MARIE DE FRANCE is one of the most interesting figures in the literary history of the Middle Ages. She is also one of the most mysterious. Nothing is known of her except from her own statements, which amount to little more than that her name was Marie and her country France, that she dedicated one of her works to an unnamed king, and another to a certain Count William. She is mentioned by Denis Pyramus, who was her contemporary, and who says that she was very popular, but gives no particulars. Attempts have been made to identify conjecturally the king and the count,—the most probable hypotheses being that the former was Henry III. of England, and the latter William Longsword of Salisbury; that is to say, Marie lived in the first half of the 13th century, and rather towards the beginning than the end of that half. Her work which remains to us is entirely poetical, and by no means inconsiderable in extent. It falls naturally into three divisions. The first consists of lais or narrative poems in octosyllabic couplets. There are fourteen of them, the titles being Gugemer, Equitan, Le Frêne, Le Bisclavaret, Lanval, Les deux amants, Ywenec, Le Laustic (*‘ the Nightingale ”), Milon, Le Chaitivel ( “the Unhappy One”), Le Chèvrefeuille, Eliduc,Graelent, I.’Epine. The longest of these contains nearly twelve hundred lines; the shortest only just exceeds a hundred. The term lai is of Breton origin, and is believed to have had reference originally to the kind of music to which it was performed. But in Marie it is simply a short romance, generally of an amatory character. The merits of these poems are very great. They have much tenderness and delicacy of expression, flowing and melodious verse, and not a little descriptive power. The dialect is decidedly Norman in ...character, and English words occasionally occur, but are invariably explained in French. Some of these poems were paraphrased by the late Mr O’Shaughnessy in his Lays of France (London, 1872), but the translator indulged to such an t xtent in amplification that the effect is very dissimilar to that of the original. The second division of Marie’s work is of less poetical but of greater general interest. It consists of an Ysopet (a general term in the Middle Ages for a collection of fables) of one hundred and three fables, of which Marie tells us that Henry Beauclerk translated it from Latin into English, and that for the love of Count William, “the most valiant of this realm,” she herself rhymed it from English into French. The fables are exceedingly well told, with a liveliness, elegance of verse, and ingenious aptness of moral which make Marie a worthy forerunner of La Fontaine. The question has been debated whether the great fabulist was acquainted with her work. All that can be said is that, though it is by no means impossible, and from internal evidence not even wholly improbable, it cannot be said to be very likely. The third of Marie’s works is a poem of two thousand three hundred verses, describing the purgatory of Saint Patrick, written at the request of an unidentified “prudom,” or man of worship. Marie has been longer and better known than most of the poets of mediaeval France, and perhaps she has been relatively a little overvalued, but her positive excellence is very considerable. Her style is a good example of the pure and highly organized language of the 13th century; and despite its great age it can be read by any person acquainted with modern French with a very small expense of attention, and with but slight use of glossaries.
The standard edition of Marie’s works is by B. de Roquefort, 2 vols., Paris, 1820.
Μ ARIENBAD, one of the prettiest and most frequented watering-places on the Continent of Europe, with a station (about 1∣ miles S;E. of the town) on the Kaiser Franz Josephs Railway, lies in a pleasant valley in the district of Tepl, in the north-west of Bohemia, about 18 miles south of Carlsbad, and nearly 2000 feet above the level of the sea. The gently-sloping hills which enclose it on all sides except the south are picturesquely wooded with fragrant pine forests. The town has an attractive and clean appearance, and is amply provided with buildings for the lodging and amusement of its thirteen thousand annual visitors, including a theatre and a large kurhaus. The handsome Roman Catholic church and the tasteful little English church are among the chief ornaments of the place. The springs resemble those of Carlsbad, except that they are cold, and contain nearly twice the quantity of purgative salts. The water is used both internally and externally, and is deemed efficacious in disorders of the stomach and other organs, skin diseases, gout, and nervous complaints. About one million bottles are annually exported. The curative appliances of Marienbad also include the use of goats’ mi⅛ whey, and peat, pine-cone, and gas baths. The climate is healthy and bracing, the mean annual temperature being about 45° Fahr. The springs of Marienbad, though previously used by the peasantry of the district, first came into general notice about the beginning of this century through the instrumentality of Dr Nehr, to whom a monument was erected here in 1857. They belong to the rich abbey of Tepl, which lies about 9 miles to the east. The permanent population of Marienbad was 2009 at the census of 1880.
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