Four Breton Lays: Lay Le Freine, Sir Orfeo

The symbolism of trees in Breton lays Most Breton lays relate old tales or are inspired by traditional tales. They usually follow the same structure. First, tragedy happens to the hero, then s/he goes on adventures and eventually “fixes” the envent of the beginning which leads to a happy end. In this essay, I am going to focus on the analysis of four Breton lays: Lay le Freine, Sir Degare, Sir Launfal and Sir Orfeo. Two of them – Lay le Freine and Sir Launfal – are based on Anglo-Norman 'lais' written by Marie de France in the 12th century. There are several motifs in these lays, and each of them could be interpreted in a different way. Among them, nature is indeniably one of the most important. Indeed, it seems to have a very close and special …show more content…
Indeed, in this lay, Heurodis is taken from the human world to the fairy one through the tree. The king of the fairies even tells her to “be/ Right here under this ympe-tre” (165-166) in order to take her to the other world. Once she is there, she stays under the same tree, which enables her to come back to the human world. In the light of this interpretation one can conclude that the 'ymp-tre' in Sir Orfeo is an undeniable mother figure: it is the only link from the one world to the other. Nevertheless, this passage seems to go against the good mother figure. As a matter of fact, the world of the fairies refers to the world of the dead according to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice which inspired the lay. It seems rather odd that the tree – symbol of motherhood – leads the queen to death, while I stated earlier that it was a protective figure. Yet, the lay specifies that the tree is 'ymp'. This could explain the reversal of the nature of the passage: what should be a good one thanks to the protection of the tree becomes bad because of the 'disability' of this tree. However, although the queen is taken to this world of the fairies, her husband Orfeo finds her there still “slepe under an ympe-tre” (407) which seems to have kept protecting her all throughout the …show more content…
They also are the ones who carry the child. In Sir Degare, the mother of the hero gets pregnant in the forest. Indeed, the fairy knight who rapes her there, also knows that she is going to give birth to a child of whom he is the father after this encounter: “Mid schilde I wot that thou schalt be” (116). The fact that this happens in the forest is not insignificant. The trees of the forest all represent motherhood, and it makes perfect sense that this child in conceived in such an environment. The forest is like a womb itself, the baby is not only in his biological mother's womb, but also in a symbolic one. In Lay le Freine, this symbol is even more stricking. The maiden who takes the child away (in order to keep her mistress' honour intact) goes through a forest as well, before finding a tree where she puts the