Marie de France's 12th-century lais 'Bisclavret' and 'Milun' are presented here, in Quemar's new Modern English translation, with the original Anglo-Norman French text. The title 'The Animal Let Live' reflects their essence, where the threatened animal, in a mistrustful society, is kept alive in affection - whether knight suspended in wolf-transformation, or swan, whose wings carry every utterance in secret between lady and knight in love. These living animals, in turn, allow the humans to experience life more profoundly. Marie de France, thought the earliest female French poet, constructed these lais from ancient Breton, translating them in the twelfth-century to Anglo-Norman. 'Bisclavret' is her re-imagining of traditional werewolf legends. Here, the werewolf-knight is identical to an engaging, non-threatening wolf or wolf-cub. The King is stunned at encountering this animal with a man's reason and cannot kill him. In 'Milun', a Lady and the knight Milun fell in love, had a secret son. Under threat of retribution, she sent him to live guarded by her sister, with a ring and letter, to let him find his father. Unaware, the lady's father marries her to a Baron. The lady and Milun live in love - speaking only by messages hidden in a swan's plumes. Never to be food, the swan is the knight's pet, their messenger for twenty years, as they hope to meet again.In other literature, purification is reached recoiling from the death of a hunted animal - as the slain albatross haunts Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, or the murdered ethereal deer transforms Marie's own Gugemer. But in 'Bisclavret' the knight in living wolf form gives the King a new level of mercy:'...This beast has understanding and reason. To the beast I grant rest, for I'll hunt no more this forest.' In 'Bisclavret' and 'Milun' the animal remaining alive leads to the narrative's resolution. The animals grant new elements to lives around them - whether that be the King's love, in wonder at the mysterious, beautiful animal from the forest, or every word between lady and knight, lost if not for a swan's living wings.
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