As a writer of history Geoffrey is bad.  Another chronicler* says of him, “Therefore as in all things we trust Bede, whose wisdom and truth are not to be doubted:  so that fabler with his fables shall be forthwith spat out by us all.”

William of Newbury.

But if Geoffrey was a bad writer of history, he was good as “a fabler,” and, as we have seen in chapter vii., it was to his book that we owe the first long poem written in English after the Conquest.

The Norman came with sword in hand, bringing in his train the Latin-writing chroniclers.  But he did not bring these alone.  He brought minstrels also.  Besides the quiet monks who sat in their little cells, or in the pleasant cloisters, writing the history of the times, there were the light-hearted minstrels who roamed the land with harp and song.

The man who struck the first blow at Hastings was a minstrel who, as he rode against the English, sang.  And the song he sang was of Roland, the great champion of Charlemagne.  The Roland story is to France what the Arthur story is to us.  And it shows, perhaps, the strength of English patriotic spirit that that story never took hold of English minds.  Some few tales there are told of Roland in English, but they are few indeed, in comparison with the many that are told of Arthur.

The Norman, however, who did not readily invent new tales, was very good at taking and making his own the tales of others.  So, even as he conquered England by the sword, he conquered our literature too.  For the stories of Arthur were told in French before they came back to us in English.  It was the same with other tales, and many of our old stories have come down to us, not through their English originals, but through the French.  For the years after the Conquest are the poorest in English Literature.

From the Conquest until Layamon wrote his Brut, there was no English literature worthy of the name.  Had we not already spoken of Layamon out of true order in following the story of Arthur, it is here that we should speak of him and of his book, The Brut.  So, perhaps, it would be well to go back and read chapter vii., and then we must go on to the Metrical Romances.

The three hundred years from 1200 to 1500 were the years of the Metrical Romances.  Metrical means written in verse.  Romance meant at first the languages made from the Latin tongue, such as French or Spanish.  After a time the word Romance was used to mean a story told in any Romance language.  But now we use it to mean any story of strange and wonderful adventures, especially when the most thrilling adventures happen to the hero and heroine.

The Norman minstrels, then, took English tales and made them into romances.  But when the English began once more to write, they turned these romances back again into English.  We still call them romances, although they are now written in English.