A
jongleur arrived with stories of the courts where love was the only
ruler; where the knights willingly suffered grief and want, if by so
doing they could serve their lady; where the lover, in the shape of a
beautiful blue bird, nightly slipped through the barred windows into the
arms of his mistress. But the jealous husband had drawn barbed wire
across the window, and the lover, flying away at dawn, bled to death
before the eyes of his grief-stricken lady. The jongleur would tell of
the knight who had fallen passionately in love with a beautiful damsel
of whom he had but caught a passing glimpse; month after month he worked
at digging an underground passage; every night brought him a little
nearer to her bower--she could distinctly hear the dull sounds of his
burrowing--until at last he rose through the ground and took her into
his arms. These and similar tales, doubtless all of them of Celtic
origin--preserved for us in the charming "Lais" of Marie de
France--brought tears to the eyes of many a lonely wife and gave shape
to her vague longing.
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