The Song of Roland
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*1 *.i:'1.a",d E,<-,1 i s,L, J THE SONG OF ROLAND Translatedby D. D. R. OWEN T"{to4,uotio'.' PP.r_r\ )I THE BOYDELLPRESS I f ;ni*;.&;":tr,! iiiL INTRODUCTION ThenTaillefer, most skilled in song, Spurringhis dashing steed along, Beforethe Duke began to sing Of Roland,of great Charles the king, Oliuer,and those lords beside Whocame to Ronceaaux,and died. (Wace,Roman de Rou,ll. 8013 - 18) It was a hundred years or so after the Battleof Hastings that the Jerseypoet Wace told of the preparationsfor the conflict and how a certain minstrel, Taillefer,sang a song of Roland beforeDuke William and the advancingNorman knights. His claim doesnot stand up to closescrutiny, as we shall seei but at first sight it is not unreasonable,bearing witness as it does to what his contemporariesrecognised as the inspirational qualities of the Sorzgof Roland.Wace saw it working on the emotionsas both a palliativefor battle nervesand a stimulant for those about to be hurled into the melee.What better way indeed to concentrate the knight's mind on his martial duties?He hears the sounds of combat beforethe real blows are struck; he participatesthrough the minstrel's mediation in actsof firm, even jaunty couragein the faceof heavy odds; he is reminded of the obligationsof commanderto men, men to commander,comrade to comrade;he is fired with a pride in lineageand nationhood, and feels the spiritual elation of total commitment to a just cause.Otherwise, in the words of Archbishop Turpin, . four penny pieces are worth more, And he should be a cloistered monk instead And ever after pray for all our sins. 01.1880 - 82) riirt*, ii,, ri,.,;fi,r;&';d-ir!, ,Ij,:d{i;#i,r.;]; "irijA.;.t'id*t;i+ u.sr,lJ"iliijjiii,l&i.!i*;*t fhe Songof Roland Introduction Such was the porver, as Wace was fully aware, with which this But we assumeit to have been simple and repetitive, designed earliest and finest chanson de gestewas charged. to excitethe emotionsby reinforcing the alreadystrong pulse of the epic line. Perhaps the mysterious letters AOI copied at frequent intervals at the end of lines in our unique Roland Chansonsde geste manuscript are in some way related to the musical presenta- tion, but we cannot be sure. None of the eighty or more surviving Old French epics 'Chansons', then, becausethe poems were sung. But why encapsulate better than the Song of Roland the crusading 'de geste'?The Latin Sestameans 'deeds': so these were songs warrior spirit of the feudai nobility. That nobility was of of deedsor, in this context,notable deeds,deeds ofvalour. The mainly Frankish stock; for when in the fifth century the tide French derivative geste acquired further, more particular, of Germanic invaders swept over the old Roman province of senses:the deeds of a group or family, even the family itself. Gaul, it was the Frankswiro colonisedmuch of the iand that 'God curse me,'cries Roland,'if I fail my gestel'(1.788). perpetuates their memory in its very name: France. But Traditionally, too, the whole corpus of theseepics was divided although they prevailed over the native population, their into gestesaccording to their subjects.The Rolandbelongs to the language yieldecl in time to the form of Latin imported by 'Geste du Roi', the king in question being, of course, the Roman settliersand which had itself ousted the Celtic Charlemagne,whose presenceas divinely appointed ruler of speech of the Gauls. Not that Germanic died without the Franks is felt throughout the constituenttexts, whether he resistance:it was still the mother-tongueof Charlemagneand appearsin an active or a passive role. also, no cloubt, ,cf the historical Roland. And it bequeathed The poets present their matter as firm fact; but however to French many words that speak of the particular character ready their public may have been to believe in those brave of the Franks: tlhe terms for 'arrogance','boldness', 'hate' heroic figures and their often superhuman deeds,the chansons and 'sharne', fctr 'war' and things associatedwith it de gestewere historicalin only the loosestsense. Nevertheless, 'helmet', 'broadsiword','wound','guard' and many more. most of them do carry at least a grain or two of fact, in the We know the Franks had their own heroic songs, for shapeeither of historical charactersor of actualevents that can which Charlemagne himself had some affection;but by about be verified from the chroniclesor chartersrelating to the period 11.00wherr, it is generally supposed, our Songof Roland was in question. Surprisingly, in view of the relatively late dating given its present form, the ancestral legends were being ascribedto the existing poems, that period is most often the handed down in the French tongue and given the character- remote Carolingian era of the eighth and ninth centuries. istic form of chansonsde geste.Of these the Rolandis not However, it is by no.means certain, despiteWace's testimony, only the earliest to have come down and, remarkably, the that the clash of the armiesat Hastings in 1066could have been most highly crafted: it is also one of the shortest,only half preluded by the singing of anything we would recogniseas a the length of many, whilst some marched on for up to 20,000 chansonde geste.We are in fact confrontedby a gapof roughly lines. three hundred years between many of the events and their These epic poems were truly 'chansons',since at least in celebrationin the epicswe know. Theseare the so-called'silent part they were sung, or chanted, by the jongleurs, itinerant centuries' which generatidnbof scholarshave been interrogat- minstrels rruhoaccompanied themselves on the oielle,an early ing for evidence of some bridging tradition: they have heard form of fiddle. Their performances,whether in castle hall or only confused whispers in reply, public place, would often have extendedover severalsessions. No one now takes seriously the belief of some of the We know sadly little of the music: a single line from one poem Romantics that epics sprang from the soul of the people and has been preserv'ed,embedded in a thirteenth-century play. composed themselves, rather than being composed, More The Songof Roland Introduction rationally, one school of critics supposed that memorable A threat to his predecessorson the Frankishthrone had come events prornpted an immediate responsein short songswhich, from the Moorish conquerorsof Spain. Having overcome the by a process of accretionand elaborationover many vears in Visigoths in the Peniniula, they piobed beyond the Pyrenees the course of oral, and therefore unrecorded, transmission, as far as Carcassonneand Nimes, swept through the whole of grew into the full-blown epics that were finally written down Gasconyand on to Poitiers,where they were eventually halted on parchmr:nt. This 'traditionalist' line of criticism has found in732. Their last stronghold in the south of France,Narbonne, its opponerrtsin the 'individualists', whose greatestchampion fellin759; but they remained in Spain as a continuing threat to was Joseph B6dier. He believed the chansonswere create-dall the Frankish kingdom. of a piece by indi'vidual poets from the late eleventh century Einhard, Charles's biographer, who served and knew him onwards. Typically, they were the fruit of cooperationbetween well, paints a flattering picture of his subject, stressingabove minstrelswho plied their tradeup and down the greatpilgrim all his resolute nature and tirelessnessin the pursuit of his routes and the clericsof the religious houses along their way, ends. Physically robust, Charles never let himself be deterred who supplied thern with local legends and scrapsof informa- by hardship or danger, leading his armies in defence of his tion from their archives. For the creation of the Roland the frontiers and far beyond them, spurred not only by territorial routes leading to Saint James'sshrine at Santiagode Com- ambitions but equally by a proselytisingzeal, devout Christian postela were esp,eciallysignificant. Other solutions to the as he was. The barbarian Saxons presented him with a puzzle have been proposed: the Latin epicsboth Classicaland particular challenge;and though he eventually achieved their medieval hirve been advanced as holding the kev, chronicles subjugation and conversion, they were a constant menace have been scouredfor evidence.But it is sirrely vain to seektoo throughout much of his reign. neat a theory to erplain the origin of the genie as a whole. We It was in 777 after one of his more successfulcampaigns shall return to the caseof. the Roland. against the Saxonsand while he was holding a great assembly at Paderborn that there arrived a surprising Moorish deputa- tion led by the governor of Barcelona,Suleiman Ibn Al-Arabf. Historyand Legend He came to seek Frankish support in his rebellion, with other Moorish leaders,against the Emir of Cordoba,offering Charles In the year 778 Chrarles,King of the Franks, suffered a military in return his own loyalty and also certain strongholdsincluding reverse in the Py:reneanpass of Roncevaux. Some modern Saragossa.Here it seemed, was a golden opportunity for historians believe it was a far more serious affair than appears Charles to secure his southern province of Aquitaine against in the 'officiial'chronicles of his reign, Be that as it may, had it any further Saracenincursions and at the same time to win not occurred there would have been no Songof Rolind, and more pagans over to Christianity. Unfortunately, things were world literature would have been the poorer. not to go according to plan. When his father died in768, Charles,then about twenty-six Having assembleda powerful Frankish army in Aquitaine, yearsold, inheriteclhalf of his kingdom, to which the other half where he passed the Easter of 778, he divided it into two was addedthree yerarslater on the deathof his brother.As kinq columns.