelve (or fourteen) Lais, delightful and genuinely poetic narrative poems, mostly amatory in character, in octosyllabic verse, the longest nearly twelve hundred lines, the shortest just over a hundred. The word Lai is of Breton origin, and most probably referred originally to the style of music with which the harper accompanied his verse. The titles of Marie's lais are Guigemar, Equitan, Le Fraïsse, Bisclavret, Lanval, Les Dous Amanz, Yonec, Laustic, Milun, Chaitivel, Chievrefoil, Eliduc; and to these most add Graalent and L'Espine. Of the lais the best edition is that of Karl Warnke (Halle, 1885), forming vol. iii. of Suchier's Bibliotheca Normannica, enriched with invaluable comparative notes by Reinhold Köhler. They were paraphrased rather than translated by the late Mr O'Shanghnessy as Lays of France (1872). A third work sometimes ascribed to Marie is a poem of 2300 verses on the purgatory of St Patrick. The best edition of the lays and fables together is that of Roquefort (2 vols. 1820).