THE OLD FRENCH EPIC
(_Chansons de Geste_)
It appears to be generally the case in all old epic literature, and it
is not surprising, that the existing specimens come from the end of
the period of its greatest excellence, and generally represent the
epic fashion, not quite at its freshest and best, but after it has
passed its culmination, and is already on the verge of decline. This
condition of things is exemplified in _Beowulf_; and the Sagas also,
here and there, show signs of over-refinement and exhaustion. In the
extant mass of old French epic this condition is enormously
exaggerated. The _Song of Roland_ itself, even in its earliest extant
form, is comparatively late and unoriginal; while the remainder of
French epic poetry, in all its variety, is much less authentic than
_Roland_, sensibly later, and getting rapidly and luxuriantly worse
through all the stages of lethargy.
It is the misfortune of French epic that so much should have been
preserved of its "dotages," so little of the same date and order as
the _Song of Roland_, and nothing at all of the still earlier
epic--the more original _Roland_ of a previous generation. The
exuberance, however, of the later stages of French epic, and its long
persistence in living beyond its due time, are proof of a certain
kind of vitality. The French epic in the twelfth century, long after
its best days were over, came into the keenest and closest rivalry
with the younger romantic schools in their first vigour. Fortune has
to some extent made up for the loss of the older French poems by the
preservation of endless later versions belonging in date to the
exciting times of the great romantic revolution in literature. Feeble
and drowsy as they often are, the late-born hosts of the French epic
are nevertheless in the thick of a great European contest, matched not
dishonourably against the forces of Romance. They were not the
strongest possible champions of the heroic age, but they were _there_,
in the field, and in view of all spectators. At this distance of time,
we can see how much more fully the drift of the old Teutonic world was
caught and rendered by the imagination of Iceland; how much more there
is in Grettir or Skarphedinn than in Ogier the Dane, or Raoul de
Cambrai, or even Roland and Oliver. But the Icelandic work lay outside
of the consciousness of Europe, and the French epic was known
everywhere. There are no such masterpieces in the French epic as in
the Icelandic prose. The French epic, to make up for that, has an
exciting history; it lived by antagonism, and one may look on and see
how the _chansons de geste_ were fighting for their life against the
newer forms of narrative poetry. In all this there is the interest of
watching one of the main currents of history, for it was nothing less
than the whole future imaginative life of Europe that was involved in
the debate between the stubborn old epic fashion and the new romantic
adventurers.
The _chansons de geste_ stand in a real, positive, ancestral relation
to all modern literature; there is something of them in all the poetry
of Europe. The Icelandic histories can make no such claim. Their
relation to modern life is slighter, in one sense; more spiritual, in
another. They are not widely known, they have had no share in
establishing the forms or giving vogue to the commonplaces of modern
literature. Now that they are published and accessible to modern
readers, their immediate and present worth, for the friends of
Skarphedinn and Gunnar, is out of all proportion to their past
historical influence. They have anticipated some of the literary
methods which hardly became the common property of Europe till the
nineteenth century; even now, when all the world reads and writes
prose stories, their virtue is unexhausted and unimpaired. But this
spiritual affinity with modern imaginations and conversations, across
the interval of medieval romance and rhetoric, is not due to any
direct or overt relation. The Sagas have had no influence; that is the
plain historical fact about them.
The historical influence and importance of the _chansons de geste_, on
the other hand, is equally plain and evident. Partly by their
opposition to the new modes of fiction, and partly by compliance with
their adversaries, they belong to the history of those great schools
of literature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from which all
modern imaginations in prose and rhyme are descended. The "dolorous
rout" of Roncesvalles, and not the tragedy of the Niblungs, still less
the history of Gunnar or of Njal, is the heroic origin of modern
poetry; it is remembered and renowned, [Greek: pasi melousa], among
the poets who have given shape to modern imaginative literature, while
the older heroics of the Teutonic migration are forgotten, and the
things of Iceland are utterly unknown.
French epic has some great advantages in comparison with the epic
experiments of Teutonic verse. For one thing, it exists in great
quantity; there is no want of specimens, though they are not all of
the best sort or the best period. Further, it has no difficulty, only
too much ease, in keeping a long regular course of narrative. Even
_Beowulf_ appears to have attained to its epic proportions by a
succession of efforts, and with difficulty; it labours rather heavily
over the longer epic course. _Maldon_ is a poem that runs freely, but
here the course is shorter, and it carries much less weight. The
Northern poems of the "Elder Edda" never attain the right epic scale
at all; their abrupt and lyrical manner is the opposite of the epic
mode of narration. It is true that the _chansons de geste_ are far
from the perfect continuity of the Homeric narrative. _Roland_ is
described by M. Gaston Paris in terms not unlike those that are
applied by Ten Brink in his criticism of _Beowulf_:--
"On peut dire que la _Chanson de Roland_ (ainsi que toutes
nos plus anciennes chansons de geste) se développe non pas,
comme les poèmes homériques, par un courant large et
ininterrompu, non pas, comme le _Nibelungenlied_, par des
battements d'ailes égaux et lents, mais par un suite
d'explosions successives, toujours arrêtées court et
toujours reprenant avec soudaineté" (_Litt. fr. au moyen
âge_, p. 59).
_Roland_ is a succession of separate scenes, with no gradation or
transition between them. It still bears traces of the lyrical origins
of epic. But the narrative, though broken, is neither stinted nor
laboured; it does not, like _Beowulf_, give the impression that it has
been expanded beyond the convenient limits, and that the author is
scant of breath. And none of the later _chansons de geste_ are so
restricted and reserved in their design as _Roland_; most of them are
diffuse and long. The French and the Teutonic epics are at opposite
extremes of style.
The French epics are addressed to the largest conceivable
audience.[69] They are plain and simple, as different as possible from
the allusive brevity of the Northern poems. Even the plainest of the
old English poems, even _Maldon_, has to employ the poetical diction,
the unprosaic terms and figures of the Teutonic School. The
alliterative poetry down to its last days has a vocabulary different
from that of prose, and much richer. The French epic language is not
distinguished and made difficult in this way; it is "not prismatic but
diaphanous." Those who could understand anything could understand it,
and the _chansons de geste_ easily found currency in the market-place,
when they were driven by the new romances from their old place of
honour in "bower and hall." The Teutonic poetry, even at its simplest,
must have required more attention in its hearers than the French,
through the strangeness and the greater variety of its vocabulary. It
is less familiar, less popular. Whatever dignity may be acquired by
the French epic is not due to any special or elaborate convention of
phrase. Where it is weak, its poverty is not disguised, as in the
weaker portions of Teutonic poetry, by the ornaments and synonyms of
the _Gradus_. The commonplaces of French epic are not imposing.[70]
With this difference between the French and the Teutonic conventions,
there is all the more interest in a comparison of the two kinds, where
they come into comparison through any resemblance of their subjects or
their thought, as in _Byrhtnoth_ and _Roland_.
[Footnote 69: G. Paris, Preface to _Histoire de la littérature
française_, edited by L. Petit de Julleville.]
[Footnote 70: See the preface to _Raoul de Cambrai_, ed. Paul Meyer
(Anc. Textes), for examples of such _chevilles_; and also _Aimeri de
Narbonne_, p. civ.]
The French epics have generally a larger political field, more
numerous armies, and more magnificent kings, than the Teutonic. In the
same degree, their heroism is different from that of the earlier
heroic age. The general motives of patriotism and religion, France and
Christendom, prevent the free use of the simpler and older motives of
individual heroism. The hero of the older sort is still there, but his
game is hindered by the larger and more complex political conditions
of France; or if these are evaded, still the mere size of the country
and numbers of the fighting-men tell against his importance; he is
dwarfed by his surroundings. The limitation of the scenes in the poems
of _Beowulf_, _Ermanaric_, and _Attila_ throws out the figures in
strong relief. The mere extent of the stage and the number of the
supernumeraries required for the action of most of the French stories
appear to have told against the definiteness of their characters; as,
on the other hand, the personages in _Beowulf_, without much
individual character of their own, seem to gain in precision and
strength from the smallness of the scene in which they act. There is
less strict economy in the _chansons de geste_.
Apart from this, there is real and essential vagueness in their
characters; their drama is rudimentary. The simplicity of the French
epic style, which is addressed to a large audience and easily
intelligible, is not capable of much dramatic subtlety. It can be made
to express a variety of actions and a variety of moods, but these are
generally rendered by means of common formulas, without much dramatic
insight or intention. While the fragments of Teutonic epic seem to
give evidence of a growing dramatic imagination, and the Northern
poems, especially, of a series of experiments in character, the French
epic imagination appears to have remained content with its
established and abstract formulas for different modes of sentiment
and passion. It would not be easy to find anything in French epic that
gives the same impression of discovery and innovation, of the search
for dramatic form, of the absorption of the poet's mind in the pursuit
of an imaginary character, as is given, again and again, by the
Northern poems of the Volsung cycle. Yet the _chansons de geste_ are
often true and effective in their outlines of character, and include a
quantity of "humours and observation," though their authors seem to
have been unable to give solidity to their sketches.
The weakness of the drama in the French epics, even more than their
compliance with foreign romance in the choice of incidents or
machinery, is against their claim to be reckoned in the higher order
of heroic narrative. They are romantic by the comparative levity of
their imagination; the story, with them, is too much for the
personages. But it is still the problem of heroic character that
engages them, however feebly or conventionally they may deal with it.
They rely, like the Teutonic epic and the Sagas, on situations that
test the force of character, and they find those situations in the
common conditions of an heroic age, subject of course to the
modifications of the comparatively late period and late form of
society to which they belong. _Roland_ is a variation on the one
perpetual heroic theme; it has a grander setting, a grander
accompaniment, than _Byrhtnoth_ or _Waldere_, but it is essentially
the old story of the heroic age,--no knight-errantry, but the last
resistance of a man driven into a corner.
The greatness of the poem of _Roland_ is that of an author who knows
his own mind, who has a certain mood of the heroic imagination to
express, and is at no loss for his instrument or for the lines of his
work.
The poem, as has been already noted, has a general likeness in its
plan to the story of Finnesburh as told in _Beowulf_, and to the poems
of the death of Attila. The plot falls into two parts, the second part
being the vengeance and expiation.
Although the story is thus not absolutely simple, like the adventures
of Beowulf, no epic has a more magnificent simplicity of effect. The
other personages, Charlemagne, Ganelon, Oliver, King Marsile, have to
Roland nothing like the importance of Agamemnon, Ajax, Diomede, or
Hector, as compared with Achilles in the _Iliad_. The poem is almost
wholly devoted to the praise and glorification of a single hero; it
retains very much of the old manners of the earlier stages of epic
poetry, before it ceased to be lyric. It is a poem in honour of a
chieftain.
At the same time, this lyrical tone in _Roland_ and this pathetic
concentration of the interest on one personage do not interfere with
the epic plan of the narrative, or disturb the lines of the
composition. The central part of the poem is on the Homeric scale; the
fighting, the separate combats, are rendered in an Homeric way.
_Byrhtnoth_ and _Roland_ are the works that have given the best
medieval counterpart to the battles of Homer. There is more of a
crisis and a climax in _Roland_ than in the several battles of the
_Iliad_, and a different sort of climax from that of _Byrhtnoth_.
Everything leads to the agony and heroic death of Roland, and to his
glory as the unyielding champion of France and Christendom. It is not
as in the _Iliad_, where different heroes have their day, or as at
Maldon, where the fall of the captain leads to the more desperate
defence and the more exalted heroism of his companions. Roland is the
absolute master of the _Song of Roland_. No other heroic poetry
conveys the same effect of pre-eminent simplicity and grandeur. There
is hardly anything in the poem except the single mood; its simplicity
is overpowering, a type of heroic resistance for all the later poets
of Europe. This impressive effect is aided, it is true, by an infusion
of the lyrical tone and by playing on the pathetic emotions. Roland is
ideal and universal, and the story of his defeat, of the blast of his
horn, and the last stroke of Durendal, is a kind of funeral march or
"heroic symphony" into which a meaning may be read for every new hero,
to the end of the world; for any one in any age whose _Mood is the
more as the Might lessens_. Yet although Roland has this universal or
symbolical or musical meaning--unlike the more individual personages
in the Sagas, who would resent being made into allegories--the total
effect is mainly due to legitimate epic means. There is no stinting of
the epic proportions or suppression of the epic devices. The _Song of
Roland_ is narrative poetry, a model of narrative design, with the
proper epic spaces well proportioned, well considered, and filled with
action. It may be contrasted with the _Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok_,
which is an attempt to get the same sort of moral effect by a process
of lyrical distillation from heroic poetry; putting all the strongest
heroic motives into the most intense and emphatic form. There is
something lyrical in _Roland_, but the poem is not governed by lyrical
principles; it requires the deliberation and the freedom of epic; it
must have room to move in before it can come up to the height of its
argument. The abruptness of its periods is not really an interruption
of its even flight; it is an abruptness of detail, like a broken sea
with a larger wave moving under it; it does not impair or disguise the
grandeur of the movement as a whole.
There are other poems among the _chansons de geste_ which admit of
comparison with _Roland_, though _Roland_ is supreme; other epics in
which the simple motives of heroism and loyalty are treated in a
simple and noble way, without any very strong individual character
among the personages. Of these rather abstract expositions of the
heroic ideal, some of the finest are to be found in the cycle of
William of Orange, more especially in the poems relating the exploits
of William and his nephew Vivian, and the death of Vivian in the
battle against the Moors--
En icel jor que la dolor fu grans
Et la bataille orible en Aliscans.
Like _Roland_, the poem of _Aliscans_ is rather lyrical in its effect,
reiterating and reinforcing the heroic motives, making an impression
by repetition of one and the same mood; a poem of the glorification of
France. It shows, at the same time, how this motive might be degraded
by exaggeration and amplification. There are too many Moors in it (as
also in _Roland_), and the sequel is reckless and extravagant, where
William of Orange rides to the king's court for help and discovers an
ally in the enormous scullion of the king's kitchen, Rainouart, the
Morgante of French epic. Rainouart, along with William of Orange, was
seen by Dante in Paradise. In his gigantic and discourteous way he was
one of the champions of Christendom, and his manners are interesting
as a variation from the conventional heroic standards. But he takes up
too much room; he was not invented by the wide and comprehensive epic
imagination which finds a place for many varieties of mankind in its
story, but by some one who felt that the old epic forms were growing
thin and unsatisfactory, and that there was need of some violent
diversion to keep the audiences awake. This new device is not
abandoned till Rainouart has been sent to Avalon--the epic form and
spirit losing themselves in a misappropriation of Romance. These
excursions are of course not to be ascribed to the central authors of
the cycle of William of Orange; but already even in the most heroic
parts of the cycle there are indications of the flagging imagination,
the failure of the old motives, which gave an opening to these wild
auxiliary forces. Where the epic came to trust too much to the mere
heroic sentiment, to the moral of _Roland_, to the contrast of knight
and infidel, there was nothing for it but either to have recourse to
the formal heroics of Camoens or Tasso,--for which the time had not
yet come,--or to be dissolved altogether in a medley of adventures,
and to pass from its old station in the front of literature to those
audiences of the market-place that even now, in some parts of the
world, have a welcome for Charlemagne and his peers.[71]
[Footnote 71: _Historia Verdadera de Carlo Magno y los doce Pares de
Francia_: Madrid, 4to (1891), a chap-book of thirty-two pages.]
Those of the French epics in which the motives of _Roland_ are in some
form or other repeated, in which the defence of Christendom is the
burden, are rightly considered the best representatives of the whole
body. But there are others in which with less dignity of theme there
is more freedom, and in which an older epic type, more akin to the
Teutonic, nearer in many ways to the Icelandic Sagas, is preserved,
and for a long time maintains itself distinct from all the forms of
romance and the romantic schools. It is not in _Roland_ or in
_Aliscans_ that the epic interest in character is most pronounced and
most effective. Those among the _chansons de geste_ which make least
of the adventures in comparison with the personages, which think more
of the tragic situation than of rapid changes of scene and incident,
are generally those which represent the feuds and quarrels between the
king and his vassals, or among the great houses themselves; the
anarchy, in fact, which belongs to an heroic age and passes from
experience into heroic literature. There is hardly any of the
_chansons de geste_ in which this element of heroic anarchy is not to
be found in a greater or less degree. In _Roland_, for example, though
the main action is between the French and the Moors, it is jealousy
and rivalry that bring about the catastrophe, through the treason of
Ganelon. This sort of jealousy, which is subordinate in _Roland_,
forms the chief motive of some of the other epics. These depend for
their chief interest on the vicissitudes of family quarrels almost as
completely as the Sagas. These are the French counterparts of
_Eyrbyggja_, and of the stories of Glum or Gisli. In France, as in
Iceland, the effect of the story is produced as much by the energy of
the characters as by the interest of adventures. Only in the French
epic, while they play for larger stakes, the heroes are incomparably
less impressive. The imagination which represents them is different in
kind from the Icelandic, and puts up with a very indefinite and
general way of denoting character. Though the extant poems are late,
some of them have preserved a very elementary psychology and a very
simple sort of ethics, the artistic formulas and devices of a
rudimentary stage which has nothing to correspond to it in the extant
Icelandic prose.
_Raoul de Cambrai_ in its existing form is a late poem; it has gone
through the process of translation from assonance into rhyme, and like
_Huon of Bordeaux_, though by a different method, it has been fitted
with a romantic continuation. But the first part of the poem
apparently keeps the lines of an older and more original version. The
story is not one of the later cyclic fabrications; it has an
historical basis and is derived from the genuine epic tradition of
that tenth-century school which unfortunately is only known through
its descendants and its influence. _Raoul de Cambrai_, though in an
altered verse and later style, may be taken as presenting an old story
still recognisable in most of its original features, especially in its
moral.
Raoul de Cambrai, a child at his father's death, is deprived of his
inheritance. To make up for this he is promised, later, the first fief
that falls vacant, and asserts his claim in a way that brings him into
continual trouble,--a story with great opportunities for heroic
contrasts and complications. The situation is well chosen; it is
better than that of the story of Glum, which is rather like
it[72]--the right is not all on one side. Raoul has a just cause, but
cannot make it good; he is driven to be unjust in order to come by his
own. Violence and excess in a just cause will make a tragic history;
there is no fault to be found with the general scheme or principle in
this case. It is in the details that the barbarous simplicity of the
author comes out. For example, in the invasion of the lands on which
he has a claim, Raoul attacks and burns a nunnery, and in it the
mother of his best friend and former squire, Bernier. The injured man,
his friend, is represented as taking it all in a helpless dull
expostulatory way. The author has no language to express any
imaginative passion; he can only repeat, in a muffled professional
voice, that it was really a very painful and discreditable affair. The
violent passions here are those of the heroic age in its most
barbarous form; more sudden and uncontrolled even than the anger of
Achilles. But with all their vehemence and violence there is no real
tragic force, and when the hero is killed by his friend, and the
friend is sorry afterwards, there is nothing but the mere formal and
abstract identity of the situation to recall to mind the tragedy of
Kjartan and Bolli.
[Footnote 72: Glum, like Raoul, is a widow's son deprived of his
rights.]
_Garin le Loherain_ is a story with a similar plot,--the estrangement
and enmity of old friends, "sworn companions." Though no earlier than
_Raoul de Cambrai_, though belonging in date to the flourishing period
of romance, it is a story of the older heroic age, and its contents
are epic. Its heroes are unsophisticated, and the incidents,
sentiments, and motives are primitive and not of the romantic school.
The story is much superior to _Raoul de Cambrai_ in speed and
lightness; it does not drag at the critical moments; it has some
humour and some grace. Among other things, its gnomic passages
represent very fairly the dominant heroic ideas of courage and good
temper; it may be appealed to for the humanities of the _chansons de
geste_, expressed in a more fluent and less emphatic shape than
_Roland_. The characters are taken very lightly, but at least they are
not obtuse and awkward. If there is not much dramatic subtlety, there
is a recognition and appreciation of different aspects of the same
character. The story proceeds like an Icelandic Saga, through
different phases of a long family quarrel, springing from a
well-marked origin; foreshadowed and accompanied, as in many of the
Sagas, by the hereditary felonious character of the one party, which
yet is not blackened too much nor wholly unrelieved.
As in many of the Icelandic stories, there is a stronger dramatic
interest in the adversary, the wrong side, than in the heroes. As with
Kari and Flosi in _Njála_, as with Kjartan and Bolli in _Laxdæla_, and
with Sigmund and Thrond of Gata in _Færeyinga Saga_, so in the story
of Garin it is Fromont the enemy whose case is followed with most
attention, because it is less simple than that of the heroes, Garin of
Lorraine and Begon his brother. The character of Fromont shows the
true observation, as well as the inadequate and sketchy handling, of
the French epic school. Fromont is in the wrong; all the trouble
follows from his original misconduct, when he refused to stand by
Garin in a war of defence against the Moors:--
Iluec comence li grans borroflemens.
But Fromont's demeanour afterwards is not that of a traitor and a
felon, such as his father was. He belongs to a felonious house; he is
the son of Hardré, one of the notorious traitors of French epic
tradition; but he is less than half-hearted in his own cause, always
lamentable, perplexed, and peevish, always trying to be just, and
always dragged further into iniquity by the mischief-makers among his
friends. This idea of a distracted character is worked out as well as
was possible for a poet of that school, in a passage of narrative
which represents more than one of the good qualities of French epic
poetry,--the story of the death of Begon, and the vengeance exacted
for him by his brother Garin. This episode shows how the French poets
could deal with matter like that of the Sagas. The story is well told,
fluently and clearly; it contains some fine expressions of heroic
sentiment, and a good fight, as well as the ineffectual sorrows and
good intentions of the anti-hero Fromont, with all the usual tissue of
violence which goes along with a feud in heroic narrative, when the
feud is regarded as something impersonal and fatal, outside the wishes
of the agents in it.
It may be said here that although the story of Garin and of the feud
between the house of Lorraine and their enemies is long drawn out and
copious in details, it is not confused, but falls into a few definite
episodes of warfare, with intervals of truce and apparent
reconciliation. Of these separate acts in the tragedy, the _Death of
Begon_ is the most complete in itself; the most varied, as well as the
most compact. The previous action is for a modern taste too much
occupied with the commonplaces of epic warfare, Homeric combats in the
field, such as need the heroic motives of Maldon or Roncesvalles to
make them interesting. In the story of the _Death of Begon_ there is a
change of scene from the common epic battlefield; the incidents are
not taken from the common stock of battle-poetry, and the Homeric
supernumeraries are dismissed.
This episode[73] begins after an interval in the feud, and tells how
Begon one day thought of his brother Garin whom he had not seen for
seven years and more (the business of the feud having been slack for
so long), and how he set out for the East country to pay his brother a
visit, with the chance of a big boar-hunt on the way. The opening
passage is a very complete and lively selection from the experience
and the sentiments of the heroic age; it represents the old heroic
temper and the heroic standard of value, with, at the same time, a
good deal of the gentler humanities.
[Footnote 73: _Garin le Loherain_, ed. Paulin Paris (1833-35), vol.
ii. pp. 217-272.]
One day Begon was in his castle of Belin; at his side was
the Duchess Beatrice, and he kissed her on the mouth: he saw
his two sons coming through the hall (so the story runs).
The elder was named Gerin and the younger Hernaudin; the one
was twelve and the other was ten years old, and with them
went six noble youths, running and leaping with one another,
playing and laughing and taking their sport.
The Duke saw them and began to sigh, and his lady questioned
him:--
"Ah, my Lord Duke, why do you ponder thus? Gold and silver
you have in your coffers; falcons on their perch, and furs
of the vair and the grey, and mules and palfreys; and well
have you trodden down your enemies: for six days' journey
round you have no neighbour so stout but he will come to
your levy."
Said the Duke: "Madame, you have spoken true, save in one
thing. Riches are not in the vair and the grey, nor in
money, nor in mules and horses, but riches are in kinsmen
and friends: the heart of a man is worth all the gold in the
land. Do you not remember how I was assailed and beset at
our home-coming? and but for my friends how great had been
my shame that day! Pepin has set me in these marches where I
have none of my near friends save Rigaut and Hervi his
father; I have no brother but one, Garin the Lothering, and
full seven years are past and gone that I have not seen him,
and for that I am grieved and vexed and ill at ease. Now I
will set off to see my brother Garin, and the child Girbert
his son that I have never seen. Of the woods of Vicogne and
of St. Bertin I hear news that there is a boar there; I will
run him down, please the Lord, and will bring the head to
Garin, a wonder to look upon, for of its like never man
heard tell."
Begon's combined motives are all alike honest, and his rhetoric is as
sound as that of Sarpedon or of Gunnar. Nor is there any reason to
suppose, any more than in the case of Byrhtnoth, that what is striking
in the poem is due to its comparative lateness, and to its
opportunities of borrowing from new discoveries in literature. If that
were so, then we might find similar things among the newer fashions
of the contemporary twelfth-century literature; but in fact one does
not find in the works of the romantic school the same kind of humanity
as in this scene. The melancholy of Begon at the thought of his
isolation--"Bare is back without brother behind it"--is an adaptation
of a common old heroic motive which is obscured by other more showy
ideas in the romances. The conditions of life are here essentially
those of the heroic age, an age which has no particular ideas of its
own, which lives merely on such ideas as are struck out in the
collision of lawless heavy bodies, in that heroic strife which is the
parent of all things, and, among the rest, of the ideas of loyalty,
fellowship, fair dealing, and so on. There is nothing romantic or
idealist in Begon; he is merely an honest country gentleman, rather
short of work.
He continues in the same strain, after the duchess has tried to
dissuade him. She points out to him the risk he runs by going to hunt
on his enemy's marches,--
C'est en la marche Fromont le poësti,
--and tells him of her foreboding that he will never return alive. His
answer is like that of Hector to Polydamas:--
Diex! dist il, dame, merveilles avez dit:
Ja mar croiroie sorciere ne devin;
Par aventure vient li biens el païs,
Je ne lairoie, por tot l'or que Diex fist,
Que je n'i voise, que talens m'en est prins.
The hunting of the boar is as good as anything of its kind in history,
and it is impossible to read it without wishing that it had been
printed a few years earlier to be read by Sir Walter Scott. He would
have applauded as no one else can this story of the chase and of the
hunter separated from his companions in the forest. There is one line
especially in the lament for Begon after his death which is enough by
itself to prove the soundness of the French poet's judgment, and his
right to a welcome at Abbotsford: "This was a true man; his dogs loved
him":--
Gentis hons fu, moult l'amoient si chien.
Begon came by his death in the greenwood. The forester found him there
and reported him to Fromont's seneschal, who called out six of his men
to go and take the poacher; and along with them went Thibaut,
Fromont's nephew, an old rival of Begon. Begon set his back to an
aspen tree and killed four of the churls and beat off the rest, but
was killed himself at last with an arrow.
The four dead men were brought home and Begon's horse was led away:--
En une estable menerent le destrier
Fronce et hennit et si grate des pies
Que nus de char ne li ouse aprochier.
Begon was left lying where he fell and his three dogs came back to
him:--
Seul ont Begon en la forest laissié:
Et jouste lui revindrent si trois chien,
Hulent et braient com fuissent enragié.
This most spirited passage of action and adventure shows the poet at
his best; it is the sort of thing that he understands, and he carries
it through without a mistake. It is followed by an attempt at another
theme where something more is required of the author, and his success
is not so perfect. He is drawn into the field of tragic emotion. Here,
though his means are hardly sufficient for elaborate work, he sketches
well. The character of Fromont when the news of his opponent's death
is brought to him comes out as something of a different value from the
sheer barbarism of _Raoul de Cambrai_. The narrative is light and
wanting in depth, but there is no untruth and no dulness in the
conception, and the author's meaning is perfectly clear. Fromont is
different from the felons of his own household. Fromont is the
adversary, but he is a gentleman. Even when he knows no more of the
event than that a trespasser has been killed in the forest, he sends
his men to bring in the body;--
Frans hons de l'autre doient avoir pitié
--and when he sees who it is (_vif l'ot véu, mort le reconnut bien_)
he breaks out into strong language against the churls who have killed
the most courteous knight that ever bore arms. Mingled with this
sentiment is the thought of all the trouble to come from the revival
of the feud, but his vexation does not spring from mere self-interest.
Fromondin his son is also angry with Thibaut his cousin; Thibaut ought
to be flayed alive for his foul stroke. But while Fromondin is
thinking of the shame of the murder which will be laid to the account
of his father's house, Fromont's thought is more generous, a thought
of respect and regret for his enemy. The tragedy of the feud continues
after this; as before, Fromont is involved by his irrepressible
kinsmen, and nothing comes of his good thoughts and intentions.
Our wills and fates do so contrary run,
Our thoughts are ours, the ends none of our own.
This moral axiom is understood by the French author, and in an
imaginative, not a didactic way, though his imagination is not strong
enough to make much of it.
In this free, rapid, and unforced narrative, that nothing might be
wanting of the humanities of the French heroic poetry, there is added
the lament for Begon, by his brother and his wife. Garin's lament is
what the French epic can show in comparison with the famous lament for
Lancelot at the end of the _Mort d'Arthur_:--
Ha! sire Begues, li Loherains a dit
Frans chevaliers, corajeus et hardis!
Fel et angris contre vos anemis
Et dols et simples a trestoz vos amis!
Tant mar i fustes, biaus frères, biaus amis!
Here the advantage is with the English romantic author, who has
command of a more subtle and various eloquence. On the other hand, the
scene of the grief of the Duchess Beatrice, when Begon is brought to
his own land, and his wife and his sons come out to meet him, shows a
different point of view from romance altogether, and a different
dramatic sense. The whole scene of the conversation between Beatrice
and Garin is written with a steady hand; it needs no commentary to
bring out the pathos or the dramatic truth of the consolation offered
by Garin.
She falls fainting, she cannot help herself; and when she
awakens her lamenting is redoubled. She mourns over her
sons, Hernaudin and Gerin: "Children, you are orphans; dead
is he that begot you, dead is he that was your
stay!"--"Peace, madame," said Garin the Duke, "this is a
foolish speech and a craven. You, for the sake of the land
that is in your keeping, for your lineage and your lordly
friends--some gentle knight will take you to wife and
cherish you; but it falls to me to have long sorrow. The
more I have of silver and fine gold, the more will be my
grief and vexation of spirit. Hernaudin and Gerin are my
nephews; it will be mine to suffer many a war for them, to
watch late, and to rise up early."--"Thank you, uncle,"
said Hernaudin: "Lord! why have I not a little habergeon of
my own? I would help you against your enemies!" The Duke
hears him, and takes him in his arms and kisses the child.
"By God, fair nephew, you are stout and brave, and like my
brother in face and mouth, the rich Duke, on whom God have
mercy!" When this was said, they go to bury the Duke in the
chapel beyond Belin; the pilgrims see it to this day, as
they come back from Galicia, from St. James.[74]
[Footnote 74: One of the frequent morals of French epic (repeated also
by French romance) is the vanity of overmuch sorrow for the dead.
[Greek: alla chrê ton men katathaptein hos ke thanêsin
nêlea thymon echontas, ep' êmati dakrysantas.]
(Odysseus speaking) _Il._ xix. 228.
"Laissiez ester," li quens Guillaumes dit;
"Tout avenra ce que doit avenir;
Li mort as mors, li vif voissent as vis;
Duel sor dolor et joie sor joïr
Ja nus frans hons nel devroit maintenir."
Les cors enportent, les out en terre mis.
_Garin_, i. p. 262.]
_Roland_, _Raoul de Cambrai_, and _Garin le Loherain_ represent three
kinds of French heroic poetry. _Roland_ is the more purely heroic
kind, in which the interest is concentrated on the passion of the
hero, and the hero is glorified by every possible means of patriotism,
religion, and the traditional ethics of battle, with the scenery and
the accompaniments all chosen so as to bring him into relief and give
him an ideal or symbolical value, like that of the statues of the
gods. _Raoul_ and _Garin_, contrasted with _Roland_, are two varieties
of another species; namely, of the heroic poetry which (like the
_Odyssey_ and the Icelandic stories) represents the common life of an
heroic age, without employing the ideal motives of great causes,
religious or patriotic, and without giving to the personages any
great representative or symbolical import. The subjects of _Raoul_ and
_Garin_ belong to the same order. The difference between them is that
the author of the first is only half awake to the chances offered by
his theme. The theme is well chosen, not disabled, like so many
romantic plots, by an inherent fallacy of ethics or imagination; a
story that shapes itself naturally, if the author has the wit to see
it. The author of _Raoul de Cambrai_, unhappily, has "no more wit than
a Christian or an ordinary man," and leaves his work encumbered with
his dulness of perception; an evidence of the fertility of the heroic
age in good subjects, and of the incompetence of some of the artists.
_Garin_, on the other hand, shows how the common subject-matter might
be worked up by a man of intelligence, rather discursive than
imaginative, but alive to the meaning of his story, and before
everything a continuous narrator, with the gift of natural sequence in
his adventures. He relates as if he were following the course of
events in his own memory, with simplicity and lucidity, qualities
which were not beyond the compass of the old French verse and diction.
He does not stop to elaborate his characters; he takes them perhaps
too easily. But his lightness of spirit saves him from the untruth of
_Raoul de Cambrai_; and while his ethics are the commonplaces of the
heroic age, these commonplaces are not mere formulas or cant; they are
vividly realised.
There is no need to multiply examples in order to prove the capacity
of French epic for the same kind of subjects as those of the Sagas;
that is, for the representation of strenuous and unruly life in a
comprehensive and liberal narrative, noble in spirit and not much
hampered by conventional nobility or dignity.
_Roland_ is the great achievement of French epic, and there are other
poems, also, not far removed from the severity of _Roland_ and
inspired by the same patriotic and religious ardour. But the poem of
_Garin of Lorraine_ (which begins with the defence of France against
the infidels, but very soon passes to the business of the great
feud--its proper theme), though it is lacking in the political
motives, not to speak of the symbolical imagination of _Roland_, is
significant in another way, because though much later in date, though
written at a time when Romance was prevalent, it is both archaic in
its subject and also comprehensive in its treatment. It has something
like the freedom of movement and the ease which in the Icelandic Sagas
go along with similar antique subjects. The French epic poetry is not
all of it made sublime by the ideas of _Roland_; there is still scope
for the free representation of life in different moods, with character
as the dominant interest.
It should not be forgotten that the French epic has room for comedy,
not merely in the shape of "comic relief," though that unhappily is
sometimes favoured by the _chansons de geste_, and by the romances as
well, but in the "humours" inseparable from all large and unpedantic
fiction.
A good deal of credit on this account may be claimed for Galopin, the
reckless humorist of the party of Garin of Lorraine, and something
rather less for Rigaut the Villain Unwashed, another of Garin's
friends. This latter appears to be one of the same family as Hreidar
the Simple, in the Saga of Harald Hardrada; a figure of popular
comedy, one of the lubbers who turn out something different from their
promise. Clumsy strength and good-nature make one of the most
elementary compounds, and may easily be misused (as in _Rainouart_)
where the author has few scruples and no dramatic consistency. Galopin
is a more singular humorist, a ribald and a prodigal, yet of gentle
birth, and capable of good service when he can be got away from the
tavern.
There are several passages in the _chansons de geste_ where, as with
_Rainouart_, the fun is of a grotesque and gigantic kind, like the fun
to be got out of the giants in the Northern mythology, and the trolls
in the Northern popular tales. The heathen champion Corsolt in the
_Coronemenz Looïs_ makes good comedy of this sort, when he accosts the
Pope: "Little man! why is your head shaved?" and explains to him his
objection to the Pope's religion: "You are not well advised to talk to
me of God: he has done me more wrong than any other man in the world,"
and so on.[75]
[Footnote 75:
Respont li reis: "N'iés pas bien enseigniez,
Qui devant mei oses de Deu plaidier;
C'est l'om el mont qui plus m'a fait irier:
Mon pere ocist une foldre del ciel:
Tot i fu ars, ne li pot l'en aidier.
Quant Deus l'ot mort, si fist que enseigniez;
El ciel monta, ça ne voit repairier;
Ge nel poeie sivre ne enchalcier,
Mais de ses omes me sui ge puis vengiez;
De cels qui furent levé et baptisié
Ai fait destruire plus de trente miliers,
Ardeir en feu et en eve neier;
Quant ge la sus ne puis Deu guerreier,
Nul de ses omes ne vueil ça jus laissier,
Et mei et Deu n'avons mais que plaidier:
Meie est la terre et siens sera li ciels."
_l.c._, l. 522.
The last verse expresses the same sentiment as the answer of the
Emperor Henry when he was told to beware of God's vengeance: "Celum
celi Domino, terram autem dedit filiis hominum" (Otton. Frising.
_Gesta Frid._ i. 11).]
Also, in a less exaggerated way, there is some appreciation of the
humour to be found in the contrast between the churl and the knight,
and their different points of view; as in the passage of the _Charroi
de Nismes_ where William of Orange questions the countryman about the
condition of the city under its Saracen masters, and is answered with
information about the city tolls and the price of bread.[76] It must
be admitted, however, that this slight passage of comedy is far
outdone by the conversation in the romance of _Aucassin and
Nicolette_, between Aucassin and the countryman, where the author of
that story seems to get altogether beyond the conventions of his own
time into the region of Chaucer, or even somewhere near the forest of
Arden. The comedy of the _chansons de geste_ is easily satisfied with
plain and robust practical jokes. Yet it counts for something in the
picture, and it might be possible, in a detailed criticism of the
epics, to distinguish between the comic incidents that have an
artistic value and intention, and those that are due merely to the
rudeness of those common minstrels who are accused (by their rivals in
epic poetry) of corrupting and debasing the texts.
[Footnote 76:
Li cuens Guillaumes li comença à dire:
--Diva, vilain, par la loi dont tu vives
Fus-tu a Nymes, la fort cité garnie?
--Oïl, voir, sire, le paaige me quistrent;
Ge fui trop poures, si nel poi baillier mie.
Il me lessèrent por mes enfanz qu'il virent.
--Di moi, vilain, des estres de la vile.
Et cil respont:--Ce vos sai-ge bien dire
Por un denier .ii. granz pains i véismes;
La denerée vaut .iii. en autre vile:
Moult par est bone, se puis n'est empirie.
--Fox, dist Guillaume, ce ne demant-je mie,
Mès des paiens chevaliers de la vile,
Del rei Otrant et de sa compaignie.
_l.c._, ll. 903-916.]
There were many ways in which the French epic was degraded at the
close of its course--by dilution and expansion, by the growth of a
kind of dull parasitic, sapless language over the old stocks, by the
general failure of interest, and the transference of favour to other
kinds of literature. Reading came into fashion, and the minstrels lost
their welcome in the castles, and had to betake themselves to more
vulgar society for their livelihood. At the same time, epic made a
stand against the new modes and a partial compliance with them; and
the _chansons de geste_ were not wholly left to the vagrant reciters,
but were sometimes copied out fair in handsome books, and held their
own with the romances.
The compromise between epic and romance in old French literature is
most interesting where romance has invaded a story of the simpler kind
like _Raoul de Cambrai_. Stories of war against the infidel, stories
like those of William of Orange, were easily made romantic. The poem
of the _Prise d'Orange_, for example, an addition to this cycle, is a
pure romance of adventure, and a good one, though it has nothing of
the more solid epic in it. Where the action is carried on between the
knights of France and the Moors, one is prepared for a certain amount
of wonder; the palaces and dungeons of the Moors are the right places
for strange things to happen, and the epic of the defence of France
goes easily off into night excursions and disguises: the Moorish
princess also is there, to be won by the hero. All this is natural;
but it is rather more paradoxical to find the epic of family feuds,
originally sober, grave, and business-like, turning more and more
extravagant, as it does in the _Four Sons of Aymon_, which in its
original form, no doubt, was something like the more serious parts of
_Raoul de Cambrai_ or of the _Lorrains_, but which in the extant
version is expanded and made wonderful, a story of wild adventures,
yet with traces still of its origin among the realities of the heroic
age, the common matters of practical interest to heroes.
The case of _Huon of Bordeaux_ is more curious, for there the original
sober story has been preserved, and it is one of the best and most
coherent of them all,[77] till it is suddenly changed by the sound of
Oberon's horn and passes out of the real world altogether.
[Footnote 77: Cf. Auguste Longnon, "L'élément historique de Huon de
Bordeaux," _Romania_, viii.]
The lines of the earlier part of the story are worth following, for
there is no better story among the French poems that represent the
ruder heroic age--a simple story of feudal rivalries and jealousies,
surviving in this strange way as an introduction to the romance of
_Oberon_.
The Emperor Charlemagne, one hundred and twenty-five years old, but
not particularly reverend, holds a court at Paris one Whitsuntide and
asks to be relieved of his kingdom. His son Charlot is to succeed him.
Charlot is worthless, the companion of traitors and disorderly
persons; he has made enough trouble already in embroiling Ogier the
Dane with the Emperor. Charlemagne is infatuated and will have his son
made king:--
Si m'aït Diex, tu auras si franc fiet
Com Damediex qui tot puet justicier
Tient Paradis de regne droiturier!
Then the traitor Amaury de la Tor de Rivier gets up and brings forward
the case of Bordeaux, which has rendered no service for seven years,
since the two brothers, Huon and Gerard, were left orphans. Amaury
proposes that the orphans should be dispossessed. Charlemagne agrees
at once, and withdraws his assent again (a painful spectacle!) when
it is suggested to him that Huon and his brother have omitted their
duties in pure innocence, and that their father Sewin was always
loyal.
Messengers are sent to bring Huon and Gerard to Paris, and every
chance is to be given them of proving their good faith to the Emperor.
This is not what Amaury the traitor wants; he goes to Charlot and
proposes an ambuscade to lie in wait for the two boys and get rid of
them; his real purpose being to get rid of the king's son as well as
of Huon of Bordeaux.
The two boys set out, and on the way fall in with the Abbot of Clugni,
their father's cousin, a strong-minded prelate, who accompanies them.
Outside Paris they come to the ambush, and the king's son is
despatched by Amaury to encounter them. What follows is an admirable
piece of narrative. Gerard rides up to address Charlot; Charlot rides
at him as he is turning back to report to Huon and the Abbot, and
Gerard who is unarmed falls severely wounded. Then Huon, also unarmed,
rides at Charlot, though his brother calls out to him: "I see helmets
flashing there among the bushes." With his scarlet mantle rolled round
his arm he meets the lance of Charlot safely, and with his sword, as
he passes, cuts through the helmet and head of his adversary.
This is good enough for Amaury, and he lets Huon and his party ride on
to the city, while he takes up the body of Charlot on a shield and
follows after.
Huon comes before the Emperor and tells his story as far as he knows
it; he does not know that the felon he has killed is the Emperor's
son. Charlemagne gives solemn absolution to Huon. Then appears Amaury
with a false story, making Huon the aggressor. Charlemagne forgets
all about the absolution and snatches up a knife, and is with
difficulty calmed by his wise men.
The ordeal of battle has to decide between the two parties; there are
elaborate preparations and preliminaries, obviously of the most vivid
interest to the audience. The demeanour of the Abbot of Clugni ought
not to be passed over: he vows that if Heaven permits any mischance to
come upon Huon, he, the Abbot, will make it good on St. Peter himself,
and batter his holy shrine till the gold flies.
In the combat Huon is victorious; but unhappily a last treacherous
effort of his enemy, after he has yielded and confessed, makes Huon
cut off his head in too great a hurry before the confession is heard
by the Emperor or any witnesses:--
Le teste fist voler ens el larris:
Hues le voit, mais ce fu sans jehir.
The head went flying over the lea, but it had no more words
to speak.
Huon is not forgiven by the Emperor; the Emperor spares his life,
indeed, but sends him on a hopeless expedition.
And there the first part of the story ends. The present version is
dated in the early part of the reign of St. Louis; it is contemporary
with Snorri Sturluson and Sturla his nephew, and exhibits, though not
quite in the Icelandic manner, the principal motives of early unruly
society, without much fanciful addition, and with a very strong hold
upon the tragic situation, and upon the types of character. As in
_Raoul de Cambrai_, right and wrong are mixed; the Emperor has a real
grievance against Huon, and Huon, with little fault of his own, is put
apparently in the wrong. The interests involved are of the strongest
possible. There was not a single lord among those to whom the
minstrel repeated his story who did not know that he might have to
look out for encroachments and injustice--interference at any
rate--from the king, and treachery from his neighbours. No one hoped
to leave his castles and lands in peace to his son, who did not also
fear that his son might be left defenceless and his lands exposed to
competition; a fear most touchingly expressed in the lament of William
of Poitiers, when he set out on the first Crusade.[78]
[Footnote 78: "Pos de chantar m'es pres talens:"--Raynouard, _Choix
des poésies des Troubadours_, iv. p. 83; Bartsch, _Chrestomathie
provençale_.]
Whatever general influences of law or politics or social economy are
supposed to be at work in the story of _Huon of Bordeaux_,--and all
this earlier part of it is a story of feudal politics and legal
problems,--these influences were also present in the real world in
which the maker and the hearers of the poem had their life. It is
plain and serious dealing with matter of fact.
But after the ordeal of battle in which Huon kills the traitor, the
tone changes with great abruptness and a new story begins.
The commission laid upon Huon by the implacable and doting Emperor is
nothing less than that which afterwards was made a byword for all
impossible enterprises--"to take the Great Turk by the beard." He is
to go to Babylon and, literally, to beard the Admiral there, and carry
off the Admiral's daughter. The audience is led away into the wide
world of Romance. Huon goes to the East by way of Rome and
Brindisi--naturally enough--but the real world ends at Brindisi;
beyond that everything is magical.