Those who tell them the story
 That they ask, in memory
 Have it not well, but fall in error
 In many places, and misapprehension.
 In order to make it clearly
 Intelligible to those who have
 No knowledge of letters, it has been turned
 From the Latin, and wholly rendered
 In Romanesque verses, newly,
 Much in secret, for his convent,
 By a youth; a monk he is of the Mount.
 God in his kingdom grant him part!
 William is his name, of Saint Pair
 As is seen written in this book.
 In the time of Robert of Torigny
 Was this roman made and invented.

These verses begin the "Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel," and if the spelling is corrected, they still read almost as easily as Voltaire; more easily than Verlaine; and much like a nursery rhyme; but as tourists cannot stop to clear their path, or smooth away the pebbles, they must be lifted over the rough spots, even when roughness is beauty. Translation is an evil, chiefly because every one who cares for mediaeval architecture cares for mediaeval French, and ought to care still more for mediaeval English. The language of this "Roman" was the literary language of England. William of Saint- Pair was a subject of Henry II, King of England and Normandy; his verses, like those of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, are monuments of English literature. To this day their ballad measure is better suited to English than to French; even the words and idioms are more English than French. Any one who attacks them boldly will find that the "vers romieus" run along like a ballad, singing their own meaning, and troubling themselves very little whether the meaning is exact or not. One's translation is sure to be full of gross blunders, but the supreme blunder is that of translating at all when one is trying to catch not a fact but a feeling. If translate one must, we had best begin by trying to be literal, under protest that it matters not a straw whether we succeed. Twelfth-century art was not precise; still less "precieuse," like Moliere's famous seventeenth-century prudes.

The verses of the young monk, William, who came from the little Norman village of Saint-Pair, near Granville, within sight of the Mount, were verses not meant to be brilliant. Simple human beings like rhyme better than prose, though both may say the same thing, as they like a curved line better than a straight one, or a blue better than a grey; but, apart from the sensual appetite, they chose rhyme in creating their literature for the practical reason that they remembered it better than prose. Men had to carry their libraries in their heads.

These lines of William, beginning his story, are valuable because for once they give a name and a date. Abbot Robert of Torigny ruled at the Mount from 1154 to 1186. We have got to travel again and again between Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres during these years, but for the moment we must hurry to get back to William the Conqueror and the "Chanson de Roland." William of Saint-Pair comes in here, out of place, only on account of a pretty description he gave of the annual pilgrimage to the Mount, which is commonly taken to be more or less like what he saw every year on the Archangel's Day, and what had existed ever since the Normans became Christian in 912:—

Li jorz iert clers e sanz grant vent.
 Les meschines e les vallez
 Chascuns d'els dist verz ou sonnez.
 Neis li viellart revunt chantant

De leece funt tuit semblant.
 Qui plus ne seit si chante outree
 E Dex aie u Asusee.
 Cil jugleor la u il vunt
 Tuit lor vieles traites unt
 Laiz et sonnez vunt vielant.

Li tens est beals la joie est grant.
 Cil palefrei e cil destrier
 E cil roncin e cil sommier
 Qui errouent par le chemin
 Que menouent cil pelerin
 De totes parz henissant vunt
 Por la grant joie que il unt.
 Neis par les bois chantouent tuit
 Li oiselet grant et petit.

Li buef les vaches vunt muant
 Par les forez e repaissant.
 Cors e boisines e fresteals
 E fleutes e chalemeals
 Sonnoent si que les montaignes
 En retintoent et les pleignes.
 Que esteit dont les plaiseiz
 E des forez e des larriz.
 En cels par a tel sonneiz
 Com si ce fust cers acolliz.

Entor le mont el bois follu
 Cil travetier unt tres tendu
 Rues unt fait par les chemins.
 Plentei i out de divers vins
 Pain e pastez fruit e poissons
 Oisels obleies veneisons
 De totes parz aveit a vendre
 Assez en out qui ad que tendre.

The day was clear, without much wind.
 The maidens and the varlets
 Each of them said verse or song;
 Even the old people go singing;

All have a look of joy.
 Who knows no more sings HURRAH,
 Or GOD HELP, or UP AND ON!
 The minstrels there where they go
 Have all brought their viols;
 Lays and songs playing as they go.

The weather is fine; the joy is great;
 The palfreys and the chargers,
 And the hackneys and the packhorses
 Which wander along the road
 That the pilgrims follow,
 On all sides neighing go,
 For the great joy they feel.
 Even in the woods sing all
 The little birds, big and small.

The oxen and the cows go lowing
 Through the forests as they feed.
 Horns and trumpets and shepherd's pipes
 And flutes and pipes of reed
 Sound so that the mountains
 Echo to them, and the plains.
 How was it then with the glades
 And with the forests and the pastures?
 In these there was such sound
 As though it were a stag at bay.

About the Mount, in the leafy wood,
 The workmen have tents set up;
 Streets have made along the roads.
 Plenty there was of divers wines,
 Bread and pasties, fruit and fish,
 Birds, cakes, venison,
 Everywhere there was for sale.
 Enough he had who has the means to pay.

If you are not satisfied with this translation, any scholar of French will easily help to make a better, for we are not studying grammar or archaeology, and would rather be inaccurate in such matters than not, if, at that price, a freer feeling of the art could be caught. Better still, you can turn to Chaucer, who wrote his Canterbury Pilgrimage two hundred years afterwards:—

Whanne that April with his shoures sote
 The droughte of March hath perced to the rote…
 Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages
 And palmeres for to seken strange strondes…
 And especially, from every shires ende
 Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende
 The holy blisful martyr for to seke,
 That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.

The passion for pilgrimages was universal among our ancestors as far back as we can trace them. For at least a thousand years it was their chief delight, and is not yet extinct. To feel the art of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again: but, just now, the point of most interest is not the pilgrim so much as the minstrel who sang to amuse him,—the jugleor or jongleur,— who was at home in every abbey, castle or cottage, as well as at every shrine. The jugleor became a jongleur and degenerated into the street-juggler; the minstrel, or menestrier, became very early a word