"Les Deus Amanz" ("The Two Lovers") is a Breton lai, a type of narrative poem, written by Marie de France sometime in the 12th century. The poem belongs to what is collectively known as The Lais of Marie de France. Like the other lais in the collection, Les Deux Amants is written in Old French, in rhyming octosyllabic couplets. This lai tells the tragic story of two lovers.
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A widowed king takes comfort in raising his beautiful daughter, and he is reluctant to let go of her when she is of marriageable age. He challenges all her potential suitors to prove themselves by carrying her up a nearby mountain. Many men make the attempt and fail. When the king's daughter falls in love with a noble and handsome man, she tells the man of a magical potion that will renew his strength and allow him to carry her all the way up the mountain. He obtains the tonic from her aunt who has vast medical knowledge, but when he tries to carry her up the mountain, he stubbornly refuses to take the potion. He succeeds in bringing her to the summit, but he collapses from exhaustion and dies. She tries to give him some of the potion to revive him, but he is already dead. She then throws the vial to the side and dies from a broken heart. The site where the vial breaks becomes a fertile ground for various beneficial herbs. The people of the kingdom bury them on the mountain, and the mountain becomes known as "the Mountain of Two Lovers".
The mountain mentioned in the poem actually exists, near the commune of Pîtres in the Haute-Normandie region of France.[1]
Text in Old French on wikisource.fr