Song and Legend from the Middle Ages

1. The Old High German Period, culminating about 600 A. D. The chief development of this period is the epic legend and poetry. As this literature remained largely unwritten, it...

There was no folk poetry and no popular literature in Mediaeval Italy. There were two reasons for this: (1) Italian history, political and intellectual, attaches itself very clo...

The golden age of Spanish literature embraces the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, in Spain as in other European countries, a...

The wolf said, "I may well forbear your mocks and your scorns, and also your fell, venomous words' strong thief that you are. Ye said that I was almost dead for hunger when ye h...

How Galahad and his fellows were fed of the holy Sangreal, and how our Lord appeared to them, and other things. Then king Pelles and his son departed. And therewithal beseemed t...

French Literature of the Middle Ages was produced between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries, having its greatest development in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It m...

The earliest and greatest portion of this literature is the heroic poetry forming the collection called the Poetic or Elder Edda. Like all early poetry these were minstrel poems...

In the beginning of Arthur, after he was chosen king by adventure and by grace--for the most part of the barons knew not that he was Uther Pendragon's son, but as Merlin made it...

And then the king and all estates went home unto Camelot, and so went to evensong to the great minster. And so after upon that to supper, and every knight sat in his own place a...

Right so the king and he departed, and went until an hermit that was a good man and a great leach. So the hermit searched all his wounds and gave him good salves; so the king wa...

When king Arthur heard Of the coming of Guenever and the hundred knights with the Table Round, then king Arthur made great joy for their coming, and that rich present, and said...

Then spoke Erswynde, the wolf's wife, "Ach! Fell Reynard, no man can keep himself from thee, thou canst so well utter thy words and thy falseness; but it shall be evil, rewarded...

So as they stood speaking, in came a squire, and said unto the king, Sir, I bring unto you marvellous tidings. What be they? said the king. Sir, there is here beneath at the riv...

Truly, said Sir Launcelot, a gentlewoman brought me hither, but I know not the cause. In the meanwhile, as they thus stood talking together, there came twelve nuns which brought...

Now, said the king, I am sure at this quest of the Sancgreal shall all ye of the Table Round depart, and never shall I see you again whole together, therefore I will see you all...

Then the old man made the young man to unarm him; and he was in a coat of red sendel, and bare a mantle upon his shoulder that was furred with ermine, and put that upon him. And...