Wace

12th-century Norman poet and chronicler

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

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