The Lais of Marie de France

In Brittany, a knight whose wife just gave birth to twin sons rejoices and tells his neighbor. The neighbor’s wife, who is “prone to slander and envy” (61), spreads the rumor that the knight’s wife gave birth to twins because she had sex with two men.

Later in the year, when the slanderer gives birth to twin daughters, she is convinced that her own reputation will be ruined. Her first plan is to kill one of the daughters, but a maid of noble birth has the idea that one of the twins should be abandoned in a church, where some worthy man will find her and take her in. The woman wraps up the baby in brocade and ties a ring around her arm with a ribbon. The lady’s damsel takes the baby to an abbey and puts her in the shade of an ash tree. A porter finds the child, and an abbess eventually adopts her, raising her as a niece. They call the baby le Fresne, the old French name for the ash-tree she was found under. The girl grows up to be a beauty.

In the nearby town of Dol, the lord Gurun hears of the maiden’s beauty, and finds a way to meet with her by increasing the abbey’s land in an exchange for a lord’s dwelling-rights. While he is there, he talks to the girl and asks her to be his lover. They escape to his castle, and the girl takes her brocade and ring “for that they might yet turn out to her advantage” (64).

The knights at Gurun’s castle complain that Gurun should free himself from his concubine and marry a lady of noble birth. They say that they know of a lady called La Codre, who is Le Fresne’s equal in beauty and the daughter of a wealthy knight with a rich inheritance.

Le Fresne takes the news that her lover will be married to another woman with equanimity. La Codre’s mother, who is none other than Le Fresne’s own, worries that Le Fresne, the woman the knight loves so much, will threaten her daughter’s position.

The night after the wedding, as Le Fresne prepares the nuptial bedchamber, she makes some adjustments to ensure it is to Gurun’s liking. One of these adjustments is to lay the brocade from her original household on the bed. La Codre’s mother notices the brocade and asks Le Fresne where it is from. When Le Fresne tells her, La Codre’s mother knows that Le Fresne is the daughter she gave away. She informs both Le Fresne and her Gurun of the truth. All is forgiven, and the family is reunited. The next day, the archbishop annuls the marriage between La Codre and Gurun, marrying Le Fresne and Gurun instead.