The story, so far as the simple old-world plot is concerned, is very probably not the original invention of whoever gave it this particular form, any more than were the plots of Shakespeare's plays of his own devising. It seems likely that in origin it is Arabian or Moorish, and its birthplace not Provence but Spain. Possibly it sprung, as so much of the best poetry and story has sprung, from the touching of two races, and the part friction part fusion of two religions, in this case of the Moor and the Christian. There was in 1019 a Moorish king of Cordova named Alcazin. Turn this name into French and we have Aucassin. And to reverse the roles of Christian and heathen is a very usual device for a story-teller transplanting a story from another country to his own. Though the scene is nominally laid in Provence there are a good many signs of a Spanish origin in the places mentioned. By Carthage is meant, not the city of Dido, but Carthagena; and thus the husband devised for Nicolette is "one of the greatest kings in all Spain." Valence again might originally have been not the Valence on the Rhone, but Valence le grand, or Valentia. And it is curious to observe that Beaucaire is closely connected with Tarascon--a bridge across the Rhone unites them--and that this latter name nearly resembles Tarragona, a place which in other French romances is actually called Terrascoigne. The shipwreck which in the story takes place, impossibly, at Beaucaire, may have originally happened, quite naturally, at Tarragona. Even the nonsense- name, Torelore, might easily have had its rise in Torello. Again, though it has been shown that all modern reports of the _Couvade_ as existing in Biscay have been founded only on the ancient assertion of Strabo, it is still remarkable that it is in this part of Europe alone that the custom has ever been found. If the composer of Aucassin derived his story from such a source, it is easy to see also whence he got the idea of the special form he has given it; for a narrative in prose mingled with interludes of verse, though strange to European literature, is common in Arabian. And yet, whatever his sources or his models, one feels that his debt to them is trifling compared to the worth of his own work. All that he describes he has seen with his own eyes; and all that he tells, be it borrowed or invented, is quickened and heightened and made immortal by his own touch upon it.