The warlike, adventurous spirit of the vikings mingled in its blood with
the French nimbleness of wit and fondness for display. The Normans were
a nation of knights-errant, with a passion for prowess and for courtesy.
Their architecture was at once strong and graceful. Their women were
skilled in embroidery, a splendid sample of which is preserved in the
famous Bayeux tapestry, in which the conqueror's wife, Matilda, and the
ladies of her court wrought the history of the Conquest.

This national taste for decoration expressed itself not only in the
ceremonious pomp of feast and chase and tourney, but likewise in
literature. The most characteristic contribution of the Normans to
English poetry were the metrical romances or chivalry tales. These were
sung or recited by the minstrels, who were among the retainers of every
great feudal baron, or by the _jongleurs_, who wandered from court to
castle. There is a whole literature of these _romans d'aventure_ in the
Anglo-Norman dialect of French. Many of them are very long--often
thirty, forty, or fifty thousand lines--written sometimes in a strophic
form, sometimes in long Alexandrines, but commonly in the short,
eight-syllabled rhyming couplet. Numbers of them were turned into
English verse in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. The translations
were usually inferior to the originals. The French _trouvere_ (finder
or poet) told his story in a straightforward, prosaic fashion, omitting
no details in the action and unrolling endless descriptions of dresses,
trappings, gardens, etc. He invented plots and situations full of fine
possibilities by which later poets have profited, but his own handling
of them was feeble and prolix. Yet there was a simplicity about the old
French language and a certain elegance and delicacy in the diction of
the _trouveres_ which the rude, unformed English failed to catch.

The heroes of these romances were of various climes: Guy of Warwick, and