which was very literary and purely French. Queen Eleanor was a Provençal, and belonged to a family in which the patronage of poetry was a tradition. There is no evidence to show whether Marie was of noble origin or simply pursued the profession of a _trouvère_ for her living. The origin of the _lais_ has been the subject of much discussion. Marie herself says that she had heard them sung by Breton minstrels. It seems probable that it is the lesser or French Brittany from which the stories were derived, though something may be due to Welsh and Cornish sources. Gaston Paris (_Romania_, vol. xv.) maintained that Marie had heard the stories from English minstrels, who had assimilated the Celtic legends. In any case the Breton lays offer abundant evidence of traditions from Scandinavian and Oriental sources. The _Guigemar_ of Marie de France presents marked analogies with the ordinary Oriental romance of escape from a harem, for instance, with details superadded from classical mythology. Marie seems to have contented herself with giving new literary form to the stories she heard by turning them into Norman octosyllabic verse, and apparently made few radical changes from her originals. Joseph Bédier thinks that the lays of the Breton minstrels were prose recitals interspersed with short lyrics something after the manner of the cante-fable of _Aucassin et Nicolette_. Marie's task was to give these cante-fables a narrative form destined to be read rather than sung or recited. The _Lais_ which may be definitely attributed to Marie are: _Guigemar_, _Equitan_, _Le Frêne_, _Le Bisclavret_ (the werewolf), _Les Deux amants_, _Laustic_, _Chaitivel_, _Lanval_, _Le Chèvrefeuille_, _Milon_, _Yonec_ and _Eliduc_. The other similar lays are anonymous except the _Lai d'Ignaure_ by Renant and the Lai du cor of Robert Biket, two authors otherwise unknown. They vary in length from some twelve thousand lines to about a hundred. _Le Chèvrefeuille_, a short episode of the Tristan story, telling how Tristan makes known his presence in the wood to Iseult, is the best known of them all. Laustic[4] (_Le Rossignol_) is almost as short and simple. In _Yonec_ a mysterious bird visits the lady kept in durance by an old husband, and is turned into a valiant knight. The lover is killed by the husband, but in due time is avenged by his son. The scene of the story is partly laid in Chester, but the fable in slightly different forms occurs in the folk-lore of many countries.[5] _Lanval_[6] is a fairy story, and the hero vanishes eventually with his fairy princess to the island of Avallon or Avilion. _Eliduc_ is more elaborately planned than any of these, and the action is divided between Exeter and Brittany. Here again the story of the man with two brides is not new, but the three characters of the story are so dealt with that each wins the reader's sympathy. The resignation of the wife