Wace

Wace (c. 1110 – after 1174), sometimes referred to as Robert Wace, was a Medieval Norman poet, who was born in Jersey and brought up in mainland Normandy (he tells us in the Roman de Rou that he was taken as a child to Caen), ending his career as Canon of Bayeux.

Quotes

Muscle is good, but craft is better.

• Por remembrer des ancessours
  Li fez è li diz è li mours,
  Deit l'en li livres è li gestes
  E li estoires lire as festes.
  • Who would remember his forbears,
    What deeds, what words, what life was theirs,
    Must chronicles and annals read
    And histories written for his need.
  • Roman de Rou, line 1 (Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)

• Cil due vassals, ki tant cunquistrent,
  Tant orent terres, è tant pristrent;
  Emprès la mort, de lor enor,
  N'ont cescuns fors sa lunguor.
  • These heroes twain, these conquerors grand,
    Who took and kept full many a land,
    Yet after death, for all their toil
    Have each but their own length of soil.
  • Roman de Rou, line 53 (Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)

• Tote rien se torne en déclin,
  Tot chiet, tot meurt, tot vait à fin:
  Hom muert, fer use, fust porrist,
  Tur font, mur chiet, rose flaistrist,
  Cheval trebusche, drap viésist:
  Tot ovre fet od mainz périst.
  • All things to their decline do tend,
    All falls, expires, comes to its end:
    Man dies, iron rusts, wood rots away,
    Tower sinks, wall falls, rose has its day.
    Horse stumbles, cloth wears out apace,
    No work of hands leaves lasting trace.
  • Roman de Rou, line 65 (Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)

• N'ont terre de Seingnor ki ne se pot aidier.
  • None lord it o'er the land but they who help themselves.
  • Roman de Rou, line 3329 (Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)

• Ci faut le livre Maistre Wace;
  Qu'in velt avant fere, s'in face.
  • Here endeth Master Wace his book;
    Who wanteth more to himself must look.
  • Roman de Rou, line 16,546 (Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)

• Que force sormonte vertu.
  Bone est force et engins mius valt,
  Là vaut engins où force falt;
  Engins et ars font mainte cose
  Que force commenchier ne n'ose.
  • Wit is more than strength! Muscle is good, but craft is better. Skill devises means when strength fails. Cunning and engines bring many matters to a good end, that strength would not venture even to begin.
  • Roman de Brut, line 8262 (Tr. Eugene Mason)

External links

• Thomas Benfield Harbottle; Philip Hugh Dalbiac, Dictionary of Quotations: French and Italian, 2nd ed. (London: Swann Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd., 1904), pp. 31, 32, 158, 180, 214

• Eugene Mason, Arthurian Chronicles, Everyman's Library (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1912), p. 27