--- title: Opening, part 1 — Morien: A Metrical Romance Rendered into English… · full text with trees description: Opening, part 1, «Morien: A Metrical Romance Rendered into English Prose from the Mediæval Dutch» by Jessie L. Weston: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: Produced by David Starner, David Widger, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8447/1/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Morien: A Metrical Romance Rendered in…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8447/) / Opening, part 1 # Opening, part 1 Opening, part 1 of «Morien: A Metrical Romance Rendered into English Prose from the Mediæval Dutch» by Jessie L. Weston: the whole text, 86 sentences and 2548 words. The small number after every sentence leads to its own page with its syntax tree and pragmatics, parsed by Mova itself. **1** [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8447/1/page/2/) Produced by David Starner, David Widger, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team[1](1/ "tree and pragmatics") MORIEN[2](2/ "tree and pragmatics") A Metrical Romance Rendered Into English Prose From The Mediæval Dutch[3](3/ "tree and pragmatics") Arthurian Romances No. IV.[4](4/ "tree and pragmatics") By Jessie L. Weston,[5](5/ "tree and pragmatics") With designs by Caroline Watts.[6](6/ "tree and pragmatics") Additional Arthurian Romances:[7](7/ "tree and pragmatics") I. Sir Gawain And The Green Knight.[8](8/ "tree and pragmatics") A Middle-English Romance retold in Modern Prose, with Introduction and Notes, by JESSIE L. WESTON.[9](9/ "tree and pragmatics") With Designs by M. M. CRAWFORD.[10](10/ "tree and pragmatics") 1898.[11](11/ "tree and pragmatics") 2s. net.[12](12/ "tree and pragmatics") II.[13](13/ "tree and pragmatics") Tristan And Iseult.[14](14/ "tree and pragmatics") Rendered into English from the German of Gottfried of Strassburg by JESSIE L. WESTON.[15](15/ "tree and pragmatics") With Designs by CAROLINE WATTS.[16](16/ "tree and pragmatics") Two vols.[17](17/ "tree and pragmatics") 1899.[18](18/ "tree and pragmatics") 4s. net.[19](19/ "tree and pragmatics") III.[20](20/ "tree and pragmatics") Guingamor, Lanval, Tyolet, Le Bisclaveret.[21](21/ "tree and pragmatics") Four Lays rendered into English Prose from the French of Marie de France and others by JESSIE L. WESTON.[22](22/ "tree and pragmatics") With Designs by CAROLINE WATTS.[23](23/ "tree and pragmatics") 1900.[24](24/ "tree and pragmatics") 2s. net.[25](25/ "tree and pragmatics") \[Illustration: They deemed they had seen the Foul Fiend himself\][26](26/ "tree and pragmatics") PREFACE[27](27/ "tree and pragmatics") The metrical romance of which the following pages offer a prose translation is contained in the mediæval Dutch version of the \_Lancelot\_, where it occupies upwards of five thousand lines, forming the conclusion of the first existing volume of that compilation.[28](28/ "tree and pragmatics") So far as our present knowledge extends, it is found nowhere else.[29](29/ "tree and pragmatics") Nor do we know the date of the original poem, or the name of the author.[30](30/ "tree and pragmatics") The Dutch MS. is of the commencement of the fourteenth century, and appears to represent a compilation similar to that with which Sir Thomas Malory has made us familiar, \_i.e.\_, a condensed rendering of a number of Arthurian romances which in their original form were independent of each other.[31](31/ "tree and pragmatics") Thus, in the Dutch \_Lancelot\_ we have not only the latter portion of the \_Lancelot\_ proper, the \_Queste\_, and the \_Morte Arthur\_, the ordinary component parts of the prose \_Lancelot\_ in its most fully developed form, but also a portion of a \_Perceval\_ romance, having for its basis a version near akin to, if not identical with, the poem of Chrétien de Troyes, and a group of episodic romances, some of considerable length, the majority of which have not yet been discovered elsewhere.[32](32/ "tree and pragmatics") \[Footnote: \_Cf\_. my \_Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac\_; Grimm Library, vol. xii., chapter ix., where a brief summary of the contents of the Dutch \_Lancelot\_ is given.\][33](33/ "tree and pragmatics") Unfortunately, the first volume of this compilation, which was originally in four parts, has been lost; consequently we are without any of the indications, so often to be found in the opening lines of similar compositions, as to the personality of the compiler, or the material at his disposal; but judging from those sections in which comparison is possible, the \_Lancelot\_, \_Queste\_, and \_Morte Arthur\_, the entire work is a translation, and a very faithful translation, of a French original.[34](34/ "tree and pragmatics") It is quite clear that the Dutch compiler understood his text well, and though possibly somewhat hampered by the necessity of turning prose into verse (this version, contrary to the otherwise invariable rule of the later \_Lancelot\_ romances, being rhymed), he renders it with remarkable fidelity.[35](35/ "tree and pragmatics") The natural inference, and that drawn by M. Gaston Paris, who, so far, appears to be the only scholar who has seriously occupied himself with this interesting version, is that those episodic romances, of which we possess no other copy, are also derived from a French source.[36](36/ "tree and pragmatics") Most probably, so far as these shorter romances are concerned, the originals would be metrical, not prose versions, as in the case of the \_Lancelot\_ sections.[37](37/ "tree and pragmatics") It is true that with regard to the romance here translated, \_Morien\_, the Dutch scholars responsible for the two editions in which it has appeared, MM.[38](38/ "tree and pragmatics") Jonckbloet and Te Winkel, the former the editor of the whole compilation, the latter of this section only, are both inclined to regard the poem as an original Dutch composition; but M. Gaston Paris, in his summary of the romance (\_Histoire Litteraire\_, vol. xxx. p. 247) rejects this theory as based on inadequate grounds.[39](39/ "tree and pragmatics") It must be admitted that an original Arthurian romance of the twelfth or thirteenth century, when at latest such a poem would be written, in a language other than French, is so far unknown to us; and although as a matter of fact the central \_motif\_ of the poem, the representation of a Moor as near akin to the Grail Winner, Sir Perceval, has not been preserved in any known French text, while it does exist in a famous German version, I for one find no difficulty in believing that the tradition existed in French, and that the original version of our poem was a metrical romance in that tongue.[40](40/ "tree and pragmatics") So far as the story of \_Morien\_ is concerned, the form is probably later than the tradition it embodies.[41](41/ "tree and pragmatics") In its present shape it is certainly posterior to the appearance of the Galahad \_Queste\_, to which it contains several direct references; such are the hermit's allusion to the predicted circumstances of his death, which are related in full in the \_Queste\_; the prophecy that Perceval shall "aid" in the winning of the Holy Grail, a quest of which in the earlier version he is sole achiever; and the explicit statements of the closing lines as to Galahad's arrival at Court, his filling the Siege Perilous, and achieving the Adventures of the Round Table.[42](42/ "tree and pragmatics") As the romance now stands it is an introduction to the \_Queste\_, with which volume iii.[43](43/ "tree and pragmatics") (volume ii. of the extant version) of the Dutch \_Lancelot\_ opens.[44](44/ "tree and pragmatics") But the opening lines of the present version show clearly that in one important point, at least, the story has undergone a radical modification.[45](45/ "tree and pragmatics") Was it the Dutch translator or his source who substituted Agloval, Perceval's brother, for the tradition which made Perceval himself the father of the hero?[46](46/ "tree and pragmatics") M. Gaston Paris takes the former view; but I am inclined to think that the alteration was already in the French source.[47](47/ "tree and pragmatics") The Grail of Sir Agloval's vision is the Grail of Castle Corbenic and the \_Queste\_; unless we are to consider this vision as the addition of the Dutch compiler (who, when we are in a position to test his work does not interpolate such additions), we must, I think, admit that the romance in the form in which it reached him was already at a stage in which Perceval could not, without violence to the then existing conception of his character, be considered as the father, or the brother, of Morien.[48](48/ "tree and pragmatics") To reconstruct the original story it would be necessary not merely to eliminate all mention of Agloval, as suggested by M. Gaston Paris, but the Grail references would also require modification.[49](49/ "tree and pragmatics") As it stands, the poem is a curious mixture of conflicting traditions.[50](50/ "tree and pragmatics") In this connection it appears to me that the evidence of the \_Parzival\_ is of primary importance; the circumstances attending the birth of Feirefis are exactly parallel with those of Morien--in both a Christian knight wins the love of a Moorish princess; in both he leaves her before the birth of her son, in the one case with a direct, in the other with a conditional, promise to return, which promise is in neither instance kept; in both the lad, when grown to manhood, sets out to seek his father; in both he apparently makes a practice of fighting with every one whom he meets; in the one version he is brother, in the other son or nephew, to Perceval.[51](51/ "tree and pragmatics") The points of difference are that whereas Morien is black all over, save his teeth, Feirefis is parti-coloured, black and white--a curious conception, which seems to point to an earlier stage of thought; Morien is a Christian, Feirefis a heathen--the more probable version.[52](52/ "tree and pragmatics") **1** [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8447/1/page/2/) - next →: [page 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8447/1/page/2/) - ↑ back to [Morien: A Metrical Romance Rendered into English Prose from the Mediæval Dutch](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8447/)