68 



JOURNAL or THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 



beginning of the fight at Roncevaux. In describing Gwynylou's 

 treachery the poet has derived one remarkable circumstance, not 

 from the French Roland^ but from the Chronicle of the pseudo- 

 Turpin. M. Paris is mistaken, however, in supposing that he does 

 not include Turpin in the number of the combatants at Eoncevaux 

 {Hist. Poet, de Charlemagne, p. 155, note). He says expressly 

 (leaf 384) : — 



vnto Roulond then went the princts xij 

 01yii<;r and Jioger and Aubry hym-selue 

 Richard and Rayner that redy was euer 

 tirry and turpyn all redy wer. 



The following description of the ''strange weather" that hap- 

 pened in Prance while the battle was going on may serve as a 

 specimen of the style of the poem, which is remarkably vigorous : 



— whde our folk fought to-gedur 



ther fell in ffraunce A strau^/g' wedur 



A gret derk myst in the myd-day-tym 



thik and clowdy and euyll wedur thene 



and thiknes of sterris and thond(;r light 



the erthe dynnyd doillfully to wet 



Ifoulis fled for fere it was gret wondo' 



1)0 wes of trees tliQn brestyn asondtr 



best ran to bankes And cried fidl sore 



they durst not abid in the mor 



ther was no man but he hid his hed 



And thought not but to dy in th?ii sted 



the wekid wedur lastid full long 



from the mornying to the euynsong 



then Rose a clowd euyn in the west 



as red as blod wetA-outon rest 



It shewid doun on the erthe & ther did shyn 



So many doughty men as died tJmi tym. 



2. Otuwel. This is also incomplete. Ellis has given an analysis 

 of it — ^loecimem of Early Engl. Metr. Romances (ed. 1811), vol. ii., 

 p. 324 — and the poem has since been printed from the Auchinleck 

 MS. for the Abbotsford Club (Edin. 1836). Its date is supposed 

 to be not later than 1330. Ellis has completed the story, as he 

 says, from another MS., then in the possession of Mr. Eillingham, 

 in which, however, M. Gaston Paris has recognized a portion of 

 a cyclic poem, to which he gives the title of Charlemagne and 

 Roland, and which I will next describe. Our Otuwel is the 

 French Otinel, printed in Les Anciens Poetes de la France, tom. i. 

 Otuwel or Otinel, the hero of the poem, comes as the ambassador 



