20   EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD   21

One group of doubtful references apparently question the reliability of the written source. In most cases the seeming doubt is probably the result of awkward phrasing. Statements like " as the story doth us both write and mean," I • "as the book says and true men tell us," 2 "but the book us lie," a need have little more significance than the slightly absurd declaration,

The gospel nul I forsake nought

Thaugh it be written in parchemyn.4

ore re direct questionings incline one, however, to take the matter a little more seriously. The translator of a Canticum de Creatione, strangely fabulous in content, presents his material with the words,

— as we finden in lectrure,

I not whether it be in holy scripture.'

The author of one of the legends of the Holy Cross says,
This tale, quether hit be it or gode,

I fande hit writen of the rode.

Mani tells diverseli,

For thai finde diverse stori.6

Capgrave, in his legend of St. Katherine, takes issue unmistakably with his source.

In this reknyng myne auctour & I are too:

ffor he accordeth not wytz cronicles that ben olde,

But diversyth from hem, & that in many thyngis.

There he accordeth, ther I him hold;

1 Altenglische ,Sammlung, Neue Folge, St. Etheldred Eliensis, 1. 162.

2 Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden, Erasmus, 1. 4.

3 Ibid., Magdalena, 1. 48.

4 Minor Poems of the Vernon MS., Pt. 1, St. Bernard's Lamentation,

11. 21-2.

6 Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden, Fragment of Canticum de Crea-

tione, 11. 49-50.

6 Legends of the Holy Rood, E. E. T. S., How the Holy Cross was found

by St. Helena, 11. 684-7.

And where he diversyth in ordre of theis kyngis, I leve hym, & to oder mennys rekenyngis I geve more credens whech be-fore hym and me Sette alle these men in ordre & degre.'

Except when this mistrust is made a justification for divergence from the original, these comments contribute little to our knowledge of the medieval translator's methods and need concern us little. More needful of explanation is the reference which implies that the English writer is not working from a manuscript, but is reproducing something which he has heard read or recounted, or which he has read for himself at some time in the past. How is one to interpret phrases like that which introduces the story of Golagros and Gawain, "as true men me told," or that which appears at the beginning of Rauf Coilyear, "heard I tell"? One explanation, obviously true in some cases, is that such references are only conventional. The concluding lines of Ywain and Gawin,

Of them no more have I heard tell Neither in romance nor in spe11,2

are simply a rough rendering of the French

Ne ja plus n'en orroiz conter, S'an n'i vialt manconge ajoster.3

On the other hand, the author of the long romance of Ipomadon, which follows its source with a closeness which precludes all possibility of reproduction from memory, has tacked on two references to hearing,4 not only without a basis in the French but in direct contradiction to Hue de Rotelande's account of the source of his material. In Emare, "as I have heard minstrels sing in sawe" is apparently introduced as

1 E. E. T. S., Bk. 1, 11. 684-91.   2 Ed. Ritson, 11. 4027-8.

3 Chevalier au Lyon, ed. W. L. Holland, 1886, 11. 6805-6.

4 Ed. Kolbing, 1889, 11. 144, 4514.