_Et quid Pandoniae_--thus, little book, I
charge you to poultice your more-merited oblivion--_quid Pandoniae
restat nisi nomen Athenae?_
Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with those who
will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and protest
assertions which are only fables. To these you will reply that I, your
maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of the most high and
noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at and about her house of
Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person with Dame Katharine, then
happily remarried to a private gentleman of Wales; and so obtained the
matter of the ninth story and of the tenth authentically. You will say
also that Messire de Montbrison afforded me the main matter of the
sixth and seventh stories, and many of the songs which this book
contains; and that, moreover, I once journeyed to Caer Idion and
talked for some two hours with Richard Holland (whom I found a very
old and garrulous and cheery person), and got of him the matter of the
eighth tale in this dizain, together with much information as concerns
the sixth and the seventh.
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