Aucassin and Nicolete

Translated by Andrew Lang
INTRODUCTION

There is nothing in artisticpoetry quite akin to "Aucassin and
Nicolete."

By a rare piece of good fortune the one manuscript of the Song-Story
has escaped those waves of time, which have wrecked the bark of

Menander, and left of Sappho but a few floating fragments. The very
form of the tale is peculiar; we have nothing else from the twelfth

or thirteenth century in the alternate prose and verse of the cante-
fable. {1} We have fabliaux in verse, and prose Arthurian romances.

We have Chansons de Geste, heroic poems like "Roland," unrhymed
assonant laisses, but we have not the alternations of prose with

laisses in seven-syllabled lines. It cannot be certainly known
whether the form of "Aucassin and Nicolete" was a familiar form--

used by many jogleors, or wandering minstrels and story-tellers such
as Nicolete, in the tale, feigned herself to be,--or whether this is

a solitary experiment by "the old captive" its author, a
contemporary, as M. Gaston Paris thinks him, of Louis VII (1130).

He was original enough to have invented, or adopted from popular
tradition, a form for himself; his originality declares itself

everywhere in his one surviving masterpiece. True, he uses certain
traditional formulae, that have survived in his time, as they

survived in Homer's, from the manner of purely popular poetry, of
Volkslieder. Thus he repeats snatches of conversation always in the

same, or very nearly the same words. He has a stereotyped form,
like Homer, for saying that one person addressed another, "ains

traist au visconte de la vile si l'apela" [Greek text which cannot
be reproduced] . . . Like Homer, and like popular song, he deals in

recurrent epithets, and changeless courtesies. To Aucassin the
hideous plough-man is "Biax frere," "fair brother," just as the

treacherous Aegisthus is [Greek text] in Homer; these are
complimentary terms, with no moral sense in particular. The jogleor

is not more curious than Homer, or than the poets of the old
ballads, about giving novel descriptions of his characters. As

Homer's ladies are "fair-tressed," so Nicolete and Aucassin have,
each of them, close yellow curls, eyes of vair (whatever that may

mean), and red lips. War cannot be mentioned except as war "where
knights do smite and are smitten," and so forth. The author is

absolutely conventional in such matters, according to the convention
of his age and profession.

Nor is his matter more original. He tells a story of thwarted and
finally fortunate love, and his hero is "a Christened knight"--like

Tamlane,--his heroine a Paynim lady. To be sure, Nicolete was
baptized before the tale begins, and it is she who is a captive

among Christians, not her lover, as usual, who is a captive among
Saracens. The author has reversed the common arrangement, and he

appears to have cared little more than his reckless hero, about
creeds and differences of faith. He is not much interested in the

recognition of Nicolete by her great Paynim kindred, nor indeed in
any of the "business" of the narrative, the fighting, the storms and

tempests, and the burlesque of the kingdom of Torelore.
What the nameless author does care for, is his telling of the love-

story, the passion of Aucassin and Nicolete. His originality lies
in his charming medley of sentiment and humour, of a smiling

compassion and sympathy with a touch of mocking mirth. The love of
Aucassin and Nicolete -

"Des grans paines qu'il soufri,"
that is the one thing serious to him in the whole matter, and that

is not so very serious. {2} The story-teller is no Mimnermus, Love
and Youth are the best things he knew,--"deport du viel caitif,"--

and now he has "come to forty years," and now they are with him no
longer. But he does not lament like Mimnermus, like Alcman, like

Llwyarch Hen. "What is Life, what is delight without golden
Aphrodite? May I die!" says Mimnermus, "when I am no more

conversant with these, with secret love, and gracious gifts, and the
bed of desire." And Alcman, when his limbs waver beneath him, is

only saddened by the faces and voices of girls, and would change his
lot for the sea-birds." {3}

"Maidens with voices like honey for sweetness that breathe desire,
Would that I were a sea-bird with limbs that never could tire,

Over the foam-flowers flying with halcyons ever on wing,
Keeping a careless heart, a sea-blue bird of the spring."

But our old captive, having said farewell to love, has yet a kindly
smiling interest in its fever and folly. Nothing better has he met,

even now that he knows "a lad is an ass." He tells a love story, a
story of love overmastering, without conscience or care of aught but

the beloved. And the viel caitif tells it with sympathy, and with a
smile. "Oh folly of fondness," he seems to cry, "oh merry days of

desolation"
"When I was young as you are young,

When lutes were touched and songs were sung,
And love lamps in the windows hung."

It is the very tone of Thackeray, when Thackeray is tender, and the
world heard it first from this elderly, namelessminstrel, strolling

with his viol and his singing boys, perhaps, like a blameless
d'Assoucy, from castle to castle in "the happy poplar land." One

seems to see him and hear him in the twilight, in the court of some
chateau of Picardy, while the ladies on silken cushions sit around

him listening, and their lovers, fettered with silver chains, lie at
their feet. They listen, and look, and do not think of the minstrel

with his grey head and his green heart, but we think of him. It is
an old man's work, and a weary man's work. You can easily tell the

places where he has lingered, and been pleased as he wrote. They
are marked, like the bower Nicolete built, with flowers and broken

branches wet with dew. Such a passage is the description of
Nicolete at her window, in the strangely painted chamber,

"ki faite est par grant devisse
panturee a miramie."

Thence
"she saw the roses blow,

Heard the birds sing loud and low."
Again, the minstrel speaks out what many must have thought, in those

incredulous ages of Faith, about Heaven and Hell, Hell where the
gallant company makes up for everything. When he comes to a battle-

piece he makes Aucassin "mightily and knightly hurl through the
press," like one of Malory's men. His hero must be a man of his

hands, no mere sighing youth incapable of arms. But the minstrels
heart is in other things, for example, in the verses where Aucassin

transfers to Beauty the wonder-working powers of Holiness, and makes
the sight of his lady heal the palmer, as the shadow of the Apostle,

falling on the sick people, healed them by the Gate Beautiful. The
Flight of Nicolete is a familiar and beautiful picture, the daisy

flowers look black in the ivory moonlight against her feet, fair as
Bombyca's "feet of carven ivory" in the Sicilian idyll, long ago.

{4} It is characteristic of the poet that the two lovers begin to
wrangle about which loves best, in the very mouth of danger, while

Aucassin is yet in prison, and the patrol go down the moonlit
street, with swords in their hands, sworn to slay Nicolete. That is

the place and time chosen for this ancient controversy. Aucassin's
threat that if he loses Nicolete he will not wait for sword or

knife, but will dash his head against a wall, is in the very temper
of the prisoned warrior-poet, who actually chose this way of death.

Then the night scene, with its fantasy, and shadow, and moonlight on