The romancers who preceded him, and, clad in bright colours, chanted their stories before the ladies and knights in the rush-carpeted halls, turning somersaults between their chapters, as many a modern novelist might for the enlivenment of his narrative, were not scholars, but had great store of legendary matter from which they made their tales. Their material continued to be used, more and more elaborately, until the time of Cervantes, and in such books as the _Morte Darthur_ we can see what manner of material it was. They were not in the least afraid of the supernatural, and they knew the undying attraction of hard blows. Their tales were compiled without reference to the classics, and contain all the characteristics of primitive story-telling noted in the chapter on Origins. They represented, fairly accurately, the Embroidered Exploit. They were tales of heroes, knights, and kings, half elfin stuff, half history, elaborate genealogical narratives in which the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and the grandsons' misfortunes are connected with their parents' revenge on the previous generation. There were great dragon-slayers before the Lord, and many who, like Charlemagne, were mighty killers of Saracens in the cause of Christendom. And then there were such tales as that of Melusine, whose father, King Helymas, married a fairy, and out of love for her broke his promise not to inquire how she was when she lay in childbed. Melusine suffers accordingly, spending every Saturday bathing herself, with her delicate white limbs hidden beneath a serpent's scaly skin. There comes to her a young knight called Raymondin whom she saves by her wisdom, enriches by her magic, weds with great pomp, and presents in successive years with ten sons, each curiously deformed by reason of the fairy blood. Raymondin, in espousing her, promises to make no inquiries about her doings on Saturdays. He breaks his promise, like his father-in-law before him, and when, in anger at the ill-deeds of one of his sons, he reproaches her with what she is, she sadly takes leave of him, and flies off through the window, 'transfigured lyke a serpent grete and long in fifteen foote of lengthe.' There were tales too of more charming fancy, like that of the queen who bore seven children at a birth, six boys and a girl, with silver chains about their necks. The midwife, in her devilish way, showed her seven puppies with silver collars instead of her litter of babes, privately sending the children to be killed. The children, however, left in the forest, were nurtured by a nanny-goat and cared for by a hermit, until the midwife discovered that they were not dead, when she sent men to see that they were properly scotched. But the men were so softened by the accident of meeting a crowd busied with the burning of a woman who had killed her child, that they had only heart to take the chains from off the babies' necks, whereupon they flew away as white swans. That is the