The Song of Roland is one of the many mediaeval romances that celebrate
the deeds of Charlemagne.
The oldest text now in existence was written about 1096, but the poem was
current in other forms long before this.
The author was a Norman, for the poem is written in the Norman dialect;
but it is uncertain whether the Turoldus or Théroulde named in the last
line of the poem, "Thus endeth here the geste Turoldus sang," was the
author, a copyist, or a _jongleur_.
It is said that Taillefer, the minstrel of Normandy, sang the Song of
Roland at the battle of Hastings. "Taillefer, who right well sang, mounted
on his rapid steed, went before them singing of Charlemagne, and of
Roland, and Olivier, and of the vassals who died in Roncesvalles."
The only text of the poem now in existence is one of the thirteenth
century, preserved in the Bodleian library at Oxford.
On the fifteenth of August, 778, in the valley of Roncesvalles, in the
Pyrenees, Charlemagne's rear guard, left under the command of Roland,
Prefect of the Marches of Brittany, was attacked and slaughtered by a
large army of Gascons.
This incident forms the historical basis of the poem; but the imagination
of the poet has made of Charlemagne, then a young man, the old emperor,
with "beard all blossom white," and transformed his Gascon foes to
Saracens.
The Song of Roland is written in the heroic pentameter; it is divided into
"laisses," or stanzas, of irregular length, and contains about three
thousand seven hundred and eight lines. It is written in the assonant, or
vowel rhyme, that was universal among European nations in the early stage
of their civilization.
Each stanza ends with the word "aoi," for which no satisfactory
translation has yet been offered, although "away" and "it is done" have
been suggested.
The author of the Song of Roland undertook, like Homer, to sing of one
great event about which all the interest of the poem centres; but unlike
Homer, his poem is out of all proportion, the long-drawn out revenge being
in the nature of an anti-climax. The Song of Roland is a fair exponent of
the people among whom it originated. It contains no ornament; it is a
straightforward relation of facts; it lacks passion, and while it
describes fearful slaughter, it never appeals to the emotions. Though the
French army shed many tears, and fell swooning to the ground at the sight
of the fearful slaughter at Roncesvalles, we are rather moved to smile at
the violence of their emotion than to weep over the dead, so little power
has the poet to touch the springs of feeling. However, there are passages
in which the poem rises to sublimity, and which have been pronounced
Homeric by its admirers.