The third personage who is certainly or uncertainly connected by name with the original framework of the legend is again more substantial than Robert de Borron, though less so than Walter Map. As his surname, derived from his birthplace, indicates, Chrestien de Troyes was of Champenois extraction, thus belonging to the province which, with Normandy, contributed most to early French literature. And he seems to have been attached not merely to the court of his native prince, the Count of Champagne, but to those of the neighbouring Walloon lordships or principalities of Flanders and Hainault. Of his considerable work (all of it done, it would seem, before the end of the twelfth century) by far the larger part is Arthurian--the immense romance of _Percevale le Gallois_,[48] much of which, however, is the work of continuators; the interesting episode of the Lancelot saga, called _Le Chevalier a la Charette_; _Erec et Enide_, the story known to every one from Lord Tennyson's idyll; the _Chevalier au Lyon_, a Gawain legend; and _Cliges_, which is quite on the outside of the Arthurian group. All these works are written in octosyllabic couplets, particularly light and skipping, somewhat destitute of force and grip, but full of grace and charm. Of their contents more presently. [Footnote 48: Ed. Potvin, 6 vols., Mons, 1866-70. Dr Foerster has undertaken a complete Chrestien, of which the 2d and 3d vols. are _Yvain_ ("Le Chevalier au Lyon") and _Erec_ (Halle, 1887-90). _Le Chevalier a la Charette_ should be read in Dr Jonckbloet's invaluable parallel edition with the prose of _Lancelot_ (The Hague, 1850). On this last see M. G. Paris, _Romania_, xii. 459--an admirable paper, though I do not agree with it.] Next to the questions of authorship and of origin in point of difficulty come two others--"Which are the older: the prose or the verse romances?" and, "Was there a Latin original of the Graal story?" [Sidenote: _Prose or verse first?_]