The legends of Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne, are very numerous and
vary much from each other. The Orlando of Pulci has a very different
history from the Orlando of Bojardo and Ariosto.
The legend of "Rolandseck and the Nonnenwerth," which has been adopted by
Campbell, not Mrs. Hemans, and charmingly set to music by Mrs. Arkwright,
is well known on the Rhine. There are two poems on the legend in Simrock's
_Rheinsagen_ (12mo., Bonn, 1841), one by the editor, and another by August
Kopisch. They exactly accord with Campbell's poem.
The legend of Ritter Toggenburg resembles that of Roland in many
particulars, but it is not the same, and it belongs to another locality, to
Kloster Fischingen, and not to Nonnenwerth. "Roland the Brave" appears in
all the later editions of Campbell's _Poems_. Simrock's _Rheinsagen_ is one
of the most delightful handbooks that any one can take through the romantic
region which the poems (partly well selected by the editor, and partly as
well written by himself) describe.