Yet, after all, the Middle Ages delighted to honour Our Lady as the tender Mother rather than as the Queen of Heaven. In numberless miniatures, and on the portals of the cathedrals raised to her glory, she stands presenting her Child to the adoration of men. It is as the instrument of the Incarnation that her ultimate dignity consists. Indeed, the religion of the Middle Ages can only be appreciated by regarding it in the light of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Christ is God. The Mass--the popular service instituted by Himself--is an extension of His Incarnation. The Blessed Virgin is to be held in peculiar veneration as the Mother of God. The two threads can easily be seen twined together in that story of how Our Lady tourneyed whilst the knight was at Mass. But belief in the Incarnation is the keystone of mediæval theology, and the only explanation of the lives of those saints who poured out their years like water in the service of God and man. The authors of the stories brought together in this book from various sources are, in some cases, identified, but in others are unknown. They may, perhaps, be regarded as representative of the three classes who are responsible for this kind of fiction--the monk, the trouvère and the professional minstrel. The monk, for his part, wrote in French seldom enough. He was a scholar, and when he had something to say, preferred to deliver himself in Latin, the language common to all educated men. But, for once, in the thirteenth century, a monk of Soissons, named Gautier de Coinci, translated into French verse a great collection of the miracles of Our Lady. From this garner I have selected the legend "Of a Jew who took as Surety the Image of Our Lady." Gautier de Coinci may not have been a supreme poet--that saving grace comes seldom enough--but his industry was certainly abnormal. His labour of love must have been the occupation of a lifetime, and it is pleasant to recall the old monk, in silent scriptorium and shady cloister, turning the Latin legends into fluent and pious verse.