National Epics Part 28

'T was done e'en of set purpose her heart the more to wring.

They brought the mangled margrave, where Etzel saw him well.

Th' a.s.sembled knights of Hungary such utter anguish ne'er befell.

When thus held high before them they saw the margrave dead, Sure by the choicest writer could ne'er be penn'd nor said The woeful burst of wailing from woman and eke from man, That from the heart's deep sorrow to strike all ears began.

Above his weeping people King Etzel sorrow'd sore; His deep-voic'd wail resounded loud as the lion's roar In the night-shaded desert; the like did Kriemhild too; They mourn'd in heart for Rudeger, the valiant and the true.

_Lettsom's Translation, Thirty-seventh Adventure._

THE SONG OF ROLAND.

The Song of Roland is one of the many mediaeval romances that celebrate the deeds of Charlemagne.

The oldest text now in existence was written about 1096, but the poem was current in other forms long before this.

The author was a Norman, for the poem is written in the Norman dialect; but it is uncertain whether the Turoldus or Theroulde named in the last line of the poem, "Thus endeth here the geste Turoldus sang," was the author, a copyist, or a _jongleur_.

It is said that Taillefer, the minstrel of Normandy, sang the Song of Roland at the battle of Hastings. "Taillefer, who right well sang, mounted on his rapid steed, went before them singing of Charlemagne, and of Roland, and Olivier, and of the va.s.sals who died in Roncesvalles."

The only text of the poem now in existence is one of the thirteenth century, preserved in the Bodleian library at Oxford.

On the fifteenth of August, 778, in the valley of Roncesvalles, in the Pyrenees, Charlemagne's rear guard, left under the command of Roland, Prefect of the Marches of Brittany, was attacked and slaughtered by a large army of Gascons.

This incident forms the historical basis of the poem; but the imagination of the poet has made of Charlemagne, then a young man, the old emperor, with "beard all blossom white," and transformed his Gascon foes to Saracens.

The Song of Roland is written in the heroic pentameter; it is divided into "laisses," or stanzas, of irregular length, and contains about three thousand seven hundred and eight lines. It is written in the a.s.sonant, or vowel rhyme, that was universal among European nations in the early stage of their civilization.

Each stanza ends with the word "aoi," for which no satisfactory translation has yet been offered, although "away" and "it is done" have been suggested.

The author of the Song of Roland undertook, like Homer, to sing of one great event about which all the interest of the poem centres; but unlike Homer, his poem is out of all proportion, the long-drawn out revenge being in the nature of an anti-climax. The Song of Roland is a fair exponent of the people among whom it originated. It contains no ornament; it is a straightforward relation of facts; it lacks pa.s.sion, and while it describes fearful slaughter, it never appeals to the emotions. Though the French army shed many tears, and fell swooning to the ground at the sight of the fearful slaughter at Roncesvalles, we are rather moved to smile at the violence of their emotion than to weep over the dead, so little power has the poet to touch the springs of feeling. However, there are pa.s.sages in which the poem rises to sublimity, and which have been p.r.o.nounced Homeric by its admirers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, THE SONG OF ROLAND.

J. Banquier's Bibliographie de la Chanson de Roland, 1877;

T. Bulfinch's Legends of Charlemagne, 1863;

Sir G. W. c.o.x and E. H. Jones's Popular Romances of the Middle Ages, 1871, pp. 320-347;

Leon Gautier's Les epopees francaises, vol. i., 1878;

J. Malcolm Ludlow's Story of Roland (see his Popular Epics of the Middle Ages, 1865, vol. i., pp. 362-427);

Gaston Paris's La poesie epique (see his Histoire poetique de Charlemagne, 1865, pp. 1-33);

Gaston Paris's Les Chansons de Gestes francaises (see his Histoire poetique de Charlemagne, 1865, pp. 69-72);

George Saintsbury's The Chansons de Gestes (see his Short History of French Literature, 1892, pp. 10-25);

Henri Van Laun's The Carlovingian Cycle (see his History of French Literature, 1876, vol. i., pp. 141-148);

Ancient Literature of France, Quarterly Review, 1866, cxx. 283-323;

The Chanson de Roland, Westminster Review, 1873, c. 32-44;

M. Hayden's The Chansons de Geste, Dublin Review, 1894, cxiv. 346-357;

Charles Francis Keary's The Chansons de Geste: the Song of Roland, Fraser's Magazine, 1881, civ. 777-789;

J. M. L.'s The Song of Roland, Macmillan's Magazine, 1862, vi. 486-501;

Agnes Lambert's The oldest epic of Christendom, Nineteenth Century, 1882, xi. 77-101;

Andrew Lang's The Song of Roland and the Iliad, National Review, 1892, xx.

195-205;

Legend of Roland, Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. xx.;

Gustave Ma.s.son's The Chanson de Roland, Leisure Hour, 1877, xxvi. 618-620;

The Song of Roland, Catholic World, 1873 and 1874, xviii. 378-388, 488-500;

The Song of Roland, Harper's Monthly, 1882, lxiv. 505-515;

The Month, 1880, xl. 515-527; Temple Bar, 1886, lxxviii. 534-540.

STANDARD ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS, THE SONG OF ROLAND.

The Song of Roland, as chanted before the Battle of Hastings by the Minstrel Taillefer, Tr. from the French translation of Vitet by Mrs. Anne Caldwell Marsh, 1854;

The Song of Roland, Tr. into English verse by John O'Hagan, ed. 2, 1883;

La Chanson de Roland, Tr. from the seventh ed. of Leon Gautier, by Leonce Rabillon, 1885.