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Popular Epics of the Middle Ages of the Norse

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Popular Epics of the Middle Ages of the Norse POPULAR EPICS MIDDLE AGES. POPULAR EPICS MIDDLE AGES NORSE-GERMAN AND CARLOVINGIAN C YCLES. JOHN MALCOLM LUDLOW. VOL. II. Bonbon anb Cambribge : MACMILLAN AND CO. 1865. OCambribg* : PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER, SIDNEY STREET. CONTENTS. PART III. CHAP. PAGE I. The Sub-Cycles of the Carlovingian Epic . 3 II. Sub-Cycle of the Lorrainers. .12 III. Sub-Cycle of the Lords of Vermandois : Raoul of Cambray ...... 142 IV. Sub-Cycles of Gerard of Roussillon, and of William of Orange . 1 7 1 V. Sub-Cycle of the Peers : Ogier of Denmark . 247 VI. Fusing of the Carlovingian Sub-Cycle Proper and of the Feudal Sub-Cycles .... 304 APPENDIX A. The Novalesian Chronicle and Wil- liam's Monkship . .411 APPENDIX B. English Carlovingian Poems . 418 ERRATA. " Page 320, heading -for Epic of Chivalry" read "Grotesque Epic." Line 9 from top -for "writer" read "minstrel." PAET III. THE FRENCH OR CARLOVINGIAN CYCLE. (Continued.) VOL. II. I CHAPTER I. THE SUB-CYCLES OF THE CARLOVINGIAN EPIC. IN VlLMAR's ' History of the National Literature of Germany,'* (an able and interesting work, and which has perhaps only missed being a first-rate one through that amazing national conceit of con- temporary Germans which pervades it, with its consequent undervaluing and ignoring of foreign nations and their achievements), it is claimed as the unique prerogative of Germany, that she has had two "classical periods," has twice "stood on the summit of the times ;" whilst the writer speaks elsewhere of the French as having been led to take up the Arthurian legend partly through their "almost complete want of national epic poetry" (eines Nationalepos). All three assertions are surely equally unfounded. In putting forth the first, Herr Vilmar has apparently just touched without seeing * Geschichte der deutschen National-Literatur, von A. F. C. Vilmar. Fifth edit. Marburg, 1852. 4 THE SUB-CYCLES it a very curious problem in National Physiology (or in the Science of History, if that expression be preferred), viz., that of the unity or multiplicity of the cycles of development in a nation's life and literature.* In making the second he says that which none but a German would agree to. In making the third, he errs ludicrously. Grant that Germany, in addition to her late ' classical period" of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, had an earlier one in the twelfth and thirteenth, embracing the bulk of the German poems of the Norse-German cycle, the Arthurian epics of Wolfram von Eschen- bach and Gottfried von Strassburg, and the better ' portion of the Minnelieder,' with those of Walther von der Vogelweide at their head. Yet in France, ' the great Chansons de Geste/ the lyrics and lays ' of the Trouveres', constitute a classical period of her literature quite distinct from that second one which begins in the seventeenth century, earlier in * Fully to examine this question would require a volume. I will however say for myself, that I see no reason why the number of cycles of development should be limited. Any event or group of events which profoundly modifies, if I may use the word, revolu- tionizes, a nation's life without destroying it appears to me capable of serving as the starting-point of a new cycle, which will be more or less splendid, more or less complete, in proportion to the strength of the new impulsion, and to the freedom with which it is allowed to work. OF THE CARLOVINGIAN EPIC. 5 development by the better part of a century than the German, at least as rich and varied, and " in which France stood so decidedly on the summit of the times," that a full half of the early classical literature of Italy must be con- sidered as an offshoot from that of Southern or Northern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and that the German epics of the Carlo- vingian and Arthurian cycles are all (with the most trifling exceptions) translated, or borrowed in sub- stance or it subject, from the French ; whilst is ' impossible to consider the German Minne-songs' otherwise than as echoes of the poems of the ' Trou- ' badours' and Trouveres', echoes indeed gene- rally far more beautiful than the original poems, but which died away unheeded.* As to France * As a further instance of the double classical period, take Greece, where the classical period of the Homeric poems, em- bracing, probably, between Iliad and Odyssey, a full century at least, is quite distinct from the later one, which may be said to start with ./Eschylus from the Persian war, and to close with Plato and Aristotle. In modern times, the same feature reproduces itself more or less prominently in every nation which has survived to attain its full development, the era of the discovery of printing, of the vulgarization of ancient learning, and of the Reformation serving generally to divide two separate cycles of intellectual life, which are more or less distinct, in proportion to the early or late development of the former cycle. In Italy for instance, Dante really belongs to a distinct cycle from even Petrarch the former cycle having been very late in its development, whilst the second is peculiarly early. In Spain, the poem of the Cid, though standing alone, repre- 6 THE SUB-CYCLES ' having had no national epics, the Song of Roland' in the former volume, and the whole contents of this one, must decide that question. Suffice it to say, that for every German poem of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries having the slightest pre- tence to an epical character, and relating to a German worthy, real or imaginary, France could probably supply half-a-dozen ' Chansons de Geste' relating to some French one. The German dif- ficulty in respect to such works is that of collec- that of selection rather. tion ; the French, I have spoken broadly of the French or Carlo- vingian cycle of middle age epic. But when we come to study this order of literature more closely, we find in fact cycle within cycle. If we consider the legend of Charlemagne and his peers, of which I have given a sample, as forming a sort of central sub-cycle, there will be several other sub-cycles, in fact provincial, included within the general boundary line. And the spirit of all these neigh- sents a cycle quite distinct from that of Cervantes and Calderon. Amongst ourselves even, though the shock of the Norman invasion greatly retarded or rather wholly interrupted our national develop- ment, so that, as in Italy, the former cycle runs into the latter one, yet the "classical age" of Chaucer is one also quite distinct from that of Marlowe, Spenser and Shakspeare. Among the Scandina- vian races again, though the line of demarcation between the two " cycles is no longer the same, the classical age" of the Norse Eddas is wholly distinct from that of Ohlenschlager and Tegner. OF THE CARLOVINGIAN EPIC. 7 bouring sub-cycles appears to be from the first directly opposed to that which must at least have originated the central one. All tend to exalt some local chief, to the detriment of some prince of the line. In are feudal the Carlovingian short, they ; central one is imperial. To any one who considers what France was, ' before the three great Carlovingians, Hammer' Charles, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne, re- duced it to temporary unity, what it became as soon as the last was no longer there to maintain such unity, the co-existence of poems so opposite in their inspiration can be no surprise. Evidently, each class corresponds to a reality. Throughout the weary struggles of the long reign of the Debonair Louis, in particular, there must evidently have been two leading party-faiths throughout the length and breadth of what had once been one empire, a worship for past order and unityj as embodied in the glorious memory of the great emperor, his generals and counsellors, a longing for present independence of an imbecile and shadowy central authority, embodying itself in the glorification of some local chief. We should therefore conceive of the various sub-cycles of the Carlovingian epic, not as necessarily developed from any particular one, but as growing up in great measure simultaneously, at all events without inter-dependence. 8 THE SUB-CYCLES But we must carefully distinguish between the first origin of the epics in question, and the date of them as they have been preserved to us. The for- mer belongs, I have little doubt, generally to the ninth and tenth centuries. M. Paulin Paris (in his " Manuscrits Frangais") points out that in the work known as that of the "Astronomer of Limoges," a contemporary of Louis the Debonair, we find mentioned, amongst the counts "vulgo vassos," i. e. vassals, whom Charlemagne sent to the South- ern provinces, many personages who figure in the epics, either as heroes or as traitors. Again, when Louis the Debonair was crowned, still a child, king of Aquitain, the council of regency was presided over by Arnold, whom we meet with in the poems as Hernaud or Hernaut, in connection with the celebrated hero William Short-nose. So, Chorso of the Toulouse was surprised by Adeloricus, Gascon ; who as Alori is a noted traitor in the poems (see Ogier of Denmark, post}. Lastly, Chorso was re- placed by William, whose family was originally from Narbonne, and who is mentioned several times afterwards in the wars against the Saracens of Spain, and also as the founder of the abbey of in it is to mistake Gellone ; whom impossible that William of Orange, afterwards William 'Short- nose', son of Aymery of Narbonne, the central hero of the sub-cycle of the family of Aymery.
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