On the Origin

Of the Romance Literature

OF THE XII. AND XIII. CENTURIES.

CHIEFLY WITH A REFERENCE TO ITS MYTHOLOGY.

Coloures of rhetorike ben to me quaynte;
My spirit feleth not of such matere
This ys my tale; yf ye wol yt here."

Chaucer-The Frankelyn's Prologue.

"In short, he became so infatuated with this kind of study, that he passed whole days and nights over these books; and thus, with little sleeping and much reading, his brains were dried up and his intellect deranged. His imagination was full of all that he had read; of enchantments, contests, battles, challenges, wounds, tortures, and impossible absurdities, and so firmly was he persuaded of the truth of the whole tissue of visionary fiction, that, in his mind, no history in the world was more authentic."-Don Quixote de la Mancha.

CHAPTER I.

POETICAL FEELING OF THE EUROPEAN NATIONS.

66

"Imagination, not permitted here

To waste her powers, as in the worldling's mind,

On fickle pleasures, and superfluous cares

And trivial ostentation-is left free

And puissant to range the solemn walks

Of time and nature, girded by a zone

That, while it binds, invigorates and supports."

Despondency Corrected.

IN examining into the causes which led to the rise of a new and beautiful literature in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it is obvious that we must direct our attention more to the actual Spirit of Poetry amongst the nations of Northern and Western Europe, than to the few remains of rude verse which have been preserved to us. The Romances of Chivalry, with all their throngs of "knights and barons bold," their princes and paladins, yet every here and there point as strongly to their origin in the age of the sea kings, as does the Voluspa, or the Death song of King Haco; and it would indeed be difficult to believe that a period so wild and so stirring, when

The warriors of the world went forth

To seek another land".

when the North Seas were covered with the fleets of these "dark riders of the wave,"-men too, who, followers of the most poetic system of mythology which the world has ever seen, beheld in the storms which swept the sea the actual presence of the evil beings who had their habitation in the depths of the ocean-who heard the voice of their gods in the wild wailing of the wind and the roar of the thunder—and who peopled every mountain and wood and glen with strange and aërial inhabitants—it would indeed be remarkable, if such an era should have past away and left no traces on the literature of succeeding ages. Their deeply mysterious rites and symbolic ceremonies, their wild and gloomy superstitions, spread with their race over almost all Europe, and the Goth looked forth on the “living gold" of the Mediterranean, on the ravines of the Alpuxarras, and the vega of Granada, with the same feelings as his remote brethren who retained their ancient seats beneath the pine forests of Scandinavia. The dream of the Lady Alda

“Oh I was upon a mountain, in a bare and desert place,
And I saw a mighty eagle, and a faulcon he did chase,
And to me the faulcon came, and I hid it in my breast,
But the mighty bird pursuing, came and rent away my vest;
And he scattered all the feathers—and blood was on his beak,
And ever as he tore and tore, I heard the faulcon shriek—
Now read my vision damsels—now read my dream to me,
For my heart may well be heavy that doleful sight to see”.

is but a repetition of the magnificent old Gothic ballad of Sir Aldingar

My gorget and my kirtle of gold,

And all my fair head gear

And that he worried me with his beak

And would to his nest Y beare."

So it was in all those symbolic ceremonies which took place during the administration of justice, or the election of magistrates. The adalid of King Alonzo the Wise was to be raised on a shield by twelve others, and whilst his face was turned to the east, he drew the "sweet and holy sign" in the air with his drawn sword, exclaiming, "In the name of God, I defy all the enemies of the faith, and of my lord the King, and of this land;" and amid the clashing of buckles and the shouting of the tribes, the ancient Norwegian chief was lifted on the dark blue shield in the plain of Mora. When the shine mote was to be convened, the summoning symbol was borne by the weary husbandman from dwelling to dwelling, over moor and wild-the hieroglyphical token was varied in its form according to the intent. An arrow called the people to sit in judgment upon the murderer, or told them the land was herried by the enemy. War was signified by the fiery cross of the Gael: but in Scandinavia the cross indicated that the precepts of the Church had been violated, and that the transgressors against the "Christendom's bolkr" were to appear before the court. These most ancient principles of symbolism acquired a new and peculiar influence on the spread of Christianity. Sacchi defines the symbolic art of the early Christians as a sort of mystic science understood by the initiate alone. It was divided into hermetic and orphic-the first referring to the plan and shape of the church, the number of angles and faces it presented; and the second, or orphic, consisting in the ornaments or other accessories regulating the colour and quantity of the materials employed, the disposition of the cyphers and