766 



IIOI. AMI 



would naturally fnnii lime to time intrmluce new 

 IIIH-S for the sake of novelty or as connecting link-, 

 and tlniH a recognised sequence woulil ! cstali 

 li-ln'il. which, i minstrelsy became more and more 

 MI an arl, the jongleurs more like trouvores, and 

 thi'ir hearers more cultured ami critical, would in 

 I'Mitrse of time grow '"'" n continuoiifi lay. By 

 some Midi process us this, in all prolwhility, the 

 C/Kiiisun dr. Kolnwl, unquestionably the oldest and 

 U'-t i if the chanson* de gate, was produced. 



I'ln' oldest form in which we h.-tv.- it is that of the 

 MS. in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, written pre- 

 sumalily towards the end of 'the 12th century; but 

 tlii- is "evidently by no means its oldest form OH a 

 consecutive poem. M. Gautier, who loves precision, 

 places its ci>ni|H>sition between the Norman ('MM 

 quest and the first Crusade, but it is impossible to fix 

 precisely the date at which it ceased to be a mere 

 congeries of songs and became a chanson tie yette; 

 at any rate the two references to Bngiand as one 

 of Charlemagne's many conquests cannot lie rrlicd 

 upon. Nor do the allusions to Mont Saint- Michel 

 justify the assertion that it is certainly the \vork 

 of a Norman. It is of course in the language of 

 the northern half of France, the language of the 

 tmuveres, but there is no good reason for assigning 

 it to any one province. An interesting reference to 

 the country of the poem is spoiled by M. (Jautier. 

 The death of Roland, we are told, was presaged in 

 France by storms and earthquakes 'from saint- 

 Michel to Seinz, from Besancon to Wissant.' It is 

 not certain here what place is meant by Seinz. M. 

 Friincisi|iie Michel suggests Sens; a 13th-century 

 MS. reads liains (Reims); M. Gautier boldly pro- 

 poses the 'saints of Cologne' i.e. the relics pre- 

 served there. Far more probably, as a glance at the 

 map will show, the place intended is Saintes on the 

 Charente, the old capital of the Santones and of 

 Saintonge, a town that makes a considerable figure 

 in the middle ages and in the Charlemagne legend. 

 With the other three places mentioned it forms 

 a quadrangle which exactly represents the region 

 within which the Itingite d'oil was dominant. 

 South of the line from Saintes to Besanson was the 

 country of the langtte d'oc, the Provencal ; west of 

 the line from Mont Saint-Michel to Saintes was 

 the Breton ; east of the line from Besancon to 

 Wissant, near Calais, the language was Teutonic. 

 The old minstrel was not thinking of a Rhine 

 frontier, as M. Gautier imagines, but of the habitat 

 of his hearers, the country where his words would 

 be understood. The l>est, and most likely the 

 oldest, part of the poem is that which deals with 

 the combat at Roncesvalles, Roland's refusal, until 

 too late, to sound his horn, the deeds and deaths 

 of the peers one by one, and of Roland last of all. 

 The opening portion, the despatch of Ganelon at 

 Roland's suggestion as envoy to the Saracens, his 

 anger and betrayal of Roland in revenge, and the 

 concluding part, the vengeance of Charlemagne, and 

 the trial and death of (ianelon, probably came later. 

 There can be little doubt that the episode of the 

 Kinir Baligant was a comparatively late addition. 



Besides the Oxford MS. there are half-a-dozen 

 others ranging from the 13th to the 16th cen- 

 tury. The differences Iwtween the earlier and later 

 are significant. In the Oxford MS., which is 

 one of the little pocket copies carried by the jong- 

 leurs, the assonant rhyme (that which disregards 

 the consonants and dcjiends on the accented vowel) 

 is maintained throughout, the same as-omuicc )K>ing 

 kept up to the end of each break or paragraph. In 

 the later MSS. the assonant is turned into (lie full 

 consonant rhyme, and the poem expanded to twice 

 or thrice it* former length. The first shape is the 

 poem an tuny ; the second as adapted for readers 

 when the minstrel was no longer the sole vehicle 

 for poetry and reading was Woming a common 



accomplishment. A very close Cerman version, 

 the liiiiilnnilfit I.irt, shows that early in the 12th 

 rent my the chanson hail passed out of its native 

 country and language; and it is almost a- closely 

 followed in the Icelandic Karlamaiinnx .S</<i of the 

 I Mth. The Chanson de l!nl<ul \- the fMiindation 

 nf the Charlemagne legend. Charles's wars and 

 quarrels with his vassals would no don)>t of them- 

 selves have furnished themes for the jongleurs, but 

 the legend, culminating in the .Mcirganie of 1'iilci 

 and the Orlandos of Itoiardo and Ariosto, is the 

 outcome of the story of Roland and Roncesvalles. 



The following arc the printed editions of the Channon 

 df Roland: From the Oxford MS., by Fnnciaque Midi. 1 

 ( Paris, 1837); Text, with translation, by K. (Jrnin I Paris, 

 185(1); the Oxford text, ed. by Professor Miiller ((;.>tt. 

 1851; reprinted with additions, 1863, 1878); '41 ed of 

 F. Michel's, with text of Kith-century MS. in the Bib. 

 Nat. added (Paris, 1867): Rencrnral, Oxford text, E. 

 Boehmer ( Halle, 1872); MS. of Lib. of St Mark, Venic, . 

 fac-aimile by E. Kolbing ( Heilbronn, 1877 ); Oxford M I. . 

 ed. by E. Stengel, with a photograph fac-sinnl.' i Mcilbronn, 

 1878); Text, with translation in assonant rhyme, Petit 

 de ,1 u lie vi lie ( Paris, 1878 ) ; Text, with translation, com- 

 mentary, notes, &c., by Leon Gautier (Kith i-.l. 1887). 

 There are other translations by Jonain, Lehugeur, St 

 .\llin, and Jubert. By far the best is by the Baron d* A vril 

 (Paris, 1865, 1866, 1877). The Suolande* Lot wa* 

 printed in 1727, and again by W. Grimm in 1838, and by 

 Karl Bartsch (1874); and there is a translation by W. 

 Hertz (18G1). Mrs Marsh in 1854 translated Vitct's 

 epitome ot the poem, and Mr John O'Hagan has jiivcn 

 an accurate, scholarly, and spirited version from the 

 original (2d ed. 1883). There is also an English transla- 

 tion by L. Kabillon (New York, 1885). 



Roland de la Platlere, JEAN MARIE, and 

 his greater wife, MADAME ROLAND (nfe Marie- 

 Jeanne, or MJIIIOII, Phlipon), are among the most 

 memorable martyrs of the French Revolution. 

 Roland was born of a decayed legal family at 

 Villefranche near Lyons in 1734. He made his way 

 unaided, and hod risen to be inspector of manufac- 

 tures at Amiens, when about the close of 1775 he 

 made the acquaintance of his gifted wife. She was 

 twenty years his junior, having been Ixirn at 

 Paris, 18th March 1754, daughter of an engraver, 

 who had mined himself by unlucky sjieculations. 

 From the first an eager and imaginative child, 

 she read everything, even heraldry, and Plutarch 

 made the young idealist a republican for life. At 

 eleven she went for a^'ear into a convent to prepare 

 for her first communion, next passed a year with 

 her grandmother, and then returned to her father's 

 house, where she read Buflbn, Bossuet, and Hel- 

 vetius, and at length found her gospel in the writ- 

 ings of Rousseau. Her admirable mother died in 

 1775, and the girl, solitary and poor, untouched in 

 heart by her many admirers, and soured to her father 

 by his misconduct, at length in February 1780 

 married the estimable Roland. He was over forty, 

 thin, yellowish, careless in dress, abrupt and austere 

 in manners, solid and well-informed indeed, hut 

 dry, unsympathetic, and addicted to talking about 

 himself. But she buried the latent passions of 

 her heart, and for ten years made herself an 

 admirable wife and mother, with periect domestic 

 simplicity. They lived at Amiens, where her only 

 child, a daughter, was born (October 1781); and 

 next at Lyons, and travelled in England and 

 Swit/erlamf. The Agricultural Society of Lyons 

 charged Roland to draw up its cahier for the States- 

 general, and in February 1791 he went to Paris to 

 watch the interests of ite municipality, returned to 

 Lyons in September, but came bock to Paris before 

 the close of the year. It was now that Madame 

 Roland's masculine intellect and woman's heart 

 made her the queen of a coterie of young and 

 eloquent enthusiasts that included all the famous 

 and ill-fated leaders of the (Jironde, Brissot, Buzot, 



