52
RIDDELLS OF NORMANDY AND ARDNAMURCHAN.
heard that a celebrated poet was on board, who was dying for her love,
she immediately hastened to his side, and taking his hand entreated him
to live for her sake. Ridel, already speechless and almost in the agonies
of death, revived for a moment at such unexpected tenderness and favor,
and expressing the excess of his gratitude and love, died in her arms.
The countess wept most bitterly and vowed herself a life of penance for
the loss she had caused the world. She commanded that the last song
Ridel had composed in her honor, should be transcribed in letters of gold,
and carried it always in her bosom. His body was enclosed in a magnifi-
cent mausoleum of porphyry, with an Arabic inscription, commemorating his
genius and his love for her. The song which the minstrel composed when
on this romantic expedition, while his strength was failing, and which was
worn by the countess within her vest to the end of life, is still extant,
and has been translated into nearly every language in Europe; of these
translations the following by Sismondi best preserves the original curious
arrangement of the rhymes, as well as the piety and tenderness of the sen-
timent:-
"Irrité, dolent partirai,
Si ne vois cet amour de loin,
Et ne sais quand je le verrai
Car sont par trop nos terres loin.
Dieu, qui toutes choses as fait,
Et formas cet amour si loin,
Donne force à mon cœur, car ai
L'espoir devoir m' amour an loin.
Ah, Seigneur, tenez pour bien vrai
L'amour qu'ai pour elle de loin,
Car pour un bien que j'en anrai,
J'ai mille maux, tant je suis loin.
J'a d'autre amour ne jowirai,
Si non de cet amour de loin,
Qu'une plus belle jen'en scais
En lien qui soit ni pres in loin!"
The following is as faithful a version anglicized, as the different idioms
of the language will admit of:
"Grieved and troubled shall I die,
If I meet not my love afar;
Alas! I know not that I e'er
Shall see her, for she dwells afar.
O God! that didst all things create,
And formed my sweet love now afar;
Strengthen my heart that I may hope
To behold her face who is afar.
Oh, Lord! I believe how very true
Is my love for her, who is afar;
Tho' for each joy a thousand pains
I bear, because I am so far." +
Richard Ridel¹2 (1), second son of Galfridus" (5), succeeded his
brother, before mentioned, and became possessed of nearly all the family
estates in England. He resumed the surname of Bassett, and his family
became extinct in the male line; consequently the inheritance devolved
upon his brother, of whom hereafter.
Princess Melinsend, daughter of Raimond, Count of Tripoli, the affianced bride
of Manuel, Emperor of Constantinople.
†This poem must have been composed as early as A. D. 1150.
