"Sir Orfeo", the Minstrel, and the Minstrel's Art
"Sir Orfeo", the Minstrel, and the Minstrel's Art
Author(s): Robert M. Longsworth
Studies in Philology, Vol. 79, No. 1 (Winter, 1982), pp. 1-11
Sir Orfeo, The Minstrel, and the Minstrel's Art
by Robert M. Longsworth
AUTHORS and critics alike are rightly and understandably
concerned that the definitive text of a literary work be preserved
accurately-that is to say, in the form given by the
hand of the author. Such a task is never easy, and it is particularly
difficult in the case of medieval literature. Chaucer himself, after all,
wittily threatened his slovenly scribe Adam with a plague of scabs for
marring the text that he was employed to copy. Modern editorial practice
has, accordingly, stimulated the development of textual criticism
to a noteworthy pitch of scientific refinement; and Chaucer might
marvel at the care with which his auctorial intentions have at last been
rescued from Adam's sin by patient scholars and discerning editors.
Story-telling, on the other hand, even as a highly-developed form
of social entertainment, is an evanescent art that by its very nature is
indifferent to textual authority. Tales passed along by word of mouth
alone not only undergo but must be expected by their makers and
transmitters to undergo substantial changes in their journey toward
fame.
Medieval romances, as a literary genre, have as it were a foot in
both worlds. Some were made to be read-often, no doubt, by the
author in person-to and for the entertainment of a specific, usually
courtly audience. Others existed as the communal property of
minstrels who moved from place to place, without benefit of a portable
library, to rehearse and to sing at banquets or other festive occasions.
The romance that was composed to be read certainly had a discrete identity, of which subsequent scribal copies, insofar as they diverged
from the original, would be demonstrably flawed. The romance
that unfolded from memory on the lips of a minstrel, however,
had a protean identity: any single performance had a claim on authenticity,
notwithstanding divergences from the version given at any
other performance.
To some extent, it seems to me, the duality of this formal heritage
should be reckoned with in the interpretation of all medieval romances,
for differences between textual and non-textual expectations
and conventions can produce unacknowledged but manifest differences
in thematic and stylistic conventions. Particularly, however, it is
important to distinguish between the text of a romance for which a
definitive auctorial version may be presumed or established-say, for
example, in the case of Chretien de Troyes-and the text that may be
presumed to have been set down based on the performance from
memory of a romance that was circulated among several minstrels or
even by a single minstrel.
The textual problem posed by widely-varying versions of a single
work has long plagued editors, and students of the romance have
recognized the prominent part played by the conventions of oral performance
in creating such variants. It has usually been assumed,
however, that variants are symptomatic of or synonymous with textual
and artistic corruption.[1]I suspect rather that variation was both
expected and encouraged among medieval romanciers in the telling of
their stories-and that the establishment of a definitive text for any
specific "adventure" was not often thought important.[2]
This argument can perhaps best be made by examining closely a
single exemplary romance in light of the distinction drawn and the
implications of that distinction. The medieval English poem Sir Orfeo
suggests itself not only by reason of its form but also because of its
subject.
Sir Orfeo survives in three complete versions, all of which are
printed in the admirable edition by A. J. Bliss.[3] An effort to ascertain
the affiliation of these three versions leads Bliss to conclude in frustration
that "no critical text is possible."[4 ]He speculates that at least one
of the versions (in MS Harley 3810) "was written down by a minstrel
from memory," but what leads him to this conclusion is "the generally
advanced corruption of the readings" in the text.[5] Corruption in this
case, however, is not tantamount to confusion. As Bliss's hypothetical
minstrel suggests, it rather represents a divergence from the other
versions that is too great to be explained by scribal whim. Indeed, that
a primary "text" has experienced "corruption" seems to me a dubious
assumption to make about what has happened. Reflecting on the
memory of the minstrel or minstrels, and on the effect that memory
may have had on the various versions of the romance, leads at any
rate to a different assumption: the three texts may represent three distinct
and equally authentic realizations of the romance. If so, then
each version is the product of memory and of making. Marion
Stewart has recently discovered and published fragments of a fourth
version, recorded in Middle Scots:[6] despite its apparent similarity to
the other three versions, the "complete lack of verbal echoes"[7] remarked
by Stewart permits the assumption that a fourth distinct and
authentic realization was produced.
Among these four versions, there is no reason to suppose that the
right of primogeniture itself should convey artistic authority. The Auchinleck
MS version is doubtless the eldest and the Middle Scots
fragments are the most recent; but the Harley MS version is the shortest
complete version by nearly a hundred lines. The Ashmole MS
version makes such a fundamental change in the tale as placing the initial visitation of Herodis by the Fairy King after she has awakened from rather than during her sleep in the orchard.[8] Such variations
amount to remarkable reshapings-perhaps even, to a fastidiously
textual critic, distortions-of the poem. Yet the maker or makers of Sir
Orfeo, I think, expected-nay, even welcomed (or at least arranged
matters hospitably for)-such improvisational treatment of the story.
The author or authors do not, to be sure, ignore the value of a literary
text-after all, the prologue in two of the three versions begins by
calling attention to the written form in which "lays" may be found;[9]
but corporate authorship and oral transmission are presumed-kings
or minstrels, upon hearing a "marvel" or an "adventure,"
pai token an harp in gle & game
& maked a lay & 3af it name. (19-20) [10]
Moreover, the poet of the Auchinleck version generously attributes
Sir Orfeo itself to the creative labors of musical predecessors:
Harpours in Bretaine after pan
Herd hou Pis meruaile bigan,
& made her-of a lay of gode likeing. (597-9)
The qualities in a work that allow most scope for ornamental improvisation
while at the same time minimizing the likelihood of radical
changes are just those qualities that Sir Orfeo fundamentally embodies.
This point may be seen by comparing the three complete versions
that survive. Broadly, each tells the same story in the same basic
fashion. In any particular passage, however, variation is inevitably
considerable. A single example may suffice by way of illustration.
Any part of the poem could be used for this purpose, but an especially
striking passage can be most useful. After all, the more striking
the effect, the more likely (we might suppose) it should have been to
be passed along intact from one storyteller to the next.
When Orfeo enters upon his self-imposed exile of ten years' duration,
he abandons all of his possessions except his harp and all of his
customary activities except his harping. Each version of the poem
takes pains to emphasize both the abruptness and the force of this
transformation by contrasting his fugitive with his courtly existence.
Two details in particular are singled out for this purpose-the growth
of his beard (a signal of change) and his keeping of his harp (a signal
of continuity). In each of the three versions, the beard grows "black
and rough"; in two of the versions (Auchinleck and Ashmole) it
reaches to his belt and in one (Harley) it reaches below his belt. As for
his harp, in the Auchinleck version he hides it "in an holwe tre" (268);
but in the Ashmole version the hollow tree becomes his own sylvan
dwelling:
In a tre pat was holow,
Ther was hys haule euyn & morow. (269-70)
In the Harley version, the hollowness of the tree is absent altogether.
Instead, the tree provides to Orfeo in the wilderness the same kind of
shelter that was furnished by that other tree under which Herodis
had rested in the orchard:
He take p his harpe & make p hym gle,
& lype al ny3t under a tre. (255-6)
Each version makes use of the tree; but in each it serves a slightly
different purpose, and provides a slightly different perspective upon
Orfeo's exile in relation to other parts of the poem. One may argue
the merits of the three versions. One may finally in fact prefer one of
the versions to the others. But it does not follow that the preferred
version is the definitive version. The story has been shaped in such a
way that in any imaginable version Orfeo will inevitably be alone in
the wilderness with his harp; and the wilderness is furnished with the
(hollow) tree, emblematic as it is of the ungoverned forest. But beyond
that rough design, the story allows to the individual teller the
ornamental license of shaping details to fit a variable program of ornamentation.
In order artfully to preserve the story, then, the maker must strike a
happy and skillful balance between those elements that will constrain
a subsequent teller without tempting that teller to alter what is fundamental
or basic; and those elements that will encourage or at least
allow a certain ornamental liberty to the imaginative urges of any teller
into whose possession the genius of the work may come. For
thereby the poem will keep its fundamental character; but it will also
insure its appeal to other skillful tellers, and thereby acquire stature
among that welter of adventures that compete for the teller's attention.
Sir Orfeo is a particularly distinguished achievement of that kind.
If the structure of Sir Orfeo exemplifies the ability of a skillfullymade
tale to retain its power through the changes to which oral performance
and oral transmission must have subjected it, the subject of
Sir Orfeo is delectably an assertion of that same power. After all, the
hero of the work is a minstrel, and the instrument of his heroism is
minstrelsy. The minstrel's art is at once subject to the forces of change
and capable of compelling change-as all art can be both the fragile
victim of and the potent victor over the dissolution wrought by reality
upon illusion or by things upon the appearance of things. In a sense,
the lay might be said to be what it portrays. It is a work of art the subject
of which is art itself. Or, to put the matter less portentously, the
design of the work embodies the signification of the work.
Composed in simple (and easily memorable) four-beat rhyming
couplets, the poem in each of its complete versions is described by its
author/teller as a Breton lay. The two-fold story that it unfolds-of
Queen Herodis' abduction by the Fairy King and her subsequent rescue
by King Orfeo; of King Orfeo's abandonment of his throne at the
loss of his queen and his reclaiming of the throne upon her return-is
both charming and graceful, but singularly lacking in sententiousness.
Despite the arguments made for its moral orthodoxy, no lesson
is pointed: the poem is certainly not heterodox, but neither is it
explicitly moralistic.[11] Yet it is clearly different in substance and tone
from the classical story upon which it is based.[12]
In fact, it is tempting to speculate that the maker or makers of the
poem have knowingly toyed with the version of Orpheus' descent to
the underworld related by Virgil in Book IV of the Georgics. There, the
anguished musician in search of his beloved reaches a "grove that is
murky with black terror"( caligantemn igraf ormidinelu cum),[13] and encounters "hearts that know not how to soften at human prayers" (nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda: 470). The medieval Orfeo
instead discovers a "fair cuntray" (351) that in appearance resembles
a locus amoenus4 -a setting of pastoral serenity-rather than a murky
grove. Moreover, of course, Orfeo succeeds in his mission where Virgil's
(and Ovid's and Boethius') Orpheus fails: the medieval poet eschews
the tragic peripety in which Orpheus loses Eurydice by casting
the forbidden glance back at her as they stand on the very verge of recovered
light.[15]
If the pastoral landscape of the Fairy kingdom in Sir Orfeo reverses
the terrifying desolation of Virgil's imagined otherworld, it no doubt
owes a debt to Celtic legend and tradition. But it is a pastoral pleasance
as well; and if a grand castle obtrudes unexpectedly upon a
classical scene of natural beauty, the poet has after all led us to expect
the intrusion of the unexpected into the purlieus of this poem.[16] The
"fair cuntray" into which Orfeo blunders in hot pursuit of his lady is,
at any rate, a gentler and more hospitable place than the wilderness
wherein he has wandered during the ten years of his self-imposed
exile. The splendid castle that he descries in the midst of that tranquil
scene promises to be an even more hospitable, because noble and
courtly, place; but its architectural grandeur conceals a scene of grim
desolation, of mutilation and arrested motion. In successive stages,
then, those expectations are denied to which appearances and the
familiar associations of appearances give rise.
This technique of counterposing the expected and the unexpected
is not merely a stylistic whim; it provides a formal correlative to the
conceptual and thematic movements of the tale. It permits the poet,
in a fresh and delicate fashion, to shape the poem skillfully about that most obsessive of medieval themes, the assertion of order in an apparently disordered universe.
The apparent order in which the poem opens progressively unravels
as the story unfolds: from the horticulture of the orchard in
which Herodis sleeps to the uncultivated wilderness of Orfeo's exile,
from the social and domestic comforts of the court to the anti-social
and alien discomforts of homelessness, from the natural connectedness
of daily affairs to the disconnectedness of supernatural intervention
into those affairs. From the moment when Herodis awakens from
her morning sleep unrefreshed and hysterical, disorder encroaches
steadily upon the world within the poem. Only the poetry itself appears
to retain order-the poetry, that is, and the music that symbolizes
it within the story. Orfeo's harp has throughout the poem the
power to bring into harmony nature, society, and other temporal
powers.17 And when at last this power reaches to the heart of the disorder
that conceals itself in successive layers of seeming order, the
poem reverses itself abruptly and knits up into natural, domestic, and
civil harmony the ravelled threads of dissonance in the poem: Orfeo
and Herodis are reunited, the kingdom is restored, and loyalty is rewarded.
Yet art is at odds with art in the poem. At the turning point of the
story, Orfeo and the Fairy King carry on an exquisite though brief disputation
that turns on a point which is critical to art itself-whether,
in fact (to toy with Keats), truth is more important than beauty. The
poem resolves the disputation in favor of truth-or at least it appears
to do so; for the Fairy King, to whom Orfeo in disguise has abased his
own claim to kingship by kneeling in an act of ostensible fealty, ironically
accedes to the metaphysical claim made by Orfeo that a lie despoils
beauty more than physical ugliness does:
'O, Sir!' he seyd, 'Gentil King!
3ete were it a wele fouler Ping
To here a lesing of pi moupe. (463-5)
Yet Orfeo himself subsequently resorts to a "lesing" (lie) when he
tests his steward's loyalty in his effort to reclaim the throne. Wrapped
in a two-fold disguise (as a minstrel wearing the garb of a beggar), he
accounts for having his own harp (which the steward has recognized)
by describing his own imagined slaughter (538-41) by the wolves and lions that had in fact been charmed into a kind of native civility by his
skillful minstrelsy (270-4). The artist, then, is apparently not bound
to the strict code of verity that binds the ruler and the court.
But then, the interplay between appearance and reality has been a
pervasive concern throughout the story. The Fairy King, for example,
appears to Herodis in a dream. In this case, as in most medieval
dream-lore, the dream has prophetic authority; even so, the dream is
a kind of disguise worn by reality. And the Fairy King preposterously
snatches Herodis away in broad daylight, under the nose of Orfeo
and his thousand armed knights[18]-an act the inexplicable mechanics
of which suggest an optical illusion. Even the glimpses of the Fairy
King's retinue that the exiled Orfeo catches in his wilderness have the
quality of apparitions-"ac neuer he nist whider Pai wold" (296)[19]-
-until he catches sight of Herodis among them, and pursues her "in
at a rock" to the "fair cuntray" of Fairy Land.
A corresponding method of disguise is apparent in the use of biblical
allusions. Thus, when Orfeo catches sight of the fairy castle into
which Herodis has disappeared, he sees a crystalline wall the buttresses
of which are gold, with enamelled vaulting; and the buildings
within which are made of precious jewels. The place possesses, indeed,
an inner light that banishes darkness even during the hours of
night (see 355-76). This remarkable place, which indeed leads Orfeo
to believe that he has caught sight of "Pe proude court of Paradis"
(376), is redolent of the Holy City described in the Revelation of St.
John: its "light was like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper
stone, clear as crystal" (21:11), its wall was built of jasper, with foundations
"adorned with all manner of precious stones" (21:18).[20]
Moreover, this celestial Jerusalem "hath no need of sun, neither of the
moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it" (21:23).
Herodis' sleep beneath the young tree planted in the garden to which
she has gone for refreshment in the fructiferous warmth of early
spring recalls the Song of Songs, with its description of spring (see 2:10-12), its sensuous imagery of gardens ("thou that dwellest in the
gardens, the companions hearken for thy voice": 8:13), and the
sleeper beneath a tree ("under the apple tree I awakened thee": 8:5).
Like David, too, who was able to soothe King Saul by playing the
harp (see, e.g., I Samuel 16:23), Orfeo is able to charm the Fairy King
by the gle of his minstrelsy.
On the other hand, the expectations aroused by these allusions are
rather thwarted than fulfilled. The castle which Orfeo takes for
Paradise conceals not tearless saints who forever sing the praises of
God but a grotesque, silent, and motionless tableau vivant of the Fairy
King's victims. The orchard sleep of Herodis leads not to the fruition
of love but to a nightmare in which love is broken by separation. And
Orfeo's single-minded devotion to his beloved Herodis is striking
contrast to the polygamous habits of the Psalmist-King David's.
Thus, biblical allusion is abundant, but the uses to which it is put are
somewhat surprising and unexpected.
Both formally and thematically, then, the poem portrays the unfamiliar
hidden within the familiar, uncertainty concealed within certitude,
and reality disguised by appearance-or vice versa. The manner,
however, belongs to the magician rather than to the moralist.
Playfulness is, after all, the driving spirit of the work. It maintains its
delicate equilibrium not by denying complexity in favor of simplicity
but by making complexity seem simple through the careful balancing
of contending forces.[21] The court of Orfeo and the court of the Fairy
King are at once similar and dissimilar-similar in their cherishing of
courtly pastimes, dissimilar in the forces that sustain them and in the
forces to which they are susceptible. The role Orfeo plays-the wandering
minstrel-appears to be a disguise, but it is in fact his true vocation.
As a musician Orfeo recovers what as a king and as a lover he
has lost; his art succeeds where his armed might fails. Yet art itself is
rooted in deception, and the poem carefully though indirectly celebrates
that delicious irony. The Fairy King is deceived by Orfeo's art
into releasing Herodis-but the Fairy King, after all, had first practiced
deceit by snatching Herodis away from Orfeo. The birds themselves
are deceived into auditory respectfulness in the wilderness
when Orfeo plays his harp (275-8), though to hear the birds sing is a reason (68) for Herodis' visit to the orchard from which she is
snatched by the Fairy King. And if the Fairy King's castle deceives
Orfeo by its appearance as "Pe proude court of Paradis" (376), his
own harping is able to deceive a listener into thinking that he or she is
suddenly "in on of Pe ioies of Paradis" (37). In regaining his throne,
Orfeo makes use of his art deceptively to ascertain that he has not
been deceived nor betrayed by the steward. And the steward passes
the test: in fact, as he recognizes Orfeo and joins in the celebration of
disorder reordered, he ironically knocks over the table-a little and
trivial sign of disorder creeps in even at the climactic moment of restoration
(578).[22]
This splendid control, evidence of the thematic and stylistic balance
embodied in the poem, is pervasive. Consummately crafted, the
poem seems artlessly artful; it seems delicate, though it is in fact
tough; it seems slight, though it is substantial. Moreover, the maker
of the poem is quite aware of its tenacious qualities: after all, he ascribes
to the harpers in whose instruments its art will sing the
confident and warranted critical judgment, "Gode is Pe lay, swete is
Pe note" (602). Too good, too sweet perhaps, to suffer butchery at the
hands of other minstrels who-however they prune or ornament the
story-will make it their own.
Oberlin College
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Footnotes:
1 A. C. Baugh, for example, in "Improvisation in the Medieval English Romance,"
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society CIII (1959), 418-54, has produced a useful
study of formulae, themes, and variations on a theme among different romances
and among the several surviving versions of certain single romances. He also argues
strenuously that the variations are more likely due to improvisation on a written original
than to oral composition; but he assumes that the improvisation must inevitably
have been corruptive and destructive of the original (and therefore correct) version of
the story. See also M. Mills, "A Mediaeval Reviser at Work," Medium Aevum, XXXII
(1963), 11-23.
2 Hans Robert Jauss, among others, has recently observed this textual fluidity,
suggesting that "in the medieval understanding of literature, the singular work is generally
viewed neither as a one-time, self-enclosed, and final form, nor as an individual
production of its author, to be shared with no one else." See "The Alterity and Modernity
of Medieval Literature,," New Literary History, X (1979), 191. Jauss appears to conclude
that establishing a sound text is therefore pointless. Such a conclusion, however,
does not follow from the observation. What does follow is that the surviving versions ofmedieval works in which variants are substantial can be studied and compared fruitfully
as texts with a certain (albeit circumscribed) authority in their own right.
3 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1966).
4 See p. xv.
5 See p. xvi.
6 "'King Orphius,' Scottish Studies, XVII (1973), I-16.
7 "'King Orphius,' p. 14.
8 See Ashmole 6i, 11. 13iff.; cf. Harley 3810, 11. 131ff., and Auchinleck, 11. 133ff.
9 Auchinleck and Harley MSS; the version in the Ashmole MS omits this observation.
10 Citations of Sir Orfeo are to the Auchinleck version unless otherwise noted.
11 This view is not widely shared by critics, who have drawn a variety of moral lessons
from the poem. For example, in an elegant essay on "The Uses of the Past in Sir
Orfeo,"Y earbookof English Studies, VI (1976), Felicity Riddy finds the poem "profoundly
Christian: it affirms the possibility of the miraculous in everyday life, of the dead being
raised and the prodigal returning home" (p. 15). For Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis, the
poem shows Orfeo learning "what values man should cherish": see "The Significance
of Sir Orfeo's Self-Exile, RES, XVIII (1967), 251. D. M. Hill, "The Structure of 'Sir
Orfeo,"' Mediaeval Studies, XXIII (1961), 136-53, sees the work as celebrating the primacy
of heterosexual love. Several other views could be cited; for present purposes,
however, it is perhaps sufficient to observe that the multiplication of views arises in
part from the absence of an explicit lesson in the poem itself.
12 See the admirable study by John Block Friedman, Orpheus in the Middle Ages (Cambridge,
Mass., 1970).
13 L.468. Quotations and translations are from the edition in the Loeb Classical Library,
ed. and tr. by H. Rushton Fairclough.
14 See E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Willard R. Trask
(London, 1953), pp. l9off.
15 As L. P. Wilkinson points out, of course, "the normal [pre-Virgilian] version of the
story made Orpheus successful in bringing Eurydice back to earth." See The Georgics of
Virgil: A Critical Survey (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 116-17. See also C. M. Bowra, "Orpheus
and Eurydice," The Classical Quarterly, n.s. II (1952), 113-26. The kinship of the
medieval romance with the "happy version" of the classical myth is considered by
Friedman. Michael C. J. Putnam, in Virgil's Poem of the Earth: Studies in the Georgics
(Princeton, 1979) has an interesting discussion of Orpheus as Virgilian artist (see esp.
pp. 291ff.).
16 In his Anticlaudianus, Alanus de Insulis applies to Nature's dwelling, a "towering
castle surrounded by a grove," the superlative epithet (redolent of the classically pastoral
phrase) locus iste locorum: see J. P. Migne, ed., P L. CCX, 490, or the edition by R.
Bossuat (Paris, 1955), I, 73. Aurelius Cassiodorus describes Paradise in similar terms, as
amoenissimus locus et felicissimae jocundatis aeterna securitas: see PL., LXX, 987.
17 See David Lyle Jeffrey, "The Exiled King: Sir Orfeo's Harp and the Second Death
of Eurydice," Mosaic, IX (1976), 45-60.
18 The version in MS Harley 3810 uses the more cautious figure of 200. Dean R.
Baldwin provides a very useful reading of this episode and others as well against a
background of traditional fairy lore. See "Fairy Lore and the Meaning of Sir Orfeo,"
Southern Folklore Quarterly, XL (1977), 129-42.
19 See also the Harley version, 1. 278; and the Ashmole version, 1. 294.
20 Cf. Dorothee Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (New Haven and
London, 1977), who suspects (despite the scarcity of fleshly delights) that the Islamic
paradise depicted in the Liber Scalae may have influenced the paradise of Sir Orfeo (p.
217).
21 See Mary Hynes-Berry, "Cohesion in King Horn and Sir Orfeo," Speculum, L (1975),
for an interesting exposition of the view that what elevates Sir Orfeo "to such a high
level of art is [the antithesis] between its complexity as artifact and its essential simplicity"
(p. 655).
22 The dislodged table is used in the Ashmole version, but not in the Harley nor in
the Scottish version: but then, it serves an ornamental rather than a structural purpose.