ROLAND SONG, The ((La Chanson de Roland)) is the chief French chivalrous epic and almost the oldest to survive. Written be fore 1080, the creation of a single minstrel who was a true poet, it bears internal evidence of a legendary ancestry stretching back almost to the days of Charlemagne. In 778 that still youthful king made an incursion into Spain and was checked at Saragossa. On his return across the Pyrenees his rear guard was attacked by Basque mountaineers at Roncesvalles and exterminated. Among the dead was Hrodland, Count of Brittany. Breton minstrels were quick to exploit the tragic theme. Roland's fame spread quickly over all France and be yond. In the 11th century his tomb was shown at Blaie, his horn, cracked, at Bordeaux. A minstrel sang of him to the Normans at Hast ings in 1066. Forms of the legend earlier than the can be discerned in a prose chronicle attributed to •Archbishop Turpin* and in the Latin de proditaone Guenonie ( of the Treason of Ganelon) ). The minstrel of the 'Chanson' introduced many and infused the whole with a nationalizing fervor of patriotic inspiration. The 'Chanson' is preperved only in manu script written a century after its composition by scribes who were unfamiliar with its lan guage and did some violence to its versifica tion. In the oldest of them it counts 4,002 verses. This was discovered at Oxford by F. Michel and edited by him in 1837 and since often, most elaborately by Leon Gautier in more than 20 editions. Its French shows strong marks of Breton influence and occasionally suggests an effort to combine, without fusing, differing versions of the original. In this form of the legend the Basque mountaineers have become Saracen °barons?) who worship images of Mahomet and Apollo, are able to muster for an ambush 400,000 men in three days and to summon almost equal reinforcements from Babylon and its Ethinpian vassals who seek in vain to cope with the remnant of Roland's 20,000 rear guard. Roland's jealous step father, Ganelon, betrays the French to the King Charles, then 35, is for the poet 200 years old, of England, Germany, Bavaria, Lorraine, Burgundy, Italy.
Brittany and other regions and cities innumer able.* His 12 paladins match the knights of Arthur's Round Table. Roland, the king's nephew, leads them in valor, Oliver in counsel Archbishop Turpin is their guide in religion, promising paradise to those who die killing Saracens, and bidding them ((for penance, hit hard" (line 1138). Prodigies of valor and slaughter pall, by iteration but there are many scenes to stir generous blood still, notably where Roland, counselled by Oliver, scorns in proud self-confidence to summon the king to his aid and, when he blows the horn in the last desperate strait, dies, still unscathed, his veins burst by the strain of the supreme call. Very striking, too, is the death of Aude, Roland's betrothed, and the trial of Ganelon. At the end Charles, divinely summoned to new conquests, exclaims as he pluckshis mighty beard, (My God, h i ow toilsome is my life* (line 4001).
The (Chanson' is framed in !lasses. strophes of about 15 lines, with assonant endings. The style is vivid, concise, direct. There is but one simile in the Whole poem. Its grandeur is in its ideal of devotion, fidelity, courage and honor, its impassioned patriotism and its ex pression of a spirit of national unity till then unknown to Europe's Middle Age. Its vogue was immediate and wide. It was soon nut into French rhymes and adapted to most varied foreign taste in English, Dutch, Danish, Ger man, Norwegian, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian versions. It has been translated into modern French by Petit de Julleville (Paris 1878) and others; into English prose by L Butler (Boston 1904) and, partially, into verse by Way and Spencer (London 1895). Con sult Pans, G., (Histoire poitique de Charle magne' (Paris 1905) and du moyen age' (Paris 190.31: also Gander, (Bibliog raphie des dawns de geste' (Pans 1897).