ROLAND, LEGEND OF. The legend of the French epic hero Roland (transferred to Italian romance as Orlando) is based on authentic history. Charlemagne invaded Spain in 778, and had captured Pamplona, but failed before Saragossa, when the news of a Saxon revolt recalled him to the banks of the Rhine. On his retreat to France through the defiles of the Pyrenees, part of his army was cut off from the main body by the Basques and entirely destroyed. The incident is related in Einhard's Vita Karoli (cap. ix.; Pertz. ii. 448), where the names of the leaders are given. "In this battle were slain Eggihard praepositus of the royal table; Anselm, count of the palace; and Hruodland, praefect of the Breton march. . . ." The scene of the disaster is fixed by tra dition at Roncevaux, on the road from Pamplona to St. Jean Pied de Port. The fiction of the 12 peers may possibly arise from a still earlier tradition. In 636-637, according to the Chronicles of Fredegarius (ed. Krusch, p. 159), 1 2 chiefs, whose names are given, were sent by Dagobert against the Basques. The expedition was successful, but in the valley of Subola, . identified with Mauleon, near Roncevaux, the Duke Harembert, with other Frankish chiefs, was slain. Later fights in the same neighbourhood and under similar circumstances are related in 813 (Vita Hlu dowici; Pertz ii. 616), and especially in 824 (Einhard's Annales; Pertz. i. 213). These incidents no doubt served to strengthen the tradition of the disaster to Charlemagne's rearguard in 778, the importance of which was certainly magnified in popular story.
The choice of Roland or Hruodland as the hero probably points to the borders of French Brittany as the home of the legend. The exaggeration of a rear-guard action into a national defeat ; the substitution of a vast army of Saracens for the border tribe men tioned by Einhard ; and the vengeance inflicted by Charlemagne, where in fact the enemy escaped with complete impunity—all are in keeping with the general laws of romance. Charlemagne him
self appears as the ancient epic monarch, not as the young man he really was in 778. There is evidence of a continuous tradition dating from the original event and, as Roncevaux lay on the route to Compostella, the many pilgrims who must have passed the site, from the middle of the 9th century onwards, may have helped to spread the story. Whether the actual cantilena Rollandi chanted by Taillefer at the battle of Hastings (William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum angl. iii. 242, and Wace, Brut. ii. I1, 8035 seq.) was any part of the existing Chanson de Roland cannot be stated, but the choice of the legend on this occasion by the trouvere is proof of its popularity.
The oldest extant forms of the legend are: (a) chapters xix.– xxx. of the Latin chronicle, known as the Pseudo-Turpin, which purports to be the work of Turpin, archbishop of Reims, who died about Boo, but probably dates from the 12th century; (b) Carmen de proditione Guenonis, a poem in Latin distichs ; and (c) the Chanson de Roland, a French chanson de geste of about 4,000 lines, the oldest recension of which is in the Bodleian li brary, Oxford (ms. Digby, 23). It is in assonanced tirades, of unequal length, many of them terminated with the refrain Aoi. This ms. was written by an Anglo-Norman scribe about the end of the i 2th century, and is a corrupt copy of a text by a French trouvere of the middle of the I ith century. The poem, which was first printed by Francisque Michel (Oxford, 1837) is the finest monument of the heroic age of French epic.
The Pseudo-Turpin represents a different recension of the story and is throughout clerical in tone. It was the trouvere of the Chanson de Roland who developed the characters into epic types; he invented the heroic friendship of Roland and Oliver, the motives of Ganelon's treachery, and many other details.
The famous fight between Roland and the giant Ferragus ap pears in the Pseudo-Turpin (ch. xviii.), but not in the poem.