Note 711 — LIVRE III Les derniers Mérovingiens (continued 2)

Percy, dans l’Essay on the ancient minstrels in England qui figure en tête de ses Relics of ancient poetry, nous montre le même phénomène dans l’Angleterre après la conquête normande : « At more than a century after the conquest, the national distinction must have begun to decline, and both the Norman and English languages would be heard in the house of the great : so that probably about this era, or soon after, we are to date that remarkable intercommunity and exchange of each others’s compositions, which we discover to have taken place at some early period between the French and English minstrels ; the same set of phrases, the same species of characters, incidents, and adventures, and often the same identical stories, being found in the old metrical romances of both nations. » (Edit. Chandos Classics, p. 28.)