THE very name of Queen Bertha carries us back to the remotest period of the good old times. Many an ancient romance records the praises of her unspotted virtue; and, if we may rely upon the testimony of a song-writer of the nineteenth century, it was she who founded the monastery of Sainte-Avelle, dedicated to Our Lady of the Woods. I know not whether you have ever observed, among the statues that look down upon us from the portals of our Gothic churches, the figure known throughout France by the name of la Reine Pédauque, Queen Goose-Foot. She is the heroine of our romance; and, be it said with all the veracity of an historian, for this opprobrious surname she must thank her own feet, whose vast dimensions are revealed to us by the indiscretion of the statuary. During her lifetime she was surnamed Bertha of the Great Feet; after her death, she was neither more nor less than Bertha of the Goose Feet. So true is it that the origin of the custom of flattering the great while living, and reviling them when dead, is lost in the night of ages. The story of Queen Pédauque reminds me of poor Midas; perhaps the ears of the Phrygian monarch, who fell a victim to the malevolence of his barber, were in truth only somewhat long.

This statue of Queen Pédauque has long exercised the imagination of the antiquaries.

1 A Letter to M. de Monmerqué prefixed to Li Romans de Berte aus Grans Piés, and reprinted in Férus

They have successively imagined it to be Clotilde, wife of Clovis, Brunehault, and Frédégonde. The Abbé Leboeuf, however, supposes it to be the Queen of Sheba; though it is no easy matter to devise why the Abbé Lebœuf, generally so very considerate, should thus have felt himself obliged to call in question the beauty of the Oriental princess and the practised taste of Solomon, the wisest of men. He remarks, in his learned dissertation, that the Masorites, who were great admirers of the hands of the Queen of Sheba, have maintained the most scrupulous silence in regard to her feet there is, however, a vast distance between the silence of Biblical commentators and the conjecture he allows himself.

Now both the historians and the poets, who make mention of Queen Bertha, affirm that she had large feet; and this is the first point of analogy between her and the celebrated statue. Moreover, the inhabitants of Toulouse, according to the author of the "Contes d'Eutrapel," are in the habit of swearing by the distaff of Queen Pédauque, par la quenouille de la reine Pédauque; while we speak proverbially of the time when Bertha span du temps que Berthe filait; and the Italians say, in nearly the same signification, "The days when Bertha span have gone by," - Non è più il tempo che Berta filava. After all this, and especially after the direct testimony of the sac's Bulletin Universel, from which this translation was made.

poem which I now present you, how can any one doubt the perfect identity of Bertha of the Great Feet, and the Queen of the Goose Feet? I entertain a high respect for the Abbé Leboeuf, but a higher for the truth; and I cannot refrain from expressing my opinion, that he Iwould have done better to look to the court of Pepin-le-Bref for the model of the statue which he saw at the church of Saint-Bénigne in Dijon, at the cathedral of Nevers, at the priory of Saint-Pourçain, and at the abbey of Nesle.

Bertha, the wife of Pepin, has been often named by the most respectable historians. She died in 783, and until the revolution of 1793 her tomb was still to be seen in the vaults of Saint-Denis. It bore this beautiful inscription: Berta mater Caroli Magni.

Eginhart speaks of the respectful deference which the hero of the West generally paid to the virtues of his mother. All historians coincide in regard to the time of her coronation and her death; but in regard to the name of her father, some difference of opinion prevails. According to the "Annals of Metz," she was the daughter of Caribert, Count of Laon; but unfortunately for this hypothesis, the city of Laon was not at that time governed by a count. Some trace her origin to the court of Constantinople, and others to the kingdom of Germany. You will perceive that our poet has embraced this last opinion. In the romance, Flores, king of Hungary, is father of Bertha of the Great Feet. This Flores himself and his wife Blanchefleurs are the hero and heroine of another celebrated poem of the Middle Ages, and their adventures, badly enough analyzed in one of the numbers of the "Bibliothèque des Romans," seem to have been put into rhyme. before those of Queen Bertha their daughter.

Thus it appears that Bertha can boast her statuaries as well as her poets; but whilst the former have given to her countenance a marked and striking character, the latter, by recording her touching misfortunes, have only followed the beaten path, and added another delicate flower to that poetic wreath which was woven in the heroic ages of our history. The poem of Bertha is one of the series of

"Romances of the Twelve Peers." It belongs to the number of those great epic compositions whose origin is incontestably linked to the cradle of the modern languages, and whose subjects are always borrowed from our old national traditions.

Until the present day, both critics and antiquaries have neglected to examine these singular creations of the human mind. Even those who have been wise enough to avail themselves of them in the composition of their learned works have gone no farther than to make such extracts as would throw light upon the subjects of heraldry or philology, hardly bestowing a passing glance upon those questions of manners and literature which they might suggest, enlighten, and perhaps resolve. It is strange that the press should have been so busy in giving to the world the "Fabliaux," which lay buried in our vast libraries, and yet should never have preserved from the most unmerited oblivion a single one of these ancient epics! If by a catastrophe, improbable, yet not impossible, the Royal Cabinet of Manuscripts should be destroyed, nothing of our old heroic poetry would remain but a few shreds. scattered here and there through the "Glossary" of Ducange and the "History of Lorraine" by Dom Calmet. Such a loss would indeed be immense and irreparable to those who wish, even at this distant period, to study the manners and customs of our ancestors.

Perhaps, then, I may justly claim some right to the thanks of the friends of letters for this attempt to preserve and perpetuate the "Romances of the Twelve Peers of France." I now commence the series of these publications with "Berte aus Grans Piés." In selecting this poem of the minstrel-king Adenès, I have been guided by the consideration, that, in order to gain readers for our ancient poets, it would be necessary to commence, not with the most beautiful, but with the shortest and the least incumbered with philological difficulties. And again, the romance of Bertha, however inferior it may be to some of the longer romances of the twelfth century, as, for example, "Raoul de Cambrai," "Guillaume au Court Nez," or "Garin de Loherain," nevertheless possesses the most lively interest for readers of the present