Transcribed from the 1896 George Allen edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org OLD FRENCH ROMANCES DONE INTO ENGLISH BY WILLIAM MORRIS WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOSEPH JACOBS [Picture: Decorative graphic] LONDON GEORGE ALLEN, RUSKIN HOUSE 1896 _All rights reserved_ * * * * * Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. At the Ballantyne Press INTRODUCTION MANY of us have first found our way into the Realm of Romance, properly so called, through the pages of a little crimson clad volume of the _Bibliothèque Elzevirienne_. {1} Its last pages contain the charming Cante-Fable of _Aucassin et Nicolete_, which Mr. Walter Pater’s praises and Mr. Andrew Lang’s brilliant version have made familiar to all lovers of letters. But the same volume contains four other tales, equally charming in their way, which Mr. William Morris has now made part of English literature by writing them out again for us in English, reproducing, as his alone can do of living men’s, the tone, the colour, the charm of the Middle Ages. His versions have appeared in three successive issues of the Kelmscott Press, which have been eagerly snapped up by the lovers of good books. It seemed a pity that these cameos of romance should suffer the same fate as Mr. Lang’s version of _Aucassin et Nicolete_, which has been swept off the face of the earth by the Charge of the Six Hundred, who were lucky enough to obtain copies of the only edition of that little masterpiece of translation. Mr. Morris has, therefore, consented to allow his versions of the Romances to be combined into one volume in a form not unworthy of their excellence but more accessible to those lovers of books whose purses have a habit of varying in inverse proportion to the amount of their love. He has honoured me by asking me to introduce them to that wider public to which they now make their appeal. I