Old French Romances | Page 2

course of

their history. It is, in effect, a folk etymology of the name of the great
capital of the Eastern Empire. Constantinople, so runs the tale, received
that name instead of Byzantium, because of the remarkable career of
one of its former rulers, Coustans. M. Wesselovsky has published in
Romania (vi. 1. seq.) the Dit de l'empereur Constant, the verse original
of the story before us, and in this occur the lines -
Pour ce que si nobles estoit Et que nobles oevres faisoit L'appielloient
Constant le noble Et pour cou ot Constantinnoble Li cytes de Bissence
a non.
From which it would appear that we are mistaken in thinking of the
capital of Turkey as the "City of Constantine," whereas it is rather
Constant the Noble, and the name Coustant is further explained as
"costing" too much. Constantinople, therefore, is the city that costs too
much, according to the prophetic etymology of the folk.
The only historic personage with whom this Coustant can be identified
is Constantius Chlorus, the father of Constantine the Great and the
husband of St. Helena, to whom legend ascribes the discovery of the
Holy Rood. But the Coustans of our story never lived or ruled on land
or sea, and his predecessor, Muselinus, is altogether unknown to
Byzantine annals, while their interlaced history reads more like a page
of the Arabian Nights than of Gibbon.
But such a legend could scarcely have arisen elsewhere than at
Constantinople. It is one of those fables that the disinherited folk have
at all times invented to solace themselves for their disinherison. The
sudden and fated rise of one of the folk to the heights of power occurs
sufficiently often to afford material for the day dreams of ambitious
youth. There is even a popular tendency to attribute a lowly origin to all
favourites of fortune, as witness the legends that have grown up about
the early careers of Beckett, Whittington, Wolsey, none of whom was
as ill-born as popular tradition asserts. Yet such legends invariably
grow up in the country of their heroes, which is the only one
sufficiently interested in their career, so far as the common people are
concerned. Hence the very nature of our story would cause us to locate
its origin on the banks of the Bosphorus.

But once originated in this manner, there is no limit to the travels it
may take. Curiously enough, the very legend before us in all its details
has found a home among the English peasantry. The Rev. S.
Baring-Gould collected in Yorkshire a story which he contributed to
Henderson's Folklore of the Northern Counties, and entitled The Fish
and the Ring. {2} In this legend a girl comes as the unwelcome sixth of
the family of a very poor man who lived under the shadow of York
Minster. A Knight, riding by on the day of her birth, discovers, by
consultation of the Book of Fate, that she was destined to marry his son.
He offers to adopt her, and throws her into the River Ouse. A fisherman
saves her, and she is again discovered after many years by the Knight,
who learns what Fate has still in store for his son. He sends her to his
brother at Scarborough with a fatal letter, ordering him to put her to
death. But on the way she is seized by a band of robbers, who read the
letter and replace it by one ordering the Baron's son to be married to her
immediately on her arrival.
When the Baron discovers that he has not been able to evade the decree
of fate he still persists in his persecution, and taking a ring from his
finger throws it into the sea, saying that the girl shall never live with his
son till she can show him that ring. She wanders about and becomes a
scullery-maid at a great castle, and one day when the Baron is dining at
the castle, while cleaning a great fish she finds his ring, and all ends
happily.
Now on the east wall of the chancel of Stepney Church there is a
monument erected to Dame Rebecca Berry, wife of Thomas Elton, of
Stratford, Bow, and relict of Sir John Berry, 1696. The arms on the
monument are thus blazoned by heralds . . . . "Paly of six on a bend
three mullets (Elton) impaling a fish, and in the dexter chief point an
annulet between two bends wavy." The reference in the impalement of
the blazon is obvious. A local tradition confidently identifies Dame
Berry as the heroine of the Yorkshire legend, though of course it is
ignorant of her connection with the etymology of Constantinople.
Now this tale, or the first half of it, is but a Yorkshire variant of one