versions in verse of the twelfth century, though they were done into
prose somewhere in Picardy during the course of the next century.
Daphnis and Chloe, one might say, had revived after a sleep of 700
years, and donned the garb and spoke the tongue of Romance.


II


The very first of our tales illustrates admirably the general course
of their history. It is, in effect, a folk etymology of the name of
the great capital of the Eastern Empire. Constantinople, so runs the
tale, received that name instead of Byzantium, because of the
remarkable career of one of its former rulers, Coustans. M.
Wesselovsky has published in Romania (vi. 1. seq.) the Dit de
l'empereur Constant, the verse original of the story before us, and
in this occur the lines -


Pour ce que si nobles estoit
Et que nobles oevres faisoit
L'appielloient Constant le noble
Et pour cou ot Constantinnoble
Li cytes de Bissence a non.


From which it would appear that we are mistaken in thinking of the
capital of Turkey as the "City of Constantine," whereas it is rather
Constant the Noble, and the name Coustant is further explained as
"costing" too much. Constantinople, therefore, is the city that