The Lay of Marie - And Vignettes in Verse

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Title: The Lay of Marie
Author: Matilda Betham
Release Date: March 30, 2004 [eBook #11857]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
LAY OF MARIE***
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière,
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Bibliographical Note:
These facsimiles have been made from copies in the Yale University
Library The Lay of Marie (In.B4645.816L) and the British Library
Vignettes (Il642.bbb.36)
Reprint of the 1816 and 1818 eds.
THE LAY OF MARIE
and
VIGNETTES IN VERSE
MATILDA BETHAM

with an introduction for the Garland edition by Donald H. Reiman
THE LAY OF MARIE: A POEM
BY
MATILDA BETHAM.
1816
TO
LADY BEDINGFELD.
To whom,--as Fancy, taking longer flight,
With folded arms upon her
heart's high swell,
Floating the while in circles of delight,
And
whispering to her wings a sweeter spell
Than she has ever aim'd or
dar'd before--
Shall I address this theme of minstrel lore?
To whom but her who loves herself to roam
Through tales of earlier
times, and is at home
With heroes and fair dames, forgotten long,

But for romance, and lay, and lingering song?
To whom but her,
whom, ere my judgment knew,
Save but by intuition, false from true,

Seem'd to me wisdom, goodness, grace combin'd;
The ardent heart;
the lively, active mind?
To whom but her whose friendship grows
more dear,
And more assur'd, for every lapsing year?
One whom
my inmost thought can worthy deem
Of love, and admiration, and
esteem!
PREFACE
As there is little, in all I have been able to collect respecting MARIE,
which has any thing to do with the Poem, I have chosen to place such
information at the end of the book, in form of an Appendix, rather than
here; where the only things necessary to state are, that she was an
Anglo-Norman Minstrel of the thirteenth century; and as she lived at
the time of our losing Normandy, I have connected her history with that

event: that the young king who sees her in his progress through his
foreign possessions is our Henry III.; and the Earl William who steps
forward to speak in her favour is William Longsword, brother to
Richard Coeur de Lion. Perhaps there is no record of minstrels being
called upon to sing at a feast in celebration of a victory which involves
their own greatest possible misfortune; but such an incident is not of
improbable occurrence. It is likely, also, that a woman, said to be more
learned, accomplished, and pleasing, than was usually the case with
those of her profession, might have a father, who, with the ardour, the
disobedience, the remorse of his heroic master, had been, like him, a
crusader and a captive; and in the after solitude of self-inflicted
penitence, full of romantic and mournful recollections, fostered in the
mind of his daughter, by nature embued with a portion of his own
impassioned feelings, every tendency to that wild and poetical turn of
thought which qualified her for a minstrel; and, after his death, induced
her to become one.

The union of European and Eastern beauty, in the person of Marie, I
have attempted to describe as lovely as possible. The consciousness of
noble birth, of injurious depression, and the result of that education
which absorbed the whole glowing mind of a highly gifted parent, a
mind rich with adventures, with enthusiasm and tenderness, ought to be
pourtrayed in her deportment; while the elegance and delicacy which
more particularly distinguish the gentlewoman, would naturally be
imbibed from a constant early association with a model of what the
chivalrous spirit of the age could form, with all its perfections and its
faults; in a situation, too, calculated still more to refine such a character;
especially with one who was the centre of his affections and regrets,
and whom he was so soon to leave unprotected. That, possessing all
these advantages, notwithstanding her low station, she should be
beloved by, and, on the discovery of her birth, married to a young
nobleman, whose high favour with his sovereign would lead him to
hope such an offence against the then royal prerogative of directing
choice would be deemed a venial one, is, I should think, an admissible
supposition.

That a woman would not be able to sing under such afflicting
circumstances might be objected; but history shews us, scarcely any
exertion of fortitude or despair is too great to be looked for in that total
deprivation of all worldly interest consequent to such misfortunes.
Whether that train of melancholy ideas which her own