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says: "he hath achieved a maid That paragons description and wild fame; One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens, And in the essential vesture of creation Does tire the enginer." (27) Ovid ("Metamorphosis", iii. 339-510) is Chretien's authority. (28) Cf. L. Sudre, "Les allusions a la legende de Tristan dans la litterature du moyen age", "Romania", xv. 435 f. Tristan was famed as a hunter, fencer, wrestler, and harpist. (29) "The word `Thessala' was a common one in Latin, as meaning `enchantress', `sorceress', `witch', as Pliny himself tells us, adding that the art of enchantment was not, however, indigenous to Thessaly, but came originally from Persia." ("Natural History", xxx. 2).--D.B. Easter, "Magic Elements in the romans d'aventure and the romans bretons, p. 7. (Baltimore, 1906). A Jeanroy in "Romania", xxxiii. 420 note, says: "Quant au nom de Thessala, il doit venir de Lucain, tres lu dans les ecoles au XIIe siecle." See also G. Paris in "Journal des Savants", 1902, p. 441 note. Thessala is mentioned in the "Roman de la Violetta", v. 514, in company with Brangien of the Tristan legend. (30) Medea, the wife of Jason, is the great sorceress of classic legend. (31) This personage was regarded in the Middle Ages as an Emperor of Rome. In the 13th-century poem of "Octavian" (ed. Vollmuller, Heilbronn, 1883) he is represented as a contemporary of King Dagobert! (32) This commonplace remark is quoted as a proverb of the rustic in "Ipomedon", 1671-72; id., 10, 348-51; "Roman de Mahomet", 1587-88; "Roman de Renart", vi. 85-86; Gower's "Mirour de l'omme", 28, 599, etc. (33) It is curious to note that Corneille puts almost identical words in the mouth of Don Gomes as he addresses the Cid ("Le Cid", ii. 2). (34) For this tournament and its parallels in folk-lore, see Miss J.L. Weston, "The Three Days' Tournament" (London, 1902). She argues (p. 14 f. and p. 43 f.) against Foerster's unqualified opinion of the originality of Chretien in his use of this current description of a tournament, an opinion set forth in his "Einleitung to Lancelot", pp. 43, 126, 128, 138. (35) Note that Chretien here deliberately avoids such a list of knights as he introduces in "Erec". (F.) (36) It must be admitted that the text, which is offered by all but one MS., is here unintelligible. The reference, if any be intended, is not clear. (F.) (37) Much has been made of this expression as intimating that Chretien wrote "Cliges" as a sort of disavowal of the immorality of his lost "Tristan". Cf. Foerster, "Cliges" (Ed. 1910), p. xxxix f., and Myrrha Borodine, "La femme et l'amour au XXIe Seicle d'apres les poemes de Chretien de Troyes" (Paris, 1909). G. Paris has ably defended another interpretation of the references in "Cliges" to the Tristan legend in "Journal des Savants", 1902, p. 442 f. (38) This curious moral teaching appears to be a perversion of three passages form St. Paul's Epistles: I Cor. vii. 9, I Cor. x. 32, Eph. v. 15. Cf. H. Emecke, "Chretien von Troyes als Personlichkeit und als Dichter" (Wurzburg, 1892). (39) "This feature of a woman who, thanks to some charm, preserves her virginity with a husband whom she does not love, is found not only in widespread stories, but in several French epic poems. In only one, "Les Enfances Guillaume", does the husband, like Alis, remain ignorant of the fraud of which he is the victim, and think that he really possesses the woman.... If Chretien alone gave to the charm of the form of a potion, it is in imitation of the love potion in "Tristan". (G. Paris in "Journal des Savants", 1902, p. 446). For many other references to the effect of herb potions, cf. A. Hertel, "Verzauberte Oerlichkeiten und Gegenstande in der altfranzosische erzahlende Dichtung", p. 41 ff. (Hanover, 1908).