Transcribed from the 1908 Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner& Co. edition ,
TRANSLATED FROM THE OLD FRENCH
by
FRANCIS WILLIAM BOURDILLON
LONDON
kegan paul, trench, trübner& co. ltd.
drydenhouse, gerrard street, w.
1908
The story of Love, that simple theme with variations adlibitum, ad infinitum, is never old, never stale,never out-of-date. And as we sometimes seek rest from thebrilliant audacities and complex passions of Wagner orTschaikowsky in the tender simplicity of some ancient Englishair, so we occasionally turn with relief from the wit and insightand subtlety of our modern novelists to the old uncomplicatedtales of faerie or romance, and find them after all more moving,more tender, even more real, than all the laboured realism ofthese photographic days. And here before us is of allpretty love-stories perhaps the prettiest. Idyllic asDaphnis and Chloe, romantic as Romeo and Juliet, tender asUndine, remote as Cupid and Psyche, yet with perpetual p. 8touchesof actual life, and words that raise pictures; and lightened allthrough with a dainty playfulness, as if Ariel himself hadhovered near all the time of its writing, and Puck now and againshot a whisper of suggestion.
Yet it is only of late years that the charm of this story hasbeen truly appreciated. Composed probably in NorthernFrance, about the close of the twelfth century,—the time ofour own Angevin kings and the most brilliant period of Old-Frenchliterature,—it has survived only in a single manuscript oflater date, where it is found hidden among a number of tales inverse less pleasing in subject and far less delightful inform. There it had lain unknown till discovered by M. deSainte-Palaye, and printed by him in modernised French in 1752,one hundred and fifty years ago. There is no space here tofollow its fortunes since. Even after this revival it wasnot till more than one hundred years later that it began toattain to any wide recognition. And in England thisrecognition p. 9has been mainly due to MrPater’s delightful essay in his early work “Studiesin the History of the Renaissance.” Since thepublication of this book in 1873, the story of Aucassin andNicolette has had an ever-growing train of admirers both inEngland and America, and various translations have appeared onboth sides of the Atlantic. It has also been translatedinto several other European languages, besides versions in modernFrench.
The story, so far as the simple old-world plot is concerned,is very probably not the original invention of whoever gave itthis particular form, any more than were the plots ofShakespeare’s plays of his own devising. It seemslikely that in origin it is Arabian or Moorish, and itsbirthplace not Provence but Spain. Possibly it sprung, asso much of the best poetry and story has sprung, from thetouching of two races, and the part friction part fusion of tworeligions, in this case of the Moor and the Christian. There was in 1019 a Moorish king of Cordova named Alcazin. Turn this name p. 10into French and we haveAucassi