CHANSONS DE GESTE8 



CII. \\TII-.1-. \ 



103 



syllables, arranged in laisaes, or stanzas of 



ular length, throughout each of which the 

 rhyuir [ assonance is repeated. In his intro- 

 duction t<> tin- Snug of Roland, M. Genin point- 

 mil that n i- the decasyllabic verse of the Chan- 



.uid not the Alexandrine (a form introduced 

 in tin- l.'tth century ) which is the true epic verse 

 ench literature. A large numlier of these 

 us celebrate the exploits of the peers of Charle- 

 magne. .UK! form what is termed the Carlovingian 

 c\de, which includes the Song of Rolaml. But 

 while the. author of that poem depicts Charlemagne 



i the whole a worthy and venerated sovereign, 

 the aim of the later writers is to exalt the vassal 

 nobles at the expense of the emperor, who is in- 

 variably presented in an odious or ridiculous light. 

 The ^reat emperor,' says M. GeVuzez, ' pays for the 

 misdeeds of his feeble successors; the monarchy 

 of which he remains the representative has been 



tded ; consequently he is degraded along with 

 it, to the profit of the feudal hero who is opposed 

 to him.' The principal poems of the Carlovingian 

 cycle (setting aside the Song of Roland) are Ogier 

 / Ihmois, Renaut de Montauban, Raoul de 

 i 'xittbrai, Huon de Bordeaux, Les Saisnes, Doon 

 ''I :yence, Gerard de Viane, and Hugues Capet. 



is a typical chanson containing more 

 than 13,000 lines, written by Raimbert of Paris 

 in the first half of the 12th century. It tells 

 how the vassal noble Ogier, after vainly seeking 

 reparation for the death of his son, who has 

 been slain by a son of Charlemagne, is pursued by 

 the emperor into Italy and captured after a heroic 

 resistance ; how, saved from death by the inter- 

 vention of Archbishop Turpin, he lives in conceal- 

 ment until the Saracens invade France, and the 

 emperor is forced to implore his aid ; how he yields 

 at last to repeated entreaties, frees the land from 

 the heathen, marries a princess, and lives happily 

 to the end of his days. The style of the poem 

 i- clear and vigorous, the characters stand out 

 vividly, the narrative interest is considerable, and 

 the hero rivets the sympathy of the reader. The 

 ]'<>:/nge du Charlemagne d Constantinople, which 

 belongs to the same cycle, offers a strong contrast 

 to Ogier. It is a mock-heroic piece, full of broad 

 and extravagant pleasantries, and is rather a long 

 fabliau than a true Chanson de Gestes. Among 

 the other chansons which have come to light, the 

 iii'i-t remarkable are Garin le Loherain (ascribed to 

 Jean de Flagy ), which takes us back to the times 

 of Charles Martel and Pepin, and describes the 

 feud between the Counts or Metz and the Counts 

 of Boulogne ; Amis et Amiles, and its sequel Jour- 

 dains de Blaivies ; Berte aus grans Pies, one of the 

 most graceful of all ; Gerard de Roussillon ; Fiera- 

 lirns ; AliwuiiK, which relates the wars of William 

 of i (range with the Saracens ; and Antioche, which 

 .gives a singularly animated account of the siege 

 -of Antioch by the crusaders, one of whom is sup- 

 po-ed to have written the original version of the 

 poein. The last forms one of the series known as 

 /.' Chevalier an Ci/gne, which is concluded with 

 ];<i n, 1 1, in n de Sebourc. 



The Chansons de Gestes are not, strictly speak- 

 in^, epics, though they are frequently described 

 a- -non. They are rather the material out of 

 which a genuine epic, such as the Iliad or the 

 Nibelungenlied, might have been wrought had a 

 great poet appeared to extract the gold from the 

 dross and mould a work of art out of this rich mass 

 of national legend. There has been a natural 

 tendency to overestimate their worth on the part 

 of those by whom they have been exhumed and 

 edited. Their literary merit, however, is incon- 

 testable, and their historical interest is very great. 

 They faitli fully reflect the beliefs and customs of the 

 ages in which they were written ; they abound in 



spirited battle-pieces, and contain not a few pannage* 

 marked by deep and simple pathon. Their plotn 

 are somewhat monotonously alike. The strength 

 of their writers does not He in invention, hut in 

 fresh and vivid and sometimes (an in the picture 

 of the sack of the abtay in Raoul de Cambrai) 

 terribly realistic descriptions. Their verse in by 

 no means unmelodious, and their style in rich in 

 picturesque and poetical epithets. 



After lying in neglect for centuries, the Chan- 

 sons de Gestes have for the last fifty years been 

 assiduously studied and brought into notice by a 

 band of French and German scholars. Some fifty 

 of them are now in print, a number of these having 

 been edited by the late M. Paulin Paris, a scholar 

 who did more than any one else to promote the 

 study of this department of literature. 



See I/con Gautier's Les Epoftlen Franfaitet (2d ed. 

 1S78 ) ; the Histoire Pottique de Charlemayne, by G. Paris 

 (1866); C. d'Hericault's Essai tur FOriyine de FEftopfe 

 Fruncaise (Frankfort, I860) ; Genin's introduction to the 

 Chanson de Roland ( 1850 ) ; the series, Leg A ncient 

 Poetes de la France, which MM. Guewsard and Michelant 

 began to issue in 1858 ; and Fauriel's Epopfe Chevaler- 

 esque au Moyen Ape. 



Chant, in Music, is the name applied to the 

 short tunes used in the English Church since the 

 Reformation for the psalms and, less properly, the 

 canticles. The adaptation of the form to the 

 structure of the psalms is obvious. Its distin- 

 guishing point is that each section is composed 

 of a reciting note of indefinite length, according 

 to the number of words sung to it, followed by a 

 few notes in regular time, called the Mediation 

 or Termination. The tunes were originally de- 

 rived, as the name indicates, from the Canto 

 Fermo, or Plain Song of the Roman Church, also 

 called Gregorian Tones. These Gregorian tones 

 were preceded by a still earlier form, the Ambrosian 

 Chant, which was the first attempt to systematise 

 the traditional music of the Christian church, 

 carried out by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, in the 

 4th century. Of this, next to nothing is now 

 known, the statements of musical historians being 

 founded on slender authority, and curiously at 

 variance. If any fragments still remain in the 

 services of the Roman Church, they cannot be 

 distinguished from the later Gregorian music (see 

 PLAIN-SONG, INTONING). There has l>een a re- 

 vival in the present day of the old Gregorian 

 chants, which are all 'single,' that is, composed 

 of only two sections, and adapted to a single 

 verse, and have the additional feature of an intro- 

 ductory 'intonation' of two notes before the first 

 reciting note ; but many consider these of mainly 

 antiquarian interest. The double chant, adapted 

 to a couple of verses, and hence more suitable for 

 antiphonal singing, dates from the time of the 

 Restoration ; and in later days there have been 

 added quadruple chants. The repertory has been 

 enriched by almost every English composer of the 

 last three centuries, famous or obscure. The objec- 

 tionable ' florid ' style has now happily gone out. On 

 the subject of 'pointing' the psalms Le. indicat- 

 ing the division of the verses to accord with the 

 chant, there is great diversity of usage, ami no 

 authoritative system. The best treatment of 

 the subject, theoretic and practical, will \te found 

 in Helmore's Psalter Noted and Plain Song, the 

 Cathedral /'suiter, and Ouseley and Monk's and 

 Oakeley's Psalters. Chant in.-: i- gaining ground 

 in the Presbyterian ami other churche-. 



Chailteimy, a western suburb of Nantes (q.v.). 



Chantibiin, or CHANTABON, an im|>ortant 

 commercial port of Siam, near the mouth of the 

 Chantibun River, in the Gulf of Siam, occupied by 

 the French as security for the fulfilment of the 

 treaty of 1893. Pop. 30,000. 



