SOURCE: “The Prologues of the Lay le Freine and Sir Orfeo,” Modern Language Notes, Vol. XXXVI, No. 8, December, 1921, pp. 458-64.

In the following essay, Guillaume explains why she doubts Lucien Foulet's assertions (see excerpt above) concerning the prologue to Sir Orfeo, and advances her own: the prologue was written not by a French, but by an English author; the prologue's author also wrote the Lay le Freine; and the prologue was borrowed by Sir Orfeo's author.

The only known copy of the Middle-English Breton Lay le Freine, preserved in the famous Auchinleck Manuscript, has a prologue which differs but slightly from the prologue prefixed to two of the three extant copies of the Middle-English Breton Lay, Sir Orfeo.¹ It is still an open question whether the Prologue originally belonged to the Lay le Freine or to Sir Orfeo. Lucien Foulet,² the only scholar who has examined the...