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Guigemar, the wounded knight already referred to, to whom naught but love, and sorrow endured for love, can bring any alleviation, sets forth for his healing. He comes across a ship into which he enters, and which by unseen means carries him to the desired haven. As we read the description of the ship, our thoughts at once revert to the picture of the barge in which Cleopatra goes to meet Antony.
In the “Lay of Guigemar,” which we take first because it is the first in the manuscript, we find Marie making use of a subject, in gorgeous setting, of Christian symbolism, but using it apparently so unconsciously that it is only from one or two details that we realise what is really lurking in disguise.
Allusion has been made to the wounded knight in the “Lay of Guigemar,” who can only be healed through mutual love sanctified by mutual suffering. In the lay of “The Ash Tree” a maiden of noble birth, abandoned in infancy and brought up in a convent, is loved by a lord, and returns his love, and goes with him to his castle.
Listen to the words spoken to the knight Guigemar, wounded by a chance arrow as he rides through a wood. “Never shalt thou be healed of thy wound, not even by herb, or root, or leach, or potion, until thou art healed by her who, for love of thee, shall suffer such great pain and sorrow as never woman has suffered before: and thou shalt bear as much for her.” Equality in love!
It is doubtful whether any one unacquainted with the teaching of the Courts of Love, such as they were in the twelfth century, would have made the compulsory quest of love the keynote of a story, as, for instance, Marie does in the “Lay of Guigemar.” These Courts of Love, though not so elaborate, yet seemingly as imperious, as those of the fourteenth century, formed one of the semi-serious pastimes of the Middle Ages, and although it may be that they were often mere forms of entertainment, no self-respecting person could afford to disregard their rules or decisions.
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