tion>Matilda Betham
The Lay of Marie and Vignettes in Verse
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066149123
Table of Contents
PREFACE
As there is little, in all I have been able to collect respecting MARIE, which has any thing to do with the Poem, I have chosen to place such information at the end of the book, in form of an Appendix, rather than here; where the only things necessary to state are, that she was an Anglo-Norman Minstrel of the thirteenth century; and as she lived at the time of our losing Normandy, I have connected her history with that event: that the young king who sees her in his progress through his foreign possessions is our Henry III.; and the Earl William who steps forward to speak in her favour is William Longsword, brother to Richard Coeur de Lion. Perhaps there is no record of minstrels being called upon to sing at a feast in celebration of a victory which involves their own greatest possible misfortune; but such an incident is not of improbable occurrence. It is likely, also, that a woman, said to be more learned, accomplished, and pleasing, than was usually the case with those of her profession, might have a father, who, with the ardour, the disobedience, the remorse of his heroic master, had been, like him, a crusader and a captive; and in the after solitude of self-inflicted penitence, full of romantic and mournful recollections, fostered in the mind of his daughter, by nature embued with a portion of his own impassioned feelings, every tendency to that wild and poetical turn of thought which qualified her for a minstrel; and, after his death, induced her to become one.
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The union of European and Eastern beauty, in the person of Marie, I have attempted to describe as lovely as possible. The consciousness of noble birth, of injurious depression, and the result of that education which absorbed the whole glowing mind of a highly gifted parent, a mind rich with adventures, with enthusiasm and tenderness, ought to be pourtrayed in her deportment; while the elegance and delicacy which more particularly distinguish the gentlewoman, would naturally be imbibed from a constant early association with a model of what the chivalrous spirit of the age could form, with all its perfections and its faults; in a situation, too, calculated still more to refine such a character; especially with one who was the centre of his affections and regrets, and whom he was so soon to leave unprotected. That, possessing all these advantages, notwithstanding her low station, she should be beloved by, and, on the discovery of her birth, married to a young nobleman, whose high favour with his sovereign would lead him to hope such an offence against the then royal prerogative of directing choice would be deemed a venial one, is, I should think, an admissible supposition.
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That a woman would not be able to sing under such afflicting circumstances might be objected; but history shews us, scarcely any exertion of fortitude or despair is too great to be looked for in that total deprivation of all worldly interest consequent to such misfortunes. Whether that train of melancholy ideas which her own fate suggests is sufficiently removed from narration to be natural, or not near it enough to be clear, the judgment of others must determine. No wish or determination to have it one way or another, in sentiment, stile, or story, influenced its composition; though, occasionally, lines previously written are interwoven; and, in one instance, a few that have been published.
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Her Twelve Lays are added in a second Appendix, as curious in themselves, and illustrative of the manners and morals of an age when they formed the amusement of the better orders.
THE LAY OF MARIE.
CANTO FIRST.
The guests are met, the feast is near,
But Marie does not yet appear!
And to her vacant seat on high
Is lifted many an anxious eye.
The splendid show, the sumptuous board,
The long details which feuds afford,
And discontent is prone to hold,
Absorb the factious and the cold;—
Absorb dull minds, who, in despair,
The standard grasp of worldly care,
Which none can quit who once adore—
They love, confide, and hope no more;
Seek not for truth, nor e'er aspire
To nurse that immaterial fire,
From whose most healthful warmth proceed
