The twelve lais of Marie de France describe a world that blends several traditions of the Middle Ages. The poems themselves are written in Old French, of the Anglo-Norman variety, and were probably recited aloud or sung at the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. There is also a strong Southern influence to them, drawn from the traditions of courtly love that grace the Occitan songs of the troubadours.

At the same time, the source material is largely from Breton and Welsh mythology, as the place names (such as Caerwent, or the designation of England as “Loegre” from the Welsh toponym Lloegr for the same) or the names of the characters (Yonec, or Austic, which is Breton for “nightingale”). There are lovers from the fairy realms, and werewolves, and magical worlds that one can only access by entering a cave in a hill. The reader is also presented a tale that comes from the court of Arthur (the story of Lanval), and the magical isle of Avalon is mentioned. The first story involves an enchanted boat with no crew that transports the two lovers across the English Channel between Wales and Brittany, and a later story has a knight who turns into a hawk.

There is a simplicity and even at times a naïveté to the twelve stories. The Middle Ages do not appear to have been filled with intrigue along the lines of Game of Thrones if the lais reflect the thinking of the time. There is a strong sense of chivalry (especially in Milun, where a knight and his son joust against one another without knowing their respective identities), and the villains in the stories are not very good at hiding their feelings or their motives. Usually, their villainy consists of locking away a beautiful young wife, usually in a tower, and jealously guarding her. This theme is repeated in many of the stories (Guigemar, Yonec, Austic, Milun and, if one counts an overprotective father, Les Dous Amanz).

The Old French is wonderful to read, and at times, quite funny. For example, lines 315-319 of Lanval read as follows:

Es chambres la reïne entra.
Quant el le vit, si se clama,
as piez li chiet, merci li crie
e dit que Lanval l’a hunie;

The queen entered the room.
When she saw him, she cried out greatly,
She fell to his feet and cried for pity
and said that Lanval had insulted her.*

The verb cheir or cheoir means “to fall”, but as piez li chiet still sounds more like “she shat at his feet” rather than “she fell to his feet”. Based on the fact that the modern French chez appears as chiés, it becomes clear that a Latin initial ca- mutated to chi, as cacare, cadere and casae begin to sound similar.

Similarly, at lines 57-58 of Les Dous Amanz, the text reads:

El païs ot un damisel
fiz a un cunte, gent e bel.

In the country there was a young lad
The son of a count, courteous and handsome.

Sure, there’s nothing wrong with the text, but like a twelve-year-old, every time I see “cunte” in print I still laugh. It appears without the –e in some places as “I tell”, too. Of course, in terms of actual profanity, Eliduc, the last poem, contains the epithet fiz a putain (line 843).

Although at times funny, the Old French is also filled with archaic words that convey very specific meanings, like dru, which means “thick” (a meaning it retained in modern French), but which also has a separate meaning in Old French, that of affection, so that duner druerie meant, essentially, to make gifts of love. There are other interesting archaic words, like Damedeu, which means “God” and is an Old French rendering of the Latin vocative Domine Deus. There are also words that mean one thing in modern French and another in Old French, like choisir, which means “to choose” in modern French but means “to see, perceive” in Old French. Finally, there are words that probably have led people to confusion through their continuing use in English, such as veir or voir, which means “true” or “truly”, and is used in the legal expression voir dire (to speak truthfully), but has nothing to do with the modern French voir, “to see”, which was veeir in Old French.

As a result, while the stories were themselves a bit simplistic, there were plenty of reasons to enjoy the actual act of reading them. They provided a window into a world that has been gone for almost a thousand years, written in the actual words that would have been spoken at the court of Henry II, based on legends and stories that were even older, mixing traditions from all parts of Western Europe. I guess one could call the works “fantasy”, but the author (about whom we know almost nothing) repeats in every story phrases like la verité vus en dirrai, la verité mun escient or dit vus en ai la verité , so she is at least purporting to pass the stories off as truthful.

Anyone who enjoys medieval literature will probably like these poems, whether in some form of translation or adaptation or in the original Old French, which is remarkably easy to read for anyone who knows modern French and spends a couple of hours learning the differences between Old French and modern French. I suspect that fans of Arthurian legend would also be interested in Lanval in particular because it mentions Arthur and Avalon.

• NOTE: The translations are my own rough approximations and I acknowledge that the tenses are all harmonized, whereas in the original they are varied. Old French verse abounds with the “dramatic present” for past events, and has no problem with tense changes mid-sentence.