century. Though this tale has never before been translated into English, it is so like some tales familiar to childhood that we recognize it as typical; and indeed most of its incidents may be found in other medieval romances.1
Henno cum Dentibus, so called from the size of his teeth, found the fairest of maidens in a shady grove by the Norman coast at midday. She was sitting alone, clad in silken robes befitting a princess, and weeping piteously without sound of lament, so beauti- ful that even her tears became her. The youth caught fire at once. He marvelled to see so precious a treasure unguarded, as it were a star fallen from heaven bewailing contact with earth. He looked about, for he feared some ambush in the covert; but, finding none, he knelt to her and thus reverently addressed his supplication: "Sweetest and brightest ornament of the whole world, whether the benignity of a face that so awakens desire be of our mortal lot or whether some divinity, wreathed with these flowers, robed in this light, has vouchsafed herself to the sight of her worshippers on earth, I rejoice, and thou mayest well rejoice, that it befalls thee to alight in my power. Ah me! My thought bodes that I am foreordained to thy service (glory to thee!); that thou hast turned to the place of all places where thou are received with most desire." She replied so innocently and dovelike that it might have been an angel saying what would seduce any angel to her prayers: "Amia-
York, 1911, Columbia University Press). Further information may be found in Morley's English Writers (volume III), in the Cambridge History of English Literature, and in Jusserand's Literary History of the English People . Anna Hunt Billings's Guide to the English Met- rical Romances dealing with English and Germanic Legends and with the Cycles of Charlemagne and of Arthur ( New York, 1901, Yale Studies in English, ix) is a valuable book of reference, especially for the com- parison of versions. Location may be facilitated by Lewis Spence's Dictionary of Medieval Romance and Romance Writers, which includes Scandinavian and Irish tales.
There is a close parallel in the thirteenth-century English verse romance Richard Coer de Lyon.
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Publication Information: Book Title: An Introduction to English Medieval Literature. Contributors: Charles Sears Baldwin - author. Publisher: Longmans Green. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1922. Page Number: 60.
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