1898.1 



SMYTH — PERICLES AND APOLLONIUS. 279 



golden vessel filled with wine to Fromont, who keeps him kneeling. 

 Jourdain complains ; Fromont threatens him with worse treatment, 

 whereupon Jourdain retorts and Fromont strikes him with a stick 

 across the head so that he bleeds. Jourdain escapes to Renier, who 

 discloses to him the secret of his birth. Jourdain goes with armed 

 men to Fromont, finds him at the table and with his sword strikes 

 off his nose. In the battle that ensues, Lohier, the son of Charle- 

 magne, takes part and is killed by Jourdain, who takes flight, pur- 

 sued by the emperor. The old tale of incest is abandoned by the 

 French author. Hofmann sees in Karl (Charlemagne) the image 

 of Antiochus in the old story, but Singer with more reason fancies 

 Fromont to replace Antiochus, and that Karl is only introduced in 

 order to carry the story back to the well-known Carlovingian 

 type.^ 



The poet adds a ghastly humorous touch when he says that Fro- 

 mont, in order not to suffer alone the shame of his mutilation, or- 

 ders his knights to have their noses cut off. Singer compares the 

 narrative in \\\q Kaiser chronik and in Toledoth Jeschu {Zeiischrift d. 

 Vereins f. Volkskunde, ii, 295). 



In the adventures that follow, there is an attack by Saracens, of 

 which we shall speak later. Jourdain springs from the deck of the 

 Saracen ship into the sea, and clinging to a tree bough bites his 

 arm and is cast up by the sea upon a foreign shore. The biting of 

 the arm is an allusion to the medieval belief that the sea would per- 

 mit no bleeding or wounded thing in its dominion (see page 281). 



"II s'est navrez el bras de maintenant 

 N'avoit autre arme, dont il se fust aidant, 

 Por ce le fist, gel voz di et creant, 

 Mers ne piiet sane soiiffrir ne taut " ^ (y. de B., 1 260). 



Apollonius after his shipwreck arrives at Pentapolis, on the north 

 African coast, in the kingdom of Archistrates, who is depicted as a 

 Greek. Jourdain finds himself in the realm of King Marcus, who 

 is a Christian. In both stories the heroes stand upon the beach 

 lamenting their unhappy fate, when they espy a poor fisherman. 

 The fisher is a good fellow, of a gentle heart, who feeds and 



1 As in Huon of Bordeaux, It is the familiar legend of Charlemagne pursuing 

 a vassal who has killed his son. 



2 Cf. Modersohn, Die Realien in Amis und Aniiles und Jorirdain de Blai- 

 viest Lingen, 1 886, p. 37. 



