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AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE

Song-Story of the Twelfth Century

If "Old Antif" of Hainault was, as the best authorities now
incline to think, the author of "Aucassin and Nicolette,"
Belgium may claim to have produced the finest poet of the ages
of chivalry. He was probably a contemporary of the English
minstrel king, Richard the Lion-hearted. But nothing is known
of him save what can be gathered from the exquisite story of
love which he composed in his old age. Perhaps he, too, was,
in his younger days, a Crusader as well as a minstrel, and
fought in the Holy Land against the Saracens. His "song-story"
is certainly Arabian both in form and substance. Even his
hero, Aucassin, the young Christian lord of Beaucaire, bears
an Arabian name--Alcazin. There is nothing in Mohammedan
literature equal to "Aucassin and Nicolette." It can be
compared only with Shakespeare's "As You Like It." The old,
sorrowful, tender-hearted minstrel knight, who wandered from
castle to castle in Hainault and Picardy seven hundred years
ago, is one of the master-singers of the world.


_I.--Lovers Young and Fair_