Footnote 50:  Only one word in about three hundred and fifty is of French origin.  A century later Robert Mannyng uses one French word in eighty, while Chaucer has one in six or seven.  This includes repetitions, and is a fair estimate rather than an exact computation.

Footnote 51:  The matter of Britain refers strictly to the Arthurian, i.e. the Welsh romances; and so another division, the matter of England, may be noted.  This includes tales of popular English heroes, like Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Horn Child, etc.

Footnote 52:  According to mediaeval literary custom these songs were rarely signed.  Later, when many songs were made over into a long poem, the author signed his name to the entire work, without indicating what he had borrowed

Footnote 53:  An English book in which such romances were written was called a Gest or Jest Book.  So also at the beginning of Cursor Mundi (c. 1320) we read: 

    Men yernen jestis for to here
    And romaunce rede in diverse manere,

and then follows a summary of the great cycles of romance, which we are considering.

Footnote 54:  Tennyson goes farther than Malory in making Gawain false and irreverent.  That seems to be a mistake; for in all the earliest romances Gawain is, next to Arthur, the noblest of knights, the most loved and honored of all the heroes of the Round Table.

Footnote 55:  There were various French versions of the story; but it came originally from the Irish, where the hero was called Cuchulinn.

Footnote 56:  It is often alleged that in this romance we have a very poetical foundation for the Order of the Garter, which was instituted by Edward III, in 1349; but the history of the order makes this extremely doubtful.  The reader will be chiefly interested in comparing this romance with Beowulf, for instance, to see what new ideals have taken root in England.

Footnote 57:  Originally Cockaygne (variously spelled) was intended to ridicule the mythical country of Avalon, somewhat as Cervantes’ Don Quixote later ridicules the romances of chivalry.  In Luxury Land everything was good to eat; houses were built of dainties and shingled with cakes; buttered larks fell instead of rain; the streams ran with good wine; and roast geese passed slowly down the streets, turning themselves as they went.

Footnote 58:  Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads is the most scholarly and complete collection in our language.  Gummere’s Old English Ballads is a good short work.  Professor Kittredge’s Introduction to the Cambridge edition of Child’s Ballads is the best summary of a very difficult subject.  For an extended discussion of the literary character of the ballad, see Gummere’s The Popular Ballad.

Footnote 59:  little bird.

Footnote 60:  in her language.