[Footnote I-19: Fleck’s work is a paraphrase. The details are identical but are amplified to 8006 verses.]
The story of Fl. and Bl. found its way into England in the 13th century, that is to say, when it had been for a hundred years familiar to French hearers and after it had already spread into many lands outside of France. As has been said, the English version goes back to a French original. This original was certainly of the I. form. Of the features peculiar to the French II. version, the English version does not show one, while it agrees with the French I. version to the extent of exact translation of many phrases and verses and even of reproduction of French rime-words. At the same time the French original that lay before the English adapter can not have been the text exactly as it is preserved in any one of the three extant French MSS., but rather an older, or purer text which we have designated by χ, a distinguishing feature of which is the absence of the attempted suicide of Floris in the lion pit. The text that must be assumed as the original of the English poem must have been very similar to the original from which Fleck and Dideric derived their German versions, but not exactly identical as is evidenced by frequent slight divergences.
The English poet has not expanded and amplified by the addition of further details or by the introduction of personal reflections, as the German Fleck has done. He has presented the essential features of the love story as it impressed him, in a condensed form to be sure, at the same time without bareness or baldness. Unlike the adapter of the Low Rhenish condensed version, he has preserved the original order of incidents, and has usually preserved faithfully the smallest details that have any essential bearing on the plot.
Some idea of the English writer’s fidelity to the details and even to the phraseology of his French original, and of his method of translating, may be gained from the following parallel passages:
_Que bien sorent parler latin_ _Et bien escrivre en parchemin_ vv. 263-4.
_Inouȝ þey couþ of latyne_ _And wel wryte on parchemyn_ vv. 33-4.
_Faites la moi tost demander_ _Ja li ferai le chief couper._ vv. 399-400.
_Let do bryng forþ þat mayde,_ _Fro þe body þe heved schal goo._ vv. 140-41.