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When they tired of stories they slipped into their refuge and resumed their well-tried pleasure of sounding their harp, and singing sadly and sweetly. They busied their hands and their tongues in turn. They performed amorous lays and their accompaniments, varying their delight as it suited them: for if one took the harp it was for the other to sing the tune with wistful tenderness. And indeed the strains of both harp and tongue, merging their sound in each other, echoed in that cave so sweetly that it was dedicated to sweet Love for her retreat most fittingly as 'La fossiure a la gent amant'.
Gottfried von Strassburg,Tristan, trans. by A.T. Hatto, Penguin Classics, Edinburgh, 1960, p. 267.
PLACE: The cave of lovers.
TIME: Middle Ages.
CIRCUMSTANCE: The sound of the harp and the lovers' voices must have reverberated and blended beautifully in the vaults of the cave.
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