Lily Legend

A brave knight in Normandy had turned down the offer of several maidens in the quest to find a wife. A melancholy soul, he wandered in the graveyards and one day he saw a young woman dressed in beautiful robes sitting on a tombstone. She was the woman he had been looking for and took her for his wife. At Christmas time, he held  a banquet and a minstrel sang about the loveliness of heaven. On hearing this, his wife became wan and pale and dropped to the floor. As the knight embraced his dying wife, she disappeared and he found he was holding a lily whose petals fell one by one to the floor. Heartbroken, he ran out to the courtyard where snow began to fall, white petals from the sky.