[In the following essay, Frank maintains that the Chievrefueil, a lay by Marie de France, was derived from longer versions of the Tristram (Tristan) legend.]

Chievrefueil, the shortest and perhaps the most charming of the lays by Marie de France, has troubled critics because, unlike her other poems, it seems to lack clarity. Is it not fair to assume, however, that in this instance the usual limpidity and forthrightness of Marie's narrative style may have been clouded by her modern interpreters, rather than by Marie herself? I hope to show that to her mediæval audience the lovely lines of Chievrefueil presented no difficulties whatsoever, needed no esoteric subtleties for their understanding, and that their Old Norse translator as well as the scribes of both our surviving manuscripts readily comprehended Marie's lucid phrases.

The crux of the difficulty, it seems to me, lies in a needlessly realistic scepticism regarding lines 51 ff. Marie tells us (and I translate as literally as possible from Warnke's third edition of 1925):

[Tristram] cut a hazel tree in half, split it quite square. After he had prepared the staff, he wrote his name with his knife. If the Queen becomes aware of it, she who was wont to take very careful notice, she will certainly recognize the staff of her lover when she sees it. Another time it had happened that she had thus perceived it. This was the sum of the writing that he had sent and said to her [or, according to MS. S, This was the sum of the writing which was on the staff of which I speak]: that he had long been there and waited and stayed in order to spy out and learn how he might see her, for he could not live without her. It was with the two of them just as it was with the honeysuckle which attached itself to the hazel: when the honeysuckle has twined there and taken firm hold and twisted itself completely around the trunk of the tree, together they can well survive, but if anyone wishes to separate them afterwards, the hazel quickly dies and the honeysuckle in like fashion. My fair lady, thus it is with us: nor you without me, nor I without you.

The Queen came riding. She looked a little in front of her, saw the stick, observed it well, knew all the letters there.

Now to our modern scholars it seems improbable that so long a message could have been written upon a wooden tablet. Miss Rickert remarks: “We cannot suppose Tristram wrote out in full the message of which the ‘import’ fills seventeen lines. Even if it had been possible, Yseult could not have read it as she rode along, nor was there any need for her to do so, as the branch served merely to indicate Tristram's whereabouts.” With this general conception—that the message was not on the staff—Sudre, Foulet and Spitzer would agree. Miss Rickert thinks the message was probably conveyed by the symbolism of the hazel and the honeysuckle. Sudre and Foulet, stressing the words escrit and mandé, believe Tristram's name alone was on the hazel tablet and that a written communication had been sent the Queen by her lover a few days earlier, the message whose import or substance Marie gives us. Spitzer, who accepts the notion that Tristram's name alone appeared upon the tablet, suggests that the Queen, inspired solely by love, read beneath the literal surface of the bark to its spiritual core and thus divined her lover's message, murmuring to herself the words she seemed to hear him speak to her, “comme si elle les avait entendus de la bouche de Tristan.”¹

But are we not being too prosaically literal-minded when we reject the possibility that Tristram cut his message upon the hazel tree? Foulet, before rejecting this possibility as invraisemblable, clearly sees its intrinsic likelihood: “Où se trouvait cet ‘escrit qu’il li aveit mandé et dit’? Il semble bien, à suivre l’ordre des événements tel qu’il nous est donné dans le récit, que ce dut être sur le bâton.” For my part, if Marie writes of werewolves, magic potions, speaking hinds, birds that turn into knights, ships that sail themselves, a fairy mistress who appears and disappears at will, I do not ask how such things can be. Tristram might carve a message whose import fills twice seventeen lines and I should not question Marie's poetic right to have him do so.

Nor, I venture to think, would the length of Tristram's xylographic message have disturbed any mediæval audience, however literal-minded. For in England where Marie lived, in Celtic lands from whence some parts of the Tristram legend came, and on the continent where it spread, rune sticks, letters graven on wood, wands and squared staves with poems and other inscriptions upon them were no novelty. The Old English “Lover's [or, Husband's] Message,” a poem of fifty-five lines, speaks of itself as engraved on wood. It is well known that Irish love poems and other inscriptions (some of which were planted in paths to give messages) were carved on tablets of wood, and references to wands and squared staves with ogham inscriptions are frequent in Irish literature. According to Egil's Saga, the Sonatorrek, a poetic lament of some 200 lines, was taken down on a Kefli, or rune stick, and runes carved on various kinds of wood and trees are frequently mentioned in the Sagas and Edda.² A famous instance of a letter carved on wood occurs in the story of Hamlet as recorded by Saxo Grammaticus in his Danish History, Book iii. I cite his words in the translation of Elton and Powell, p. 113: “Two retainers of Feng then accompanied him, bearing a letter graven on wood—a kind of writing material frequent in old times.” By Marie's day such tablets may well have seemed archaic and mention of them might have served to give her lay the flavor of the tens anciënur which she so frequently evokes in her poems. In any case, inscribed staves were known to her and to her contemporaries, and were surely known to her sources.

For, this whole passage—Tristram's cutting the hazel and writing upon it with his knife in order to apprise the Queen of his presence—bears a striking resemblance to an episode in the Tristram legend which has been preserved for us in no less than five different versions: those of Eilhart von Oberge, Gottfried von Strassburg, the Old Norse Saga, the Oxford Folie Tristan, and the English Sir Tristrem. In the Oxford Folie (784-86) Tristram recalls to the Queen the ruse by which he had she were wont to meet, the chips fashioned by his knife and thrown into the stream as “signs between us when it pleased me to come to you”:

de mun canivet cospels fis
k’erent enseignes entre nus
quant me plaiseit venir a vus.

In the versions of this episode by Eilhart and Gottfried and in the English Sir Tristrem these cutting bear inscriptions. In Eilhart's poem Tristram carves a cross with five branches (3346 ff.); in Gottfried's, he carves the initials T and I on each tablet (14427 ff.). But in Sir Tristrem it is actually runes that he writes upon them (2049 ff.):

Bi water he sent adoun
Liȝt linden spon:
He wrot hem al wiþ roun;
Ysonde hem knewe wel sone;
Bi þat Tristrem was boun,
Ysonde wist his bone
To abide.

These light linden chips carved with roun, the initialed olive spaene of Gottfried, the decorated cuttings of Eilhart (dar an sal gemâlet sîn / ein crûce mit vunf orten), the lokarspónu of the Old Norse Saga (chapter liv [77]), and the cospels of the Oxford Folie all serve the same purpose of advising Iseut of Tristram's desire to see her. “Ysonde hem knewe wel sone,” says the English version; “swen sie daz crûce vinde, / sô bin ich bî der linde,” says Eilhart; and Bédier summarizes the whole episode in his reconstruction of Thomas as follows: “Chaque fois donc que Tristan voulait se rencontrer avec Isolt, il jetait les copeaux au ruisseau qui courait le long de la tour du château … : par cette ruse Isolt connaissait aussitôt son désir de sa venue au rendez-vous.”³

Now when Marie writes:

Se la reïne s’aparceit,
ki mult grant guarde s’en perneit,
de sun ami bien conuistra
le bastun quant el le verra;
altre feiz li fu avenu
que si l’aveit aparceü,

[55-60]

is she not alluding to this episode in her sources?

Plusur le m’unt cunté e dit
e jeo l’ai trové en escrit
de Tristram e de la reïne …

The curious means by which Tristram and the Queen were wont to communicate with each other probably appealed to her imagination, and from the wooden chips inscribed by Tristram to tell Iseut of his eagerness to meet her, Marie elaborated her fanciful hazel tablet with its beautiful, poetic message.

Accordingly, whether or not Marie—or her sources—had rune sticks or ogham tablets in mind, I am convinced that she thought of Tristram's words as carved upon the hazel wood he had prepared. She gives us the “sume de l’escrit” (61), paraphrasing at first and then quoting directly. If the message were conceived as written in a secret or cryptic alphabet, her reason for telling us its substance and her reference to the Queen's knowledge of “tutes les letres” (82) would have special significance. But in any case I see no reason for rejecting the obvious inference of our texts or for regarding the length of Tristram's words to the Queen as precluding their appearance on the bastun which he had paré to receive them.

It is evident that the simple interpretation here proposed was that of the scribe of MS. S. He says deliberately: “This was the sum of the writing that was upon the stick.” And, although it has not been remarked before, I believe, the Old Norse translator of Marie, who follows a manuscript related to H, is here even more explicit than S.⁴ I translate his words as literally as possible:

Then he cut down a hazel tree and made it four-edged with his knife and cut his name on the stick. If it so happen that the Queen sees the stick, then she will be reminded of her lover, because it had so happened to her another time. Now it was inscribed on the stick that Tristram had waited for her there a long time and listened around in order to ask about her and find out in what way he might see her, for he can in no wise live without her. “So it is with us,” he said, “as with the honeysuckle which twines around the hazel. …”

Now the Queen came riding and saw the stick which stood in the way and she took the stick and read that which was cut on it. …⁵

There can be no question but that for the Norse translator the whole message was inscribed upon the tablet.

At the end of her poem Marie justifies its title, Chievrefueil, in lines that again have troubled some of our modern scholars because they refuse to believe that Tristram's words could have appeared upon the bastun. Marie says (107-16):

Because of the joy which he had had from his love whom he had seen and because of that which he had written [or, according to MS. S, Because of the joy which he had had from his love whom he had seen by means of the staff which he had inscribed], just as he had said it to the Queen,⁶ in order to remember the words, Tristram, who well knew how to play the harp, made of these a new lay. I shall name it briefly: the English call it Gotelef, the French, Chievrefueil.

Clearly, the title of the lay must refer to the words about the honeysuckle which Tristram used to the Queen, addressing her as his “bele amie.” Sudre and Foulet think these words occurred in a written communication sent her some days before the meeting. But this interpretation seems to me to be awkwardly prosaic and to spoil the finely woven pattern of the poem by assuming, as it does, a message that has been undramatically delivered off-stage. Spitzer, on the other hand, believes Tristram made his lay about words divined by the Queen as belonging to her lover, words apparently made into a lay by that lover to record her divination of his message.⁷ Surely this interpretation violates both the letter and the spirit of the text:

Pur la joie qu’il ot eüe
de s’amie qu’il ot veüe
e pur ceo qu’il aveit escrit, [S: par le baston qu’il ot
escrit]
si cum la reïne l’ot dit,
pur les paroles remembrer,
Tristram ki bien saveit harper,
en aveit fet un nuvel lai.

The emphasis throughout this passage is on Tristram and the pronoun il. It is his joy, his mistress whom he has seen, the words he wrote (on the baston, says S) which are to be recorded, and obviously, because of the title of the lay, The Honeysuckle, the words addressed to the Queen that he would remember exactly are his lovely image of interlaced vine and tree, his beautiful identification of their life and death with the love that exists between himself and his bele amie:

Bele amie, si est de nus:
Ni vus sens mei, ni mei sens vus.

In short, then, I believe that Chievrefueil, a little gem of synthesis, compression and clean-cut narration, derives from one of the longer versions of the Tristram legend. Marie tells us of a single meeting between the lovers and, like any good writer of short stories, she makes this one significant scene embrace the past and foreshadow the future. Her originality consists in letting us share the emotions of her hero before the meeting, and she does this by embroidering most poetically upon a theme found in her sources, the fragments of wood that served the lovers as secret messengers before their rendezvous. Upon such a tablet Tristram engraves the words about hazel and honeysuckle in which he so vividly embodies his love for Iseut and his feeling that separation must spell death for both of them. In order to remember these words and to express the joy he experienced in meeting his mistress by having written them, he made a lay called The Honeysuckle. And Marie concludes:

Dit vus en ai la verité
del lai que j’ai ici cunté.

Notes

1. See Edith Rickert, Marie de France: Seven of her Lays done into English (New York, 1901), p. 193; L. Sudre, Romania, xv (1886), 551; L. Foulet, ZRP, xxxii (1908), 278-80; L. Spitzer, Romania, lxix (1946), 80 ff., who cites a biblical exegesis of Genesis, xxx, 37, by Macé de la Charité to support the contrast he finds in Marie between letre and sume=écorce and moelle. For Spitzer's interpretation see also note 7, below.

2. On runes in general see the works of Helmut Arntz, Bibliographie der runenkunde (Leipzig, 1937), Die Runenschrift (Halle, 1938). For runes in England, see The Cambridge History of English Literature, i, chapt. 2. “The Lover's Message” is in The Exeter Book, ii, ed. W. S. Mackie, EETS, cxciv (1934), 192. For Irish material, Douglas Hyde's A Literary History of Ireland (1901), chapt. xi, is convenient (cf. especially p. 111); see also Revue Celtique, xiii (1892), 220. In the Egil's Saga note especially chapters 44, 72, 78 and cf. The Lay of Sigrdrífa, The Sayings of Hór, The Lay of Skírnir, etc. Note that it is the coldre itself which Tristram cuts par mi, and that he splits the tree and squares it to make his bastun. Most modern critics imply diminutives which are not in the text. Incidentally, the European hazel, Corylus Avellana, may attain considerable size and has a tough, pliant, close-textured wood much used in the Middle Ages for making bows and crossbows, and, as is well known, the O.F. baston might be a very big stick indeed.

3. See Bédier, Le Roman de Tristan par Thomas, SATF (1902), i, 194 ff. The Old Norse version is here almost like Bédier's. For it and the English Sir Tristrem see Eugen Kölbing's editions, Die Nordische und die Englische Version der Tristan-Sage (Heilbronn, 1878, 1882). Eilhart was edited by Franz Lichtenstein in Quellen und Forschungen (1877), xix; Gottfried's Tristan, by Karl Marold in Teutonia, vi (Leipzig, 1906). For the Folie Tristan d’Oxford, see Bédier's edition (SATF, 1907) or Hoepffner's (1938).

4. Warnke and Rudolf Meissner, Die Strengleikar (Halle, 1902), p. 205, agree in positing a close relationship between MS. H and the Norse version.

5. For the Old Norse version I have used the text in Leit eg suður til landa, ed. Einar Òl. Sveinsson (Reykjavík, 1944), pp. 112-4. I should like to express here my warm thanks to Professor Stefán Einarsson for his aid in translating it and for many other helpful suggestions.

6. Because of the meaning and the emphasis throughout the passage on Tristram, I believe, with Warnke (p. 268) and G. Cohn (ZFSL 24², 1902, p. 15) that la reïne in the phrase si cum la reïne l’ot dit is a dative. Grammatically, there is no objection to Foulet's translation (sur la demande de la reine), although nothing has heretofore been said of this request, nor to the Old Norse translation (remembering the words she spoke), nor to Miss Rickert's (for remembrance of her words), nor to Spitzer's (comme la reine le lui avait dit). But if one adopts the interpretation that the words to be remembered are the Queen's, then the line must refer to the Queen's conversation in the forest (et ele li dist son plaisir, etc.) and not to the lines beginning Bele amie or to the words about the honeysuckle which give the lay its title. In any case, it must be the passage about the honeysuckle that is to be commemorated in a lay so called, and these are the words that Tristram wrote (on the tablet).

7. See op. cit., p. 84: “Il n’y avait sur la baguette de coudrier comme letre que le nom ‘Tristan,’ c’était à Iseut de découvrir le sens du message, et c’est l’amour seul qui, Tristan le sait, aiguisera l’intelligence de l’amante, au point de lui faire découvrir l’image du coudrier et du chèvrefeuille … et de lui faire murmurer les deux beaux vers finaux, comme si elle les avait entendus de la bouche de Tristan. …” And pp. 87-8: “A cause de la joie de Tristan d’avoir réussi à voir son amie par le message de la baguette, joie que la reine lui avait exprimée lors de leur rendez-vous, et pour conserver les paroles telles qu’elle les lui avait dites, Tristan. …”