Introduction

Manuscript, Editions, Translations

The lay of Espine is preserved in two manuscripts: (i) MS B, f. 481v, col. 1 – 484r, col. 1, (ii) MS S, f. 27v, col. 1 – 30v, col. 2. It is not found in the Norse Strengleikar collection. An edition based on MS B was published in 1819 by B. de Roquefort with a facing prose translation in French (Poésies de Marie de France, I, pp. 542–81). Two further editions were published in the nineteenth century, by Gotthard Gullberg in Deux lais du XIIIe siècle (1876) and Rudolf Zenker in the Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie (1893). Gullberg provides a diplomatic edition of MS B (pp. 25–41) and a reprint of Roquefort's edition (pp. 62–73), whereas Zenker edits MS S (his MS A) with variants from MS B. In 1976 an edition of Espine, based on MS B, was included in Prudence M. O’H. Tobin's Les Lais anonymes des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (pp. 264–83). Tobin's text was reprinted in 1984 by Walter Pagani with a facing Italian translation (pp. 196–225) and again in 1992 by Alexandre Micha with a facing Modern French translation (pp. 226–55). There is a partial prose translation of the lay, up to the appearance of the knight at the ford, in Legrand d’Aussy's Fabliaux ou contes du XIIe siècle (1779, pp. 244–49, plus later editions). The lay has also been translated into English by Eugene Mason (1911, pp. 137–47), into Modern French by Danielle Régnier-Bohler (1979, pp. 121–32) and Nathalie Desgrugillers (2003, pp. 73–81), into Dutch by Ludo Jongen and Paul Verhuyck (1985, pp. 195–100), into Spanish by Isabel de Riquer (1987, pp. 97–106) and into Japanese by Atsuko Iwamoto in Lais bretons féeriques au Moyen Age (1998).

Author and Date

There are at least three elements within the text which suggest that the author was writing in England. In the opening lines he states that his story derives from a collection of ‘estoires’ to be found in the church of St Aaron in Caerleon (vv. 6– 8). Furthermore, the lay revolves around a series of chivalric encounters which take place by night at a ford.