Mariede France

Marie de France, a writer of poetry in a Norman-French dialect, is supposed to have lived in England at the beginning of the 13th century. Her works first consist of fourteen Lais, or narrative poems, in octosyllabic metre; secondly, of 103 fables (The Ysopet), which were translated from Latin into English by Henry III., and thence into French by Marie herself, "for the love of Count William, the most valiant of this realm." who has been identified with William Longsword of Salisbury; thirdly, of a poem of over 2,000 lines descriptive of the purgatory of St. Patrick.