_"Les Veus du Hairon," or "Le Voeu du Héron."_--Is any more known of this
curious historical romance than Sainte Palaye tells us in the third volume
of his _Mémoires sur l'Ancienne Chevalerie_? He gives the original text (I
suspect not very correctly) from, he says, a MS. in the public library at
Berne. It is a poem in old French verse (something like Chaucer's English),
of about 500 lines, descriptive of a series of _vows_, by which Robert
Comte d'Artois, then an exile in England, engaged Edward III., his queen
and court, to the invasion of France:
"Dont maint bon chevalier fu jété fort souvin;
Mainte dame fu vesve, et maint povre orfelin;
Et maint bon maronier accourchit son termin;
Et mainte preude femme mise à divers destin;
Et encore sera, si Jhesus n'i met fin."
The first lines of the poem give the place and date of the transaction,
"London, September, 1338," in King Edward's "palais marbrin." The
versification is as strange as the matter. The author has taken great pains
to collect as many words rhyming together as possible. The first twenty-six
lines rhyme to "in;" the hundred next to "is;" then fifty to "ent," and so
on: but the lines have all their rhythm, and some are smooth and
harmonious. Has any other MS. been discovered? Has it been elsewhere
printed? Has it been translated into English, or has any English author
noticed it? If these questions are answered in the negative, I would
suggest that the Camden, or some such society, would do well to reprint it,
with a translation, and Sainte Palaye's commentary, and whatever additional
information can be gathered about it; for although it evidently is a
_romance_, it contains many particulars of the court of England, and of the
manners of the time, which are extremely curious, and which must have a
good deal of truth mixed up with the chivalrous fable.