Soon many more people began to
write about them, and especially about Arthur.
In 1155 Geoffrey died, and that year a Frenchman, or Jerseyman
rather, named Robert Wace, finished a long poem which he called
Li Romans de Brut or the Romances of Brutus. This poem was
founded upon Geoffrey's history and tells much the same story, to
which Wace has added something of his own. Besides Wace, many
writers told the tale in French. For French, you must remember,
was still the language of the rulers of our land. It is to these
French writers, and chiefly to Walter Map, perhaps, that we owe
something new which was now added to the Arthur story.
Walter Map, like so many of the writers of this early time, was a
priest. He was chaplain to Henry II., and was still alive when
John, the bad king, sat upon the throne.
The first writers of the Arthur story had made a great deal of
manly strength: it was often little more than a tale of hard
knocks given and taken. Later it became softened by the thought
of courtesy, with the idea that knights might give and take these
hard knocks for the sake of a lady they loved, and in the cause
of all women.
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