ROLAND (Italian, Orlando; Spanish, Roldan), the name of the most prominent hero in the Charlemagne legend. Unlike most legendary heroes, Roland is a figure in history as well as in poetry and fable. All that we know of him is contained in one line of Eginhard's "Vita Karoli," chap. ix., and that simply records his name, Hruodlandus, his rank of prefect or warden of the march of Brittany, and his death at the hands of the Gascons in a valley of the Pyrenees.
The oldest form in which we have the "Chanson de Roland" is that of the MS. in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, written presumably toward the end of the 12th century; but this is evidently by no means its oldest form as a consecutive poem.
Besides the Oxford MS. there are half a dozen others ranging from the 13th to the 16th century. The differences be tween the earlier and later are significant. In the Oxford MS., which is one of the little pocket copies carried by the jon gleurs, the assonant rhyme (that which disregards the consonants and depends on the accented vowel) is maintained throughout, the same assonance being kept up to the end of each break or para graph. In the later MSS. the assonant is turned into the full consonant rhyme, and the poem expanded to twice or thrice its former length. The first shape is the poem as sung; the second as adapted for readers when the minstrel was no longer the sole vehicle, for poetry and reading was becoming a common accomplishment. A very close German version, tha "Rno.
care of her father, who provided her with masters regardless of expense and gave her a brilliant education; the best grounds for which existed in her native talents, her firm spirit, her personal beauty, and her undoubted virtues. - Antiquities, her
aldry, philosophy, and, among other books, the Bible, made up her earliest studies; her favorite authors, however, were Plu tarch, Tacitus, Montaigne, and Rousseau. She became the wife of Roland in 1781. She became the sharer in all his studies, aided him in editing his works, and dur ing his two ministries acted as his secre tary and entered into all the intrigues of his party without debasing herself by their meanness. After the flight of her husband, Madame Roland was arrested by order of the Paris Commune under the dictation of Marat and Robespierre, and consigned to the Abbaye prison, from which, on Oct. 31, she was removed to a more wretched abode in the Conciergerie. When sentenced at the bar of Fouquier Tinville she was eager to embrace her fate. She declared her conviction that her husband would not survive her. (He committed suicide.) On the scaffold she apostrophized the statue of liberty near by—"Ah, Liberty! what crimes are com mitted in thy name!" Besides her miscellaneous works, Madame Roland left "Memoirs" composed during her captivity, and a last affecting composition in the "Counsels of a Letter," addressed to her little girl. She was executed Nov. 8, 1793.