in the ninth century. They refer to a legendary action of King Clotair in the seventh century. The author presents them as excerpts translated from a song which, he tells us, was popular at that time. We have nothing else. To reconstruct these non-existent effusions by inference, and even to cite them by name as the panegyric of this or that Frankish king, the song of Clotair, or of Chlodoweg, is, in the word of an eminent French scholar, triumph of scientific hypothesis.' In the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries France was still Roman and unromantic, but not Teutonic, and with Celts on one flank.

a

In the eighth century a third event continued the preparation for Romance. The Arabs, after conquering Spain, invaded the south of France and were defeated at the battle of Tours by Charles Martel on the 10th October 732. We know that the Arabs sang songs, for we possess seven odes written by them in the days of ignorance' before Mahomet. And we know that, in the ninth century, they brought into Southern Europe the viol, or fiddle, conveyed from Persia, upon which Jongleurs were, much later, to accompany the Romances of Europe. But the early influence of the Arabs produced no romance. On the contrary, it produced dry translations of the least romantic works of the Greeks. Even the epoch-making contest at Tours bequeathed no legacy to romantic literature. Charles the Hammer never appears as one of its heroes. It was his grandson, Charlemagne, who became all but the greatest of romantic figures. His legendary exploits overshadowed his achievements, and were sung for centuries in every language of Europe. Yet the first legend, that we still possess,

was not written until some two hundred and seventy years after his death. Two other events were needed to complete the preparation. Despite the lays of the Bretons, the songs of the Francs, the odes of the Arabs, accompanied by rotes, harps, and viols, it is not until after the Normans had established themselves in France at the beginning of the tenth century, and conquered the English in the second half of the eleventh century, that we find the advent of Romance in European literature. The placid province of Latin Gaul was modified by the juxtaposition of Bretons, the absorption of Francs, the expulsion of Arabs, the absorption of Normans, and the conquest of England, before the 'Song of Roland' appears.

THE SONG OF ROLAND

The ironical adage Post hoc ergo propter hoc may be discounted at once, for the song reveals the influence of all those five events, and, but for their happening, could not be what it is. It is written in French; because Latinised Gaul, having ceased to be Celtic, never became German, but became France. Its hero, Roland, is the Count of the Marches of Brittany, and it teems with praise of the Bretons:

'Icil chevalchent en guise de baruns

Dreites lur hanstes, fermez lur gunfanuns' (1. 3054),

These ride with the high air of fighting-men,
Their spears erect, and battle-pennons furled';

because France was in contact with Celtic Brittany. Its action, in defiance of history, consists of conflicts with Saracens; because such conflicts in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries held the imagination of Europe with a growing horror, that culminated when

the Turks took Jerusalem from the Arabs, to profane her shrines and persecute their pious visitors. It is written by a Norman; because the author discovered, in the legendary feats of Roland, a parallel to the historic conquests of his race. But he found it difficult to harmonise the two. So Normandy, though conquered, in his song is still la franche' -the free (1. 2324). Duke Richard is one of Charlemagne's twelve peers, and his Normans are picked from all nations for the highest praise :

Ja

pur murir cil n'ièrent recreant;

Suz ciel, n'ad gent ki durer poissent tant' (1. 3047).

Handsome their weapons and their coursers strong;
Never for death will they admit the wrong;

No other nation can endure so long.'

The reference to England, on the other hand, is in the scornful tone of one who had himself followed William to Hastings and Westminster; because the song was written after, and not before, the conquest of England. To that opinion, at any rate, the weight of French scholarship inclines, as I hold conclusively. When the death-stricken Roland recites the countries he has won for Charles with his sword Durendal, his slighting reference to England

'E Engletere que il teneit sa cambre' (1. 2332),

And England which he kept for his own room,'

finds no counterpart in any allusion to other legendary conquests. The Saracen is detested, but the Englishman is despised, whilst other nations, although defeated, are hailed as honoured vassals who follow the oriflamme to war. Finally, this

song, and no other, won a way for Romance in the literature of Europe; because northern French, by becoming the Royal language of England, attained a position which Latin, for lack of general comprehension, could no longer hold. Northern French became the tongue common to many nations, and was adapted, as Latin never had been, to the expression of Romance. Here I must note a possibility of misconception. It is urged that some features in the song we possess are earlier than the date attributed to it. Again, we know that the Jongleur, Taillefer, sang some other song of Roland as he rode in front of the Norman advance at Hastings, tossing his sword in the air and catching it by the hilt. But these considerations do not affect my argument. None of the romantic features in the song can be earlier than the Celtic and Saracenic influences; most of them must be later than the Norman influence, and that influence did not carry Romance into literature until after the Conquest.

The view that the Song of Roland' could not have been written until after the events I have enumerated, or be what it is but for their happening, is confirmed if we glance at the historic fact on which it is based, and compare the song with the account written at the time. For the song reveals the influence of all these events, and the contemporary account shows scarce a trace of any one of them.

On the 15th of August 778, Charlemagne's army had retired from Spain into France over the Pyrenees in safety. But his rear-guard was ambushed by the Basques in a closely-wooded defile and killed out to the last man. That is the historic

fact. Now turn to the contemporary account. Charlemagne's secretary, Eginhard, describes the tragedy (vita et gesta Caroli cognomento Magni, etc., cap. ix.) in seventeen and a half lines of prosaic Latin. There is no word of the Saracens. Three of the slaughtered chieftains are named, and of these the third, apparently in order of importance, is Rutlandus, the præfect of the frontier of Brittany (Rutlandus Britannici limitis præfectus). That is all that history tells us of Roland. He is not even in command, and sounds no

· blast of that dread horn On Fontarabian echoes borne,'

that caught the ear of Walter Scott as he was writing Marmion.

We hear no more of him in any written word that remains until his romantic glory is unrolled in the four thousand and two ringing lines of the Chanson de Roland. Thenceforward it reverberates through literature, expanding into the stupendous cycle of Carlovingian romances, and their derivatives, down to the day on which Ariosto presented the Cardinal of Este with his poem of ladies and of knights, of battles and loves, of courtesies and of daring adventures':

'Le Donne, il Cavalier, l'Arme, gli Amori,
Le Cortesie, l'audaci Imprese io canto,

Che furo al tempo che passaro i Mori

D'Africa il mare, e in Francia nocquer tanto,
Sequendo l'ire e i giovenil furori

D'Agramante lor Re che si diè vanto

Di Vendicar la morte di Trojano

Sopra Re Carlo Imperator Romano.'

Incidentally the story of Roland gave proverbs to the people-a Roland for an Oliver-and their