CHANSONS DE GESTE.[15]
[Footnote 15: I prefer, as more logical, the plural form _chansons de
gestes_, and have so written it in my _Short History of French
Literature_ (Oxford, 4th ed., 1892), to which I may not improperly
refer the reader on the general subject. But of late years the fashion
of dropping the _s_ has prevailed, and, therefore, in a book meant for
general reading, I follow it here. Those who prefer native authorities
will find a recent and excellent one on the whole subject of French
literature in M. Lanson, _Histoire de la Littérature Française_,
Paris, 1895. For the mediæval period generally M. Gaston Paris, _La
Littérature Française au Moyen Age_ (Paris, 1888), speaks with
unapproached competence; and, still narrowing the range, the subject
of the present chapter has been dealt with by M. Léon Gautier, _Les
Epopées Françaises_ (Paris, 4 vols., 1878-92), in a manner equally
learned and loving. M. Gautier has also been intrusted with the
section on the _Chansons_ in the new and splendidly illustrated
collection of monographs (Paris: Colin) which M. Petit de Julleville
is editing under the title _Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature
Française_. Mr Paget Toynbee's _Specimens of Old French_ (Oxford,
1892) will illustrate this and the following chapters.]
EUROPEAN LITERATURE IN 1100. LATE DISCOVERY OF THE
"CHANSONS." THEIR AGE AND HISTORY. THEIR DISTINGUISHING
CHARACTER. MISTAKES ABOUT THEM. THEIR ISOLATION AND ORIGIN.
THEIR METRICAL FORM. THEIR SCHEME OF MATTER. THE CHARACTER
OF CHARLEMAGNE. OTHER CHARACTERS AND CHARACTERISTICS.
REALIST QUALITY. VOLUME AND AGE OF THE "CHANSONS." TWELFTH
CENTURY. THIRTEENTH CENTURY. FOURTEENTH, AND LATER.
"CHANSONS" IN PRINT. LANGUAGE: "OC" AND "OÏL." ITALIAN.
DIFFUSION OF THE "CHANSONS." THEIR AUTHORSHIP AND
PUBLICATION. THEIR PERFORMANCE. HEARING, NOT READING, THE
OBJECT. EFFECT ON PROSODY. THE "JONGLEURS." "JONGLERESSES,"
ETC. SINGULARITY OF THE "CHANSONS." THEIR CHARM. PECULIARITY
OF THE "GESTE" SYSTEM. INSTANCES. SUMMARY OF THE "GESTE" OF
WILLIAM OF ORANGE. AND FIRST OF THE "COURONNEMENT LOYS."
COMMENTS ON THE "COURONNEMENT." WILLIAM OF ORANGE. THE
EARLIER POEMS OF THE CYCLE. THE "CHARROI DE NÎMES." THE
"PRISE D'ORANGE." THE STORY OF VIVIEN. "ALISCANS." THE END
OF THE STORY. RENOUART. SOME OTHER "CHANSONS." FINAL REMARKS
ON THEM.
[Sidenote: _European literature in 1100._]
When we turn from Latin and consider the condition of the vernacular
tongues in the year 1100, there is hardly more than one country in
Europe where we find them producing anything that can be called
literature. In England Anglo-Saxon, if not exactly dead, is dying, and
has for more than a century ceased to produce anything of distinctly
literary attraction; and English, even the earliest "middle" English,
is scarcely yet born, is certainly far from being in a condition for
literary use. The last echoes of the older and more original Icelandic
poetry are dying away, and the great product of Icelandic prose, the
Saga, still _volitat per ora virum_, without taking a concrete
literary form. It is in the highest degree uncertain whether anything
properly to be called Spanish or Italian exists at all--anything but
dialects of the _lingua rustica_ showing traces of what Spanish and
Italian are to be; though the originals of the great _Poema del Cid_
cannot be far off. German is in something the same trance between its
"Old" and its "Middle" state as is English. Only in France, and in
both the great divisions of French speech, is vernacular literature
active. The northern tongue, the _langue d'oïl_, shows us--in actually
known existence, or by reasonable inference that it existed--the
national epic or _chanson de geste_; the southern, or _langue d'oc_,
gives us the Provençal lyric. The latter will receive treatment later,
the former must be dealt with at once.
It is rather curious that while the _chansons de geste_ are, after
Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic poetry, the oldest elaborate example of
verse in the modern vernaculars; while they exhibit a character, not
indeed one of the widest in range or most engaging in quality, but
individual, interesting, intense as few others; while they are
entirely the property of one nation, and that a nation specially proud
of its literary achievements,--they were almost the last division of
European literature to become in any degree properly known. In so far
as they were known at all, until within the present century, the
knowledge was based almost entirely on later adaptations in verse, and
still later in prose; while--the most curious point of all--they were
not warmly welcomed by the French even after their discovery, and
cannot yet be said to have been taken to the heart of the nation, even
to the limited extent to which the Arthurian romances have been taken
to the heart of England, much less to that in which the old, but much
less old, ballads of England, Scotland, Germany, and Spain have for
periods of varying length been welcomed in their respective countries.
To discuss the reason of this at length would lead us out of our
present subject; but it is a fact, and a very curious fact.
[Sidenote: _Late discovery of the_ chansons.]
[Sidenote: _Their age and history._]
The romances of Charlemagne, or, to employ their more technical
designation, the _chansons de geste_, form a large, a remarkably
homogeneous, and a well-separated body of compositions. These, as far
as can be decided, date in time from the eleventh to the thirteenth
century, with a few belated representatives in the fourteenth; but
scarcely, as far as probability shows, with any older members in the
tenth. Very little attention of any kind was paid to them, till some
seventy years ago, an English scholar, Conybeare, known for his
services to our own early literature, following the example of another
scholar, Tyrwhitt, still earlier and more distinguished, had drawn
attention to the merit and interest of, as it happens, the oldest and
most remarkable of all. This was the _Chanson de Roland_, which, in
this oldest form, exists only in one of the MSS. of the Bodleian
Library at Oxford. But they very soon received the care of M. Paulin
Paris, the most indefatigable student that in a century of examination
of the older European literature any European country has produced,
and after more than half a century of enthusiastic resuscitation by M.
Paris, by his son M. Gaston, and by others, the whole body of them has
been thoroughly overhauled and put at the disposal of those who do not
care to read the original, in the four volumes of the remodelled
edition of M. Léon Gautier's _Epopées Françaises_, while perhaps a
majority of the actual texts are in print. This is as well, for though
a certain monotony is always charged against the _chansons de
geste_[16] by those who do not love them, and may be admitted to some
extent even by those who do, there are few which have not a more or
less distinct character of their own; and even the generic character
is not properly to be perceived until a considerable number have been
studied.
[Footnote 16: This monotony almost follows from the title. For _geste_
in the French is not merely the equivalent of _gesta_, "deeds." It is
used for the record of those deeds, and then for the whole class or
family of performances and records of them. In this last sense the
_gestes_ are in chief three--those of the king, of Doon de Mayence,
and of Garin de Montglane--besides smaller ones.]
[Sidenote: _Their distinguishing character._]
The old habit of reading this division of romance in late and
travestied versions naturally and necessarily obscured the curious
traits of community in form and matter that belong to it, and indeed
distinguish it from almost all other departments of literature of the
imaginative kind. Its members are frequently spoken of as "the
Charlemagne Romances"; and, as a matter of fact, most of them do come
into connection with the great prince of the second race in one way or
another. Yet Bodel's phrase of _matière de France_[17] is happier. For
they are all still more directly connected with French history, seen
through a romantic lens; and even the late and half-burlesque _Hugues
Capet_, even the extremely interesting and partly contemporary set on
the Crusades, as well as such "little _gestes_" as that of the
Lorrainers, _Garin le Loherain_ and the rest, and the three "great
_gestes_" of the king, of the southern hero William of Orange
(sometimes called the _geste_ of Montglane), and of the family of Doon
de Mayence, arrange themselves with no difficulty under this more
general heading. And the _chanson de geste_ proper, as Frenchmen are
entitled to boast, never quite deserts this _matière de France_. It is
always the _Gesta Francorum_ at home, or the _Gesta Dei per Francos_
in the East, that supply the themes. When this subject or group of
subjects palled, the very form of the _chanson de geste_ was lost. It
was not applied to other things;[18] it grew obsolete with that which
it had helped to make popular. Some of the material--_Huon of
Bordeaux_, the _Four Sons of Aymon_, and others--retained a certain
vogue in forms quite different, and gave later ages the inexact and
bastard notion of "Charlemagne Romance" which has been referred to.
But the _chanson de geste_ itself was never, so to speak,
"half-known"--except to a very few antiquaries. After its three
centuries of flourishing, first alone, then with the other two
"matters," it retired altogether, and made its reappearance only after
four centuries had passed away.
[Footnote 17: Jean Bodel, a _trouvère_ of the thirteenth century,
furnished literary history with a valuable stock-quotation in the
opening of his _Chanson des Saisnes_ for the three great divisions of
Romance:--
"Ne sont que trois matières à nul home attendant,
De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant."
--_Chanson des Saxons_, ed. Michel, Paris, 1839, vol. i. p. 1.
The lines following, less often quoted, are an interesting early
_locus_ for French literary patriotism.]
[Footnote 18: Or only in rare cases to later French history itself--Du
Guesclin, and the _Combat des Trente_.]
[Sidenote: _Mistakes about them._]
This fact or set of facts has made the actual nature of the original
Charlemagne Romances the subject of much mistake and misstatement on
the part of general historians of literature. The widely read and
generally accurate Dunlop knew nothing whatever about them, except in
early printed versions representing their very latest form, and in the
hopelessly travestied eighteenth-century _Bibliothèque des Romans_ of
the Comte de Tressan. He therefore assigned to them[19] a position
altogether inferior to their real importance, and actually apologised
for the writers, in that, coming _after_ the Arthurian historians,
they were compelled to imitation. As a matter of fact, it is probable
that all the most striking and original _chansons de geste_, certainly
all those of the best period, were in existence before a single one of
the great Arthurian romances was written; and as both the French and
English, and even the German, writers of these latter were certainly
acquainted with the _chansons_, the imitation, if there were any, must
lie on their side. As a matter of fact, however, there is little or
none. The later and less genuine _chansons_ borrow to some extent the
methods and incidents in the romances; but the romances at no time
exhibit much resemblance to the _chansons_ proper, which have an
extremely distinct, racy, and original character of their own. Hallam,
writing later than Dunlop, and if with a less wide knowledge of
Romance, with a much greater proficiency in general literary history,
practically passes the _chansons de geste_ over altogether in the
introduction to his _Literature of Europe_, which purports to
summarise all that is important in the _History of the Middle Ages_,
and to supplement and correct that book itself.
[Footnote 19: Dunlop, _History of Prose Fiction_ (ed. Wilson, London,
1888), i. 274-351. Had Dunlop rigidly confined himself to _prose_
fiction, the censure in the text might not be quite fair. As a matter
of fact, however, he does not, and it would have been impossible for
him to do so.]
[Sidenote: _Their isolation and origin._]
The only excuse (besides mere unavoidable ignorance, which, no doubt,
is a sufficient one) for this neglect is the curious fact, in itself
adding to their interest, that these _chansons_, though a very
important chapter in the histories both of poetry and of fiction, form
one which is strangely marked off at both ends from all connection,
save in point of subject, with literature precedent or subsequent. As
to their own origin, the usual abundant, warm, and if it may be said
without impertinence, rather futile controversies have prevailed.
Practically speaking, we know nothing whatever about the matter. There
used to be a theory that the Charlemagne Romances owed their origin
more or less directly to the fabulous _Chronicle_ of Tilpin or Turpin,
the warrior-Archbishop of Rheims. It has now been made tolerably
certain that the Latin chronicle on the subject is not anterior even
to our existing _Chanson de Roland_, and very probable that it is a
good deal later. On the other hand, of actual historical basis we have
next to nothing except the mere fact of the death of Roland
("Hruotlandus comes Britanniæ") at the skirmish of Roncesvalles. There
are, however, early mentions of certain _cantilenæ_ or ballads; and it
has been assumed by some scholars that the earliest _chansons_ were
compounded out of precedent ballads of the kind. It is unnecessary to
inform those who know something of general literary history, that this
theory (that the corruption of the ballad is the generation of the
epic) is not confined to the present subject, but is one of the
favourite fighting-grounds of a certain school of critics. It has been
applied to Homer, to _Beowulf_, to the Old and Middle German Romances,
and it would be very odd indeed if it had not been applied to the
_Chansons de geste_. But it may be said with some confidence that not
one tittle of evidence has ever been produced for the existence of any
such ballads containing the matter of any of the _chansons_ which do
exist. The song of Roland which Taillefer sang at Hastings may have
been such a ballad: it may have been part of the actual _chanson_; it
may have been something quite different. But these "mays" are not
evidence; and it cannot but be thought a real misfortune that, instead
of confining themselves to an abundant and indeed inexhaustible
subject, the proper literary study of what does exist, critics should
persist in dealing with what certainly does not, and perhaps never
did. On the general point it might be observed that there is rather
more positive evidence for the breaking up of the epic into ballads
than for the conglomeration of ballads into the epic. But on that
point it is not necessary to take sides. The matter of real importance
is, to lay it down distinctly that we _have_ nothing anterior to the
earliest _chansons de geste_; and that we have not even any
satisfactory reason for presuming that there ever was anything.
[Sidenote: _Their metrical form._]
One of the reasons, however, which no doubt has been most apt to
suggest anterior compositions is the singular completeness of form
exhibited by these poems. It is now practically agreed that--scraps
and fragments themselves excepted--we have no monument of French in
accomplished profane literature more ancient than the _Chanson de
Roland_.[20] And the form of this, though from one point of view it
may be called rude and simple, is of remarkable perfection in its own
way. The poem is written in decasyllabic iambic lines with a cæsura at
the second foot, these lines being written with a precision which
French indeed never afterwards lost, but which English did not attain
till Chaucer's day, and then lost again for more than another century.
Further, the grouping and finishing of these lines is not less
remarkable, and is even more distinctive than their internal
construction. They are not blank; they are not in couplets; they are
not in equal stanzas; and they are not (in the earliest examples, such
as _Roland_) regularly rhymed. But they are arranged in batches
(called in French _laisses_ or _tirades_) of no certain number, but
varying from one to several score, each of which derives unity from an
_assonance_--that is to say, a vowel-rhyme, the consonants of the
final syllable varying at discretion. This assonance, which appears to
have been common to all Romance tongues in their early stages,
disappeared before very long from French, though it continued in
Spanish, and is indeed the most distinguishing point of the prosody of
that language. Very early in the _chansons_ themselves we find it
replaced by rhyme, which, however, remains the same for the whole of
the _laisse_, no matter how long it is. By degrees, also, the
ten-syllabled line (which in some examples has an octosyllabic
tail-line not assonanced at the end of every _laisse_) gave way in its
turn to the victorious Alexandrine. But the mechanism of the _chanson_
admitted no further extensions than the substitution of rhyme for
assonance, and of twelve-syllabled lines for ten-syllabled. In all
other respects it remained rigidly the same from the eleventh century
to the fourteenth, and in the very latest examples of such poems, as
_Hugues Capet_ and _Baudouin de Seboure_--full as enthusiasts like M.
Gautier complain that they are of a spirit very different from that of
the older _chansons_--there is not the slightest change in form; while
certain peculiarities of stock phrase and "epic repetition" are
jealously preserved. The immense single-rhymed _laisses_, sometimes
extending to several pages of verse, still roll rhyme after rhyme with
the same sound upon the ear. The common form generally remains; and
though the adventures are considerably varied, they still retain a
certain general impress of the earlier scheme.
[Footnote 20: _Editio princeps_ by Fr. Michel, 1837. Since that time
it has been frequently reprinted, translated, and commented. Those who
wish for an exact reproduction of the oldest MS. will find it given by
Stengel (Heilbronn, 1878).]
[Sidenote: _Their scheme of matter._]
[Sidenote: _The character of Charlemagne._]
That scheme is, in the majority of the _chansons_, curiously uniform.
It has, since the earliest studies of them, been remarked as odd that
Charlemagne, though almost omnipresent (except of course in the
Crusading cycle and a few others), and though such a necessary figure
that he is in some cases evidently confounded both with his ancestor
Charles Martel and his successor Charles the Bald, plays a part that
is very dubiously heroic. He is, indeed, presented with great pomp and
circumstance as _li empereres à la barbe florie_, with a gorgeous
court, a wide realm, a numerous and brilliant baronage. But his
character is far from tenderly treated. In _Roland_ itself he appears
so little that critics who are not acquainted with many other poems
sometimes deny the characteristic we are now discussing. But elsewhere
he is much less leniently handled. Indeed the plot of very many
_chansons_ turns entirely on the ease with which he lends an ear to
traitors (treason of various kinds plays an almost ubiquitous part,
and the famous "trahis!" is heard in the very dawn of French
literature), on his readiness to be biassed by bribes, and on the
singular ferocity with which, on the slightest and most unsupported
accusation, he is ready to doom any one, from his own family
downwards, to block, stake, gallows, or living grave. This
combination, indeed, of the irascible and the gullible tempers in the
king defrays the plot of a very large number of the _chansons_, in
which we see his best knights, and (except that they are as intolerant
of injustice as he is prone to it) his most faithful servants, forced
into rebellion against him, and almost overwhelmed by his own violence
following on the machinations of their and his worst enemies.
[Sidenote: _Other characters and characteristics._]
Nevertheless, Charlemagne is always the defender of the Cross, and
the antagonist of the Saracens, and the part which these latter play
is as ubiquitous as his own, and on the whole more considerable. A
very large part of the earlier _chansons_ is occupied with direct
fighting against the heathen; and from an early period (at least if
the _Voyage à Constantinoble_ is, as is supposed, of the early twelfth
century, if not the eleventh) a most important element, bringing the
class more into contact with romance generally than some others which
have been noticed, is introduced in the love of a Saracen princess,
daughter of emperor or "admiral" (emir), for one of the Christian
heroes. Here again _Roland_ stands alone, and though the mention of
Aude, Oliver's sister and Roland's betrothed, who dies when she hears
of his death, is touching, it is extremely meagre. There is
practically nothing but the clash of arms in this remarkable poem. But
elsewhere there is, in rather narrow and usual limits, a good deal
else. Charlemagne's daughter, and the daughters of peers and paladins,
figure: and their characteristics are not very different from those of
the pagan damsels. It is, indeed, unnecessary to convert them,--a
process to which their miscreant sisters usually submit with great
goodwill,--and they are also relieved from the necessity of showing
the extreme undutifulness to their more religiously constant sires,
which is something of a blot on Paynim princesses like Floripas in
_Fierabras_. This heroine exclaims in reference to her father, "He is
an old devil, why do you not kill him? little I care for him provided
you give me Guy," though it is fair to say that Fierabras himself
rebukes her with a "Moult grant tort avès." All these ladies, however,
Christian as well as heathen, are as tender to their lovers as they
are hard-hearted to their relations; and the relaxation of morality,
sometimes complained of in the later _chansons_, is perhaps more
technical than real, even remembering the doctrine of the mediæval
Church as to the identity, for practical purposes, of betrothal and
marriage. On the other hand, the courtesy of the _chansons_ is
distinctly in a more rudimentary state than that of the succeeding
romances. Not only is the harshest language used by knights to
ladies,[21] but blows are by no means uncommon; and of what is
commonly understood by romantic love there is on the knights' side
hardly a trace, unless it be in stories such as that of _Ogier le
Danois_, which are obviously late enough to have come under Arthurian
influence. The piety, again, which has been so much praised in these
_chansons_, is of a curious and rather elementary type. The knights
are ready enough to fight to the last gasp, and the last drop of
blood, for the Cross; and their faith is as free from flaw as their
zeal. _Li Apostoiles de Rome_--the Pope--is recognised without the
slightest hesitation as supreme in all religious and most temporal
matters. But there is much less reference than in the Arthurian
romances, not merely to the mysteries of the Creed, but even to the
simple facts of the birth and death of Christ. Except in a few
places--such as, for instance, the exquisite and widely popular story
of _Amis and Amiles_ (the earliest vernacular form of which is a true
_chanson de geste_ of the twelfth century)--there are not many
indications of any higher or finer notion of Christianity than that
which is confined to the obedient reception of the sacraments, and the
cutting off Saracens' heads whensoever they present themselves.[22]
[Footnote 21: _V. infra_ on the scene in _Aliscans_ between William of
Orange and his sister Queen Blanchefleur.]
[Footnote 22: Even the famous and very admirable death-scene of Vivien
(again _v. infra_) will not disprove these remarks.]
[Sidenote: _Realist quality._]
In manners, as in theology and ethics, there is the same simplicity,
which some have called almost barbarous. Architecture and dress
receive considerable attention; but in other ways the arts do not seem
to be far advanced, and living is still conducted nearly, if not
quite, as much in public as in the _Odyssey_ or in _Beowulf_. The hall
is still the common resort of both sexes by day and of the men at
night. Although gold and furs, silk and jewels, are lavished with the
usual cheap magnificence of fiction, very few details are given of the
minor _supellex_ or of ways of living generally. From the _Chanson de
Roland_ in particular (which, though it is a pity to confine the
attention to it as has sometimes been done, is undoubtedly the type of
the class in its simplest and purest form) we should learn next to
nothing about the state of society depicted, except that its heroes
were religious in their fashion, and terrible fighters. But it ought
to be added that the perusal of a large number of these _chansons_
leaves on the mind a much more genuine belief in their world (if it
may so be called) as having for a time actually existed, than that
which is created by the reading of Arthurian romance. That fair
vision we know (hardly knowing why or how we know it) to have been a
creation of its own Fata Morgana, a structure built of the wishes, the
dreams, the ideals of men, but far removed from their actual
experience. This is not due to miracles--there are miracles enough in
the _chansons de geste_ most undoubtingly related: nor to the strange
history, geography, and chronology, for the two divisions are very
much on a par there also. But strong as the fantastic element is in
them, the _chansons de geste_ possess a realistic quality which is
entirely absent from the gracious idealism of the Romances. The
emperors and the admirals, perhaps even their fair and obliging
daughters, were not personages unknown to the contemporaries of the
Norman conquerors of Italy and Sicily, or to the first Crusaders. The
faithful and ferocious, covetous and indomitable, pious and lawless
spirit, which hardly dropped the sword except to take up the torch,
was, poetic presentation and dressing apart, not so very different
from the general temper of man after the break up of the Roman peace
till the more or less definite mapping out of Europe into modern
divisions. More than one Vivien and one William of Orange listened to
Peter the Hermit. In the very isolation of the atmosphere of these
romances, in its distance from modern thought and feeling, in its lack
(as some have held) of universal quality and transcendent human
interest, there is a certain element of strength. It was not above its
time, and it therefore does not reach the highest forms of literature.
But it was intensely _of_ its time; and thus it far exceeds the
lowest kinds, and retains an abiding value even apart from the
distinct, the high, and the very curious perfection, within narrow
limits, of its peculiar form.
[Sidenote: _Volume and age of the_ chansons.]
[Sidenote: _Twelfth century._]
It is probable that very few persons who are not specially acquainted
with the subject are at all aware of the enormous bulk and number of
these poems, even if their later _remaniements_ (as they are called)
both in verse and prose--fourteenth and fifteenth century
refashionings, which in every case meant a large extension--be left
out of consideration. The most complete list published, that of M.
Léon Gautier, enumerates 110. Of these he himself places only the
_Chanson de Roland_ in the eleventh century, perhaps as early as the
Norman Conquest of England, certainly not later than 1095. To the
twelfth he assigns (and it may be observed that, enthusiastic as M.
Gautier is on the literary side, he shows on all questions of age,
&c., a wariness not always exhibited by scholars more exclusively
philological) _Acquin_, _Aliscans_, _Amis et Amiles_, _Antioche
Aspremont_, _Auberi le Bourgoing_, _Aye d'Avignon_, the _Bataille
Loquifer_, the oldest (now only known in Italian) form of _Berte aus
grans Piés_, _Beuves d'Hanstone_ (with another Italian form more or
less independent), the _Charroi de Nîmes_, _Les Chétifs_, the
_Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche_, the _Chevalerie Vivien_ (otherwise
known as _Covenant Vivien_), the major part (also known by separate
titles) of the _Chevalier au Cygne_, _La Conquête de la Petite
Bretagne_ (another form of _Acquin_), the _Couronnement Loys_, _Doon
de la Roche_, _Doon de Nanteuil_, the _Enfances Charlemagne_, the
_Enfances Godefroi_, the _Enfances Roland_, the _Enfances Ogier_,
_Floovant_, _Garin le Loherain_, _Garnier de Nanteuil_, _Giratz de
Rossilho_, _Girbert de Metz_, _Gui de Bourgogne_, _Gui de Nanteuil_,
_Hélias_, _Hervis de Metz_, the oldest form of _Huon de Bordeaux_,
_Jérusalem_, _Jourdains de Blaivies_, the Lorraine cycle, including
_Garin_, &c., _Macaire_, _Mainet_, the _Moniage Guillaume_, the
_Moniage Rainoart_, _Orson de Beauvais_, _Rainoart_, _Raoul de
Cambrai_, _Les Saisnes_, the _Siège de Barbastre_, _Syracon_, and the
_Voyage de Charlemagne_. In other words, nearly half the total number
date from the twelfth century, if not even earlier.
[Sidenote: _Thirteenth century._]
By far the larger number of the rest are not later than the
thirteenth. They include--_Aimeri de Narbonne_, _Aiol_, _Anséis de
Carthage_, _Anséis Fils de Gerbert_, _Auberon_, _Berte aus grans Piés_
in its present French form, _Beton et Daurel_, _Beuves de Commarchis_,
the _Département des Enfans Aimeri_, the _Destruction de Rome_, _Doon
de Mayence_, _Elie de Saint Gilles_, the _Enfances Doon de Mayence_,
the _Enfances Guillaume_, the _Enfances Vivien_, the _Entrée en
Espagne_, _Fierabras_, _Foulques de Candie_, _Gaydon_, _Garin de
Montglane_, _Gaufrey_, _Gérard de Viane_, _Guibert d'Andrenas_, _Jehan
de Lanson_, _Maugis d'Aigremont_, the _Mort Aimeri de Narbonne_,
_Otinel_, _Parise la Duchesse_, the _Prise de Cordres_, the _Prise de
Pampelune_, the _Quatre Fils d'Aymon_, _Renaud de Montauban_ (a
variant of the same), _Renier_, the later forms of the _Chanson de
Roland_, to which the name of _Roncevaux_ is sometimes given for the
sake of distinction, the _Siège de Narbonne_, _Simon de Pouille_,
_Vivien l'Amachour de Montbranc_, and _Yon_.
[Sidenote: _Fourteenth, and later._]
By this the list is almost exhausted. The fourteenth century, though
fruitful in _remaniements_, sometimes in mono-rhymed tirades, but
often in Alexandrine couplets and other changed shapes, contributes
hardly anything original except the very interesting and rather
brilliant last branches of the _Chevalier au Cygne_--_Baudouin de
Seboure_, and the _Bastart de Bouillon_; _Hugues Capet_, a very lively
and readable but slightly vulgar thing, exhibiting an almost
undisguised tone of parody; and some fragments known by the names of
_Hernaut de Beaulande_, _Renier de Gennes_, &c. As for fifteenth and
sixteenth century work, though some pieces of it, especially the very
long and unprinted poem of _Lion de Bourges_, are included in the
canon, all the _chanson_-production of this time is properly
apocryphal, and has little or nothing left of the _chanson_ spirit,
and only the shell of the _chanson_ form.
[Sidenote: Chansons _in print._]
It must further be remembered that, with the exception of a very few
in fragmentary condition, all these poems are of great length. Only
the later or less genuine, indeed, run to the preposterous extent of
twenty, thirty, or (it is said in the case of _Lion de Bourges_) sixty
thousand lines. But _Roland_ itself, one of the shortest, has four
thousand; _Aliscans_, which is certainly old, eight thousand; the
oldest known form of _Huon_, ten thousand. It is probably not
excessive to put the average length of the older _chansons_ at six
thousand lines; while if the more recent be thrown in, the average of
the whole hundred would probably be doubled.
This immense body of verse, which for many reasons it is very
desirable to study as a whole, is still, after the best part of a
century, to a great extent unprinted, and (as was unavoidable) such of
its constituents as have been sent to press have been dealt with on no
very uniform principles. It was less inevitable, and is more to be
regretted, that the dissensions of scholars on minute philological
points have caused the repeated printing of certain texts, while
others have remained inaccessible; and it cannot but be regarded as a
kind of petty treason to literature thus to put the satisfaction of
private crotchets before the "unlocking of the word-hoard" to the
utmost possible extent. The earliest _chansons_ printed[23] were, I
believe, M. Paulin Paris's _Berte aus grans Piés_, M. Francisque
Michel's _Roland_; and thereafter these two scholars and others edited
for M. Techener a very handsome set of "Romances des Douze Pairs," as
they were called, including _Les Saisnes_, _Ogier_, _Raoul de
Cambrai_, _Garin_, and the two great crusading _chansons_, _Antioche_
and _Jérusalem_. Other scattered efforts were made, such as the
publication of a beautiful edition of _Baudouin de Seboure_ at
Valenciennes as early as 1841; while a Belgian scholar, M. de
Reiffenberg, published _Le Chevalier au Cygne_, and a Dutch one, Dr
Jonckbloët, gave a large part of the later numbers of the Garin de
Montglane cycle in his _Guillaume d'Orange_ (2 vols., The Hague,
1854). But the great opportunity came soon after the accession of
Napoleon III., when a Minister favourable to literature, M. de
Fourtou, gave, in a moment of enthusiasm, permission to publish the
entire body of the _chansons_. Perfect wisdom would probably have
decreed the acceptance of the godsend by issuing the whole, with a
minimum of editorial apparatus, in some such form as that of our
Chalmers's Poets, the bulk of which need probably not have been
exceeded in order to give the oldest forms of every real _chanson_
from _Roland_ to the _Bastart de Bouillon_. But perfect wisdom is not
invariably present in the councils of men, and the actual result took
the form of ten agreeable little volumes, in the type, shape, and
paper of the "Bibliothèque Elzévirienne" with abundant editorial
matter, paraphrases in modern French, and the like. _Les Anciens
Poètes de la France_, as this series was called, appeared between
1858, which saw the first volume, and 1870, which fatal year saw the
last, for the Republic had no money to spare for such monarchical
glories as the _chansons_. They are no contemptible possession; for
the ten volumes give fourteen _chansons_ of very different ages, and
rather interestingly representative of different kinds. But they are a
very small portion of the whole, and in at least one instance,
_Aliscans_, they double on a former edition. Since then the Société
des Anciens Textes Français has edited some _chansons_, and
independent German and French scholars have given some more; but no
systematic attempt has been made to fill the gaps, and the pernicious
system of re-editing, on pretext of wrong selection of MSS. or the
like, has continued. Nevertheless, the number of _chansons_ actually
available is so large that no general characteristic is likely to have
escaped notice; while from the accounts of the remaining MSS., it
would not appear that any of those unprinted can rank with the very
best of those already known. Among these very best I should rank in
alphabetical order--_Aliscans_, _Amis et Amiles_, _Antioche_,
_Baudouin de Seboure_ (though in a mixed kind), _Berte aus grans
Piés_, _Fierabras_, _Garin le Loherain_, _Gérard de Roussillon_, _Huon
de Bordeaux_, _Ogier de Danemarche_, _Raoul de Cambrai_, _Roland_, and
the _Voyage de Charlemagne à Constantinoble_. The almost solitary
eminence assigned by some critics to _Roland_ is not, I think,
justified, and comes chiefly from their not being acquainted with many
others; though the poem has undoubtedly the merit of being the oldest,
and perhaps that of presenting the _chanson_ spirit in its best and
most unadulterated, as well as the _chanson_ form at its simplest,
sharpest, and first state. Nor is there anywhere a finer passage than
the death of Roland, though there are many not less fine.
[Footnote 23: Immanuel Bekker had printed the Provençal _Fierabras_ as
early as 1829.]
It may, however, seem proper, if not even positively indispensable, to
give some more general particulars about these _chansons_ before
analysing specimens or giving arguments of one or more; for they are
full of curiosities.
[Sidenote: _Language._ Oc _and_ oïl.]
In the first place, it will be noticed by careful readers of the list
above given, that these compositions are not limited to French proper
or to the _langue d'oïl_, though infinitely the greater part of them
are in that tongue. Indeed, for some time after attention had been
drawn to them, and before their actual natures and contents had been
thoroughly examined, there was a theory that they were Provençal in
origin. This, though it was chiefly due to the fact that Raynouard,
Fauriel, and other early students of old French had a strong southern
leaning, had some other excuses. It is a fact that Provençal was
earlier in its development than French; and whether by irregular
tradition of this fact, or owing to ignorance, or from anti-French
prejudice (which, however, would not apply in France itself), the part
of the _langue d'oc_ in the early literature of Europe was for
centuries largely overvalued. Then came the usual reaction, and some
fifty years ago or so one of the most capable of literary students
declared roundly that the Provençal epic had "le défaut d'être perdu."
That is not quite true. There is, as noted above, a Provençal
_Fierabras_, though it is beyond doubt an adaptation of the French;
_Betonnet d'Hanstone_ or _Beton et Daurel_ only exists in Provençal,
though there is again no doubt of its being borrowed; and, lastly, the
oldest existing, and probably the original, form of _Gérard de
Roussillon_, _Giratz de Rossilho_, is, as its title implies,
Provençal, though it is in a dialect more approaching to the _langue
d'oïl_ than any form of _oc_, and even presents the curious
peculiarity of existing in two forms, one leaning to Provençal, the
other to French. But these very facts, though they show the statement
that "the Provençal epic is lost" to be excessive, yet go almost
farther than a total deficiency in proving that the _chanson de geste_
was not originally Provençal. Had it been otherwise, there can be no
possible reason why a bare three per cent of the existing examples
should be in the southern tongue, while two of these are evidently
translations, and the third was as evidently written on the very
northern borders of the "Limousin" district.
[Sidenote: _Italian._]
[Sidenote: _Diffusion of the_ chansons.]
The next fact--one almost more interesting, inasmuch as it bears on
that community of Romance tongues of which we have evidence in
Dante,[24] and perhaps also makes for the antiquity of the Charlemagne
story in its primitive form--is the existence of _chansons_ in
Italian, and, it may be added, in a most curious bastard speech which
is neither French, nor Provençal, nor Italian, but French Italicised
in part.[25] The substance, moreover, of the Charlemagne stories was
very early naturalised in Italy in the form of a sort of abstract or
compilation called the _Reali di Francia_,[26] which in various forms
maintained popularity through mediæval and early modern times, and
undoubtedly exercised much influence on the great Italian poets of the
Renaissance. They were also diffused throughout Europe, the
_Carlamagnus Saga_ in Iceland marking their farthest actual as well as
possible limit, though they never in Germany attained anything like
the popularity of the Arthurian legend, and though the Spaniards,
patriotically resenting the frequent forays into Spain to which the
_chansons_ bear witness, and availing themselves of the confession of
disaster at Roncesvalles, set up a counter-story in which Roland is
personally worsted by Bernardo del Carpio, and the quarrels of the
paynims are taken up by Spain herself. In England the imitations,
though fairly numerous, are rather late. They have been completely
edited for the Early English Text Society, and consist (for Bevis of
Hampton has little relation with its _chanson_ namesake save the name)
of _Sir Ferumbras_ (_Fierabras_), _The Siege of Milan_, _Sir Otuel_
(two forms), the _Life of Charles the Great_, _The Soudone of
Babylone_, _Huon of Bordeaux_, and _The Four Sons of Aymon_, besides a
very curious semi-original entitled _Rauf Coilzear_ (Collier), in
which the well-known romance-_donnée_ of the king visiting some
obscure person is applied to Charlemagne. Of these, one, the version
of _Huon of Bordeaux_,[27] is literature of no mean kind; but this is
because it was executed by Lord Berners, long after our present
period. Also, being of that date, it represents the latest French form
of the story, which was a very popular one, and incorporated very
large borrowings from other sources (the loadstone rock, the
punishment of Cain, and so forth) which are foreign to the subject and
substance of the _chansons_ proper.
[Footnote 24: _V._ the famous and all-important ninth chapter of the
first book of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_.]
[Footnote 25: See especially _Macaire_, ed. Guessard, Paris, 1860.]
[Footnote 26: So also the _geste_ of Montglane became the
_Nerbonesi_.]
[Footnote 27: Ed. S. Lee, London, 1883-86.]
[Sidenote: _Their authorship and publication._]
Very great pains have been spent on the question of the authorship,
publication, or performance of these compositions. As is the case with
so much mediæval work, the great mass of them is entirely anonymous.
A line which concludes, or rather supplements, _Roland_--
"Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet"--
has been the occasion of the shedding of a very great deal of ink. The
enthusiastic inquisitiveness of some has ferreted about in all
directions for Turolds, Thorolds, or Therouldes, in the eleventh
century, and discovering them even among the companions of the
Conqueror himself, has started the question whether Taillefer was or
was not violating the copyright of his comrade at Hastings. The fact
is, however, that the best authorities are very much at sea as to the
meaning of _declinet_, which, though it must signify "go over," "tell
like a bead-roll," in some way or other, might be susceptible of
application to authorship, recitation, or even copying. In some other
cases, however, we have more positive testimony, though they are in a
great minority. Graindor of Douai refashioned the work of Richard the
Pilgrim, an actual partaker of the first Crusade, into the present
_Antioche_, _Jérusalem_, and perhaps _Les Chétifs_. Either Richard or
Graindor must have been one of the very best poets of the whole cycle.
Jehan de Flagy wrote the spirited _Garin le Loherain_; and Jehan Bodel
of Arras _Les Saisnes_. Adenès le Roi, a _trouvère_, of whose actual
position in the world we know a little, wrote or refashioned three or
four _chansons_ of the thirteenth century, including _Berte aus grans
Piés_, and one of the forms of part of _Ogier_. Other names--Bertrand
of Bar sur Aube, Pierre de Rieu, Gérard d'Amiens, Raimbert de Paris,
Brianchon (almost a character of Balzac!), Gautier of Douai, Nicolas
of Padua (an interesting person who was warned in a dream to save his
soul by compiling a _chanson_), Herbert of Dammartin, Guillaume de
Bapaume, Huon de Villeneuve--are mere shadows of names to which in
nearly all cases no personality attaches, and which may be as often
those of mere _jongleurs_ as of actual poets.
[Sidenote: _Their performance._]
No subject, however, in connection with these _chansons de geste_ has
occupied more attention than the precise mode of what has been called
above their "authorship, publication, or performance." They are called
_chansons_, and there is no doubt at all that in their inception, and
during the earlier and better part of their history, they strictly
deserved the name, having been written not to be read but to be sung
or recited. To a certain extent, of course, this was the case with all
the lighter literature of mediæval times. Far later than our present
period the English metrical romances almost invariably begin with the
minstrel's invocation, "Listen, lordings," varied according to his
taste, fancy, and metre; and what was then partly a tradition, was two
or three hundred years earlier the simple record of a universal
practice. Since the early days of the Romantic revival, even to the
present time, the minutest details of this singing and recitation have
been the subject of endless wrangling; and even the point whether it
was "singing" or "recitation" has been argued. In a wider and calmer
view these things become of very small interest. Singing and
recitation--as the very word recitative should be enough to remind
any one--pass into each other by degrees imperceptible to any but a
technical ear; and the instruments, if any, which accompanied the
performance of the _chansons_, the extent of that accompaniment, and
the rest, concern, if they concern history at all, the history of
music, not that of literature.
[Sidenote: _Hearing, not reading, the object._]
[Sidenote: _Effect on prosody._]
But it is a matter of quite other importance that, as has been said,
lighter mediæval literature generally, and the _chansons_ in
particular, were meant for the ear, not the eye--to be heard, not to
be read. For this intention very closely concerns some of their most
important literary characteristics. It is certain as a matter of fact,
though it might not be very easy to account for it as a matter of
argument, that repetitions, stock phrases, identity of scheme and
form, which are apt to be felt as disagreeable in reading, are far
less irksome, and even have a certain attraction, in matter orally
delivered. Whether that slower irritation of the mind through the ear
of which Horace speaks supplies the explanation may be left
undiscussed. But it is certain that, especially for uneducated hearers
(who in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, if not in the thirteenth,
must have been the enormous majority), not merely the phraseological
but the rhythmical peculiarities of the _chansons_ would be specially
suitable. In particular, the long maintenance of the mono-rhymed, or
even the single-assonanced, _tirade_ depends almost entirely upon its
being delivered _vivâ voce_. Only then does that wave-clash which has
been spoken of produce its effect, while the unbroken uniformity of
rhyme on the printed page, and the apparent absence of uniformity in
the printed assonances, are almost equally annoying to the eye. Nor is
it important or superfluous to note that this oral literature had, in
the Teutonic countries and in England more especially, an immense
influence (hitherto not nearly enough allowed for by literary
historians) in the great change from a stressed and alliterative to a
quantitative and rhymed prosody, which took place, with us, from about
1200 A.D. Accustomed as were the ears of all to quantitative (though
very licentiously quantitative) and rhymed measures in the hymns and
services of the Church--the one literary exercise to which gentle and
simple, learned and unlearned, were constantly and regularly
addicted--it was almost impossible that they should not demand a
similar prosody in the profaner compositions addressed to them. That
this would not affect the _chansons_ themselves is true enough; for
there are no relics of any alliterative prosody in French, and its
accentual scanning is only the naturally "crumbled" quantity of Latin.
But it is extremely important to note that the metre of these
_chansons_ themselves, single-rhyme and all, directly influenced
English writers. Of this, however, more will be found in the chapter
on the rise of English literature proper.
[Sidenote: _The_ jongleurs.]
Another, and for literature a hardly less important, consequence of
this intention of being heard, was that probably from the very first,
and certainly from an early period, a distinction, not very different
from that afterwards occasioned by the drama, took place between the
_trouvère_ who invented the _chanson_ and the _jongleur_ or minstrel
who introduced it. At first these parts may, for better or worse, have
been doubled. But it would seldom happen that the poet who had the
wits to indite would have the skill to perform; and it would happen
still seldomer that those whose gifts lay in the direction of
interpretation would have the poetical spirit. Nor is it wonderful
that, in the poems themselves, we find considerably more about the
performer than about the author. In the cases where they were
identical, the author would evidently be merged in the actor; in cases
where they were not, the actor would take care of himself.
Accordingly, though we know if possible even less of the names of the
_jongleurs_ than of those of the _trouvères_, we know a good deal
about their methods. Very rarely does an author like Nicolas of Padua
(_v. supra_) tell us so much as his motive for composing the poems.
But the patient study of critics, eked out it may be by a little
imagination here and there, has succeeded in elaborating a fairly
complete account of the ways and fortunes of the _jongleur_, who also
not improbably, even where he was not the author, adjusted to the
_chansons_ which were his copyright, extempore _codas_, episodes,
tags, and gags of different kinds. Immense pains have been spent upon
the _jongleur_. It has been asserted, and it is not improbable, that
during the palmiest days--say the eleventh and twelfth centuries--of
the _chansons_ a special order of the _jongleur_ or minstrel hierarchy
concerned itself with them,--it is at least certain that the phrase
_chanter de geste_ occurs several times in a manner, and with a
context, which seem to justify its being regarded as a special term of
art. And the authors at least present their heroes as deliberately
expecting that they will be sung about, and fearing the chance of a
dishonourable mention; a fact which, though we must not base any
calculations upon it as to the actual sentiments of Roland or Ogier,
Raoul or Huon, is a fact in itself. And it is also a fact that in the
_fabliaux_ and other light verse of the time we find _jongleurs_
presented as boasting of the particular _chansons_ they can sing.
[Sidenote: Jongleresses, _&c._]
But the enumeration of the kinds of _jongleurs_--those itinerant,
those attached to courts and great families, &c.--would lead us too
far. They were not all of one sex, and we hear of _jongleresses_ and
_chanteresses_, such as Adeline who figures in the history of the
Norman Conquest, Aiglantine who sang before the Duke of Burgundy,
Gracieuse d'Espagne, and so forth--pretty names, as even M. Gautier,
who is inclined to be suspicious of them, admits. These suspicions, it
is fair to say, were felt at the time. Don Jayme of Aragon forbade
noble ladies to kiss _jongleresses_ or share bed and board with them;
while the Church, which never loved the _jongleur_ much, decided that
the duty of a wife to follow her husband ceased if he took to
jongling, which was a _vita turpis et inhonesta_. Further, the pains
above referred to, bestowed by scholars of all sorts, from Percy
downwards, have discovered or guessed at the clothes which the
_jongleur_ and his mate wore, and the instruments with which they
accompanied their songs. It is more germane to our purpose to know, as
we do in one instance on positive testimony, the principles (easily to
be guessed, by the way) on which the introduction of names into these
poems were arranged. It appears, on the authority of the historian of
Guisnes and Ardres, that Arnold the Old, Count of Ardres, would
actually have had his name in the _Chanson d'Antioche_ had he not
refused a pair of scarlet boots or breeches to the poet or performer
thereof. Nor is it more surprising to find, on the still more
indisputable authority of passages in the _chansons_ themselves, that
the _jongleur_ would stop singing at an interesting point to make a
collection, and would even sometimes explicitly protest against the
contribution of too small coins--_poitevines_, _mailles_, and the
like.
It is impossible not to regard with a mixture of respect and pity the
labour which has been spent on collecting details of the kind whereof,
in the last paragraph or two, a few examples have been given. But they
really have very little, if anything, to do with literature; and what
they have to do with it is common to all times and subjects. The
excessive prodigality to minstrels of which we have record parallels
itself in other times in regard to actors, jockeys, musicians, and
other classes of mechanical pleasure-makers whose craft happens to be
popular for the moment. And it was never more likely to be shown than
in the Middle Ages, when generosity was a profane virtue; when the
Church had set the example--an example the too free extension of
which she resented highly--of putting reckless giving above almost all
other good deeds; and when the system of private war, of ransoms and
other things of the same kind, made "light come, light go," a maxim
almost more applicable than in the days of confiscations, in those of
pensions on this or that list, or in those of stock-jobbing. Moreover,
inquirers into this matter have certainly not escaped the besetting
sin of all but strictly political historians--a sin which even the
political historian has not always avoided--the sin of mixing up times
and epochs.
It is the great advantage of that purely literary criticism, which is
so little practised and to some extent so unpopular, that it is able
to preserve accuracy in this matter. When with the assistance (always
to be gratefully received) of philologists and historians in the
strict sense the date of a literary work is ascertained with
sufficient--it is only in a few cases that it can be ascertained with
absolute--exactness, the historian of literature places it in that
position for literary purposes only, and neither mixes it with other
things nor endeavours to use it for purposes other than literary. To
recur to an example mentioned above, Adeline in the eleventh century
and Gracieuse d'Espagne in the fifteenth are agreeable objects of
contemplation and ornaments of discourse; but, once more, neither has
much, if anything, to do with literature.
[Sidenote: _Singularity of the_ chansons.]
We may therefore with advantage, having made this digression to comply
a little with prevalent fashions, return to the _chansons_ themselves,
to the half-million or million verses of majestic cadence written in
one of the noblest languages, for at least first effect, to be found
in the history of the world, possessing that character of distinction,
of separate and unique peculiarity in matter and form, which has such
extraordinary charm, and endowed besides, more perhaps than any other
division, with the attraction of presenting an utterly vanished Past.
The late Mr Froude found in church-bells--the echo of the Middle
Ages--suggestion of such a vanishing. To some of us there is nothing
dead in church-bells; there is only in them, as in the Arthurian
legends, for instance, a perennial thing still presented in
associations, all the more charming for being slightly antique. But
the _chansons de geste_, living by the poetry of their best examples,
by the fire of their sentiment, by the clash and clang of their music,
are still in thought, in connection with manners, hopes, aims, almost
more dead than any of the classics. The literary misjudgment of them
which was possible in quite recent times, to two such critics--very
different, but each of the first class--as Mr Matthew Arnold and M.
Ferdinand Brunetière, is half excused by this curious feature in their
own literary character. More than mummies or catacombs, more than
Herculaneum and Pompeii, they bring us face to face with something so
remote and afar that we can hardly realise it at all. It may be that
that peculiarity of the French genius, which, despite its unsurpassed
and almost unmatched literary faculty, has prevented it from
contributing any of the very greatest masterpieces to the literature
of the world, has communicated to them this aloofness, this, as it may
almost be called, provincialism. But some such note there is in them,
and it may be that the immense stretch of time during which they were
worse than unknown--misknown--has brought it about.
[Sidenote: _Their charm._]
Yet their interest is not the less; it is perhaps even the more. It is
nearly twenty years since I began to read them, and during that period
I have also been reading masses of other literature from other times,
nations, and languages; yet I cannot at this moment take up one
without being carried away by the stately language, as precise and
well proportioned as modern French, yet with much of the grandeur
which modern French lacks, the statelier metre, the noble phrase, the
noble incident and passion. Take, for instance, one of the crowning
moments, for there are several, of the death-scene of Roland, that
where the hero discovers the dead archbishop, with his hands--"the
white, the beautiful"--crossed on his breast:--
"Li quenz Rollanz revient de pasmeisuns,
Sur piez se drecet, mais il ad grant dulur;
Guardet aval e si guardet amunt;
Sur l'erbe verte, ultre ses cumpaignuns,
La veit gesir le nobile barun:
C'est l'arcevesque que deus mist en sun num,
Claimet sa culpe, si regardet amunt,
Cuntre le ciel ainsdoux ses mains ad juinz,
Si priet deu que pareis li duinst.
Morz est Turpin le guerrier Charlun.
Par granz batailles e par mult bels sermuns
Contre paiens fut tuz tens campiuns.
Deus li otreit seinte beneïçun.
Aoi!"[28]
[Footnote 28: _Roland_, ll. 2233-2246.]
Then turn to, perhaps, the very last poem which can be called a
_chanson de geste_ proper in style, _Le Bastart de Bouillon_, and open
on these lines:--
"Pardevant la chité qui Miekes[29] fut clamée
Fu grande la bataille, et fière la mellée,
Enchois car on eust nulle tente levée,
Commencha li debas à chelle matinée.
Li cinc frere paien i mainent grant huée,
Il keurent par accort, chascuns tenoit l'espée,
Et une forte targe à son col acolée.
Esclamars va ferir sans nulle demorée,
Un gentil crestien de France l'onnerée--
Armeïre n'i vault une pomme pelée;
Sus le senestre espaulle fu la chars atamée,
Le branc li embati par dedans la corée,[30]
Mort l'abat du cheval; son ame soit sauvée!"[31]
[Footnote 29: _I.e._, Mecca.]
[Footnote 30: _Corée_ is not merely = _coeur_, but heart, liver, and
all the upper "inwards."]
[Footnote 31: _Li Bastars de Bouillon_ (ed. Scheler, Brussels, 1877).]
This is in no way a specially fine passage, it is the very "padding"
of the average _chanson_, but what padding it is! Compare the mere
sound, the clash and clang of the verse, with the ordinary English
romance in _Sir Thopas_ metre, or even with the Italian poets. How
alert, how succinct, how finished it is beside the slip-shodness of
the first, in too many instances;[32] how manly, how intense, beside
the mere sweetness of the second! The very ring of the lines brings
mail-shirt and flat-topped helmet before us.
[Footnote 32: Not always; for the English romance of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries has on the whole been too harshly dealt with.
But its _average_ is far below that of the _chansons_.]
[Sidenote: _Peculiarity of the_ geste _system._]
But in order to the proper comprehension of this section of
literature, it is necessary that something more should be said as well
of the matter at large as of the construction and contents of separate
poems; and, most of all, of the singular process of adjustment of
these separate poems by which the _geste_ proper (that is to say, the
subdivision of the whole which deals more or less distinctly with a
single subject) is constituted. Here again we find a "difference" of
the poems in the strict logical sense. The total mass of the Arthurian
story may be, though more probably it is not, as large as that of the
Charlemagne romances, and it may well seem to some of superior
literary interest. But from its very nature, perhaps from the very
nature of its excellence, it lacks this special feature of the
_chansons de geste_. Arthur may or may not be a greater figure in
himself than Charlemagne; but when the genius of Map (or of some one
else) had hit upon the real knotting and unknotting of the story--the
connection of the frailty of Guinevere with the Quest for the
Grail--complete developments of the fates of minor heroes, elaborate
closings of minor incidents, became futile. Endless stories could be
keyed or geared on to different parts of the main legend: there might
be a Tristan-saga, a Palomides-saga, a Gawain-saga, episodes of Balin
or of Beaumains, incidents of the fate of the damsel of Astolat or the
resipiscence of Geraint. But the central interest was too artistically
complete to allow any of these to occupy very much independent space.
[Sidenote: _Instances._]
In our present subject, on the other hand, even Charlemagne's life is
less the object of the story than the history of France; and enormous
as the falsification of that history may seem to modern criticism, the
writers always in a certain sense remembered that they were
historians. When an interesting and important personality presented
itself, it was their duty to follow it out to the end, to fill up the
gaps of forerunners, to round it off and shade it in.[33] Thus it
happens that the _geste_ or saga of _Guillaume d'Orange_--which is
itself not the whole of the great _geste_ of Garin de Montglane--occupies
eighteen separate poems, some of them of great length; that the
crusading series, beginning no doubt in a simple historical poem,
which was extended and "cycled," has seven, the Lorraine group five;
while in the extraordinary monument of industry and enthusiasm which
for some eight hundred pages M. Léon Gautier has devoted to the king's
_geste_, twenty-seven different _chansons_ are more or less
abstracted. Several others might have been added here if M. Gautier
had laid down less strict rules of exclusion against mere _romans
d'aventures_ subsequently tied on, like the above-mentioned outlying
romances of the Arthurian group, to the main subject.
[Footnote 33: This will explain the frequent recurrence of the title
"_Enfances ----_" in the list given above. A hero had become
interesting in some exploit of his manhood: so they harked back to his
childhood.]
[Sidenote: _Summary of the_ geste _of William of Orange._]
It seems necessary, therefore, or at least desirable, especially as
these poems are still far too little known to English readers, to give
in the first place a more or less detailed account of one of the
groups; in the second, a still more detailed account of a particular
_chanson_, which to be fully illustrative should probably be a member
of this group; and lastly, some remarks on the more noteworthy and
accessible (for it is ill speaking at second-hand from accounts of
manuscripts) of the remaining poems. For the first purpose nothing can
be better than _Guillaume d'Orange_, many, though not all, of the
constituents of which are in print, and which has had the great
advantage of being systematically treated by more than one or two of
the most competent scholars of the century on the subject--Dr
Jonckbloët, MM. Guessard and A. de Montaiglon, and M. Gautier himself.
Of this group the short, very old, and very characteristic
_Couronnement Loys_ will supply a good subject for more particular
treatment, a subject all the more desirable that _Roland_ may be said
to be comparatively familiar, and is accessible in English
translations.
[Sidenote: _And first of the_ Couronnement Loys.]
The poem as we have it[34] begins with a double exordium, from which
the _jongleur_ might perhaps choose as from alternative collects in a
liturgy. Each is ten lines long, and while the first rhymes
throughout, the second has only a very imperfect assonance. Each
bespeaks attention and promises satisfaction in the usual manner,
though in different terms--
"Oez seignor que Dex vos soit aidant;"
"Seignor baron, pleroit vos d'un exemple!"
[Footnote 34: Ed. Jonckbloët, _op. cit._, i. 1-71.]
A much less commonplace note is struck immediately afterwards in what
may be excusably taken to be the real beginning of the poem:--
"A king who wears our France's crown of gold
Worthy must be, and of his body bold;
What man soe'er to him do evil wold,
He may not quit in any manner hold
Till he be dead or to his mercy yold.
Else France shall lose her praise she hath of old.
Falsely he's crowned: so hath our story told."
Then the story itself is plunged into in right style. When the chapel
was blessed at Aix and the minster dedicated and made, there was a
mighty court held. Poor and rich received justice; eighteen bishops,
as many archbishops, twenty-six abbots, and four crowned kings
attended; the Pope of Rome himself said mass; and Louis, son of
Charlemagne, was brought up to the high altar where the crown was
laid. At this moment the people are informed that Charles feels his
death approaching, and must hand over his kingdom to his son. They
thank God that no strange king is to come on them. But when the
emperor, after good advice as to life and policy, bids him not dare to
take the crown unless he is prepared for a clean and valiant life, the
infant (_li enfes_) does not dare. The people weep, and the king
storms, declaring that the prince is no son of his and shall be made a
monk. But Hernaut of Orleans, a great noble, strikes in, and
pretending to plead for Louis on the score of his extreme youth,
offers to take the regency for three years, when, if the prince has
become a good knight, he shall have the kingdom back, and in increased
good condition. Charlemagne, with the singular proneness to be victim
of any kind of "confidence trick" which he shows throughout the
_chansons_, is turning a willing ear to this proposition when William
of Orange enters, and, wroth at the notion, thinks of striking off
Hernaut's head. But remembering
"Que d'ome occire est trop mortex péchiés,"
he changes his plan and only pummels him to death with his fists, a
distinction which seems indifferential. Then he takes the crown
himself, places it on the boy's head, and Charles accommodates himself
to this proceeding as easily as to the other proposal.
Five years pass: and it is a question, not of the mere choice of a
successor or assessor, but of actual death. He repeats his counsels to
his son, with the additional and very natural warning to rely on
William. Unluckily this chief, who is in the earlier part of the
_chanson_ surnamed Firebrace (not to be confounded with the converted
Saracen of that name), is not at the actual time of the king's death
at Aix, but has gone on pilgrimage, in fulfilment of a vow, to Rome.
He comes at a good time, for the Saracens have just invaded Italy,
have overthrown the King of Apulia with great slaughter, and are close
to Rome. The Pope (the "Apostle") hears of William, and implores his
succour, which, though he has but forty knights and the Saracens are
in their usual thousands, he consents to give. The Pope promises him
as a reward that he may eat meat all the days of his life, and take as
many wives as he chooses,--a method of guerdon which shocks M.
Gautier, the most orthodox as well as not the least scholarly of
scholars. However, the Holy Father also wishes to buy off the heathen,
thereby showing a truly apostolic ignorance of the world. Galafré, the
"admiral," however has a point of honour. He will not be bought off.
He informs the Pope, calling him "Sir with the big hat,"[35] that he
is a descendant of Romulus and Julius Cæsar, and for that reason feels
it necessary to destroy Rome and its clerks who serve God. He relents,
however, so far as to propose to decide the matter by single combat,
to which the Pope, according to all but nineteenth century sentiment,
very properly consents. William is, of course, the Christian champion;
the Saracen is a giant named Corsolt, very hideous, very violent, and
a sort of Mahometan Capaneus in his language. The Pope does not
entirely trust in William's valour, but rubs him all over with St
Peter's arm, which confers invulnerability. Unfortunately the
"promontory of the face" is omitted. The battle is fierce, but not
long. Corsolt cuts off the uncharmed tip of William's nose (whence his
epic surname of Guillaume au Court Nez), but William cuts off
Corsolt's head. The Saracens fly: William (he has joked rather
ruefully with the Pope on his misadventure, which, as being a
recognised form of punishment, was almost a disgrace even when
honourably incurred) pursues them, captures Galafré, converts him at
point of sword, and receives from him the offer of his beautiful
daughter. The marriage is about to be celebrated, William and the
Saracen princess are actually at the altar, when a messenger from
Louis arrives claiming the champion's help against the traitors who
already wish to wrest the sceptre from his hand. William asks the Pope
what he is to do, and the Pope says "Go":
"Guillaumes bese la dame o le vis cler,
Et ele lui; ne cesse deplorer.
Par tel covent ensi sont dessevré,
Puis ne se virent en trestot leur aé."
[Footnote 35: "Parlez à moi, sire au chaperon large."--_C.L._, l.
468.]
Promptly as he acts, however, he is only in time to repair, not to
prevent, the mischief. The rebels have already dethroned Louis and
imprisoned him at St Martins in Tours, making Acelin of Rouen, son of
Richard, Emperor. William makes straight for Tours, prevails on the
castellan of the gate-fortress to let him in, kicks--literally
kicks--the monks out of their abbey, and rescues Louis. He then kills
Acelin, violently maltreats his father, and rapidly traverses the
whole of France, reducing the malcontents.
Peace having been for the time restored at home, William returns to
Rome, where many things have happened. The Pope and Galafré are dead,
the princess, though she is faithful to William, has other suitors,
and there is a fresh invasion, not this time of heathen Asiatics, but
led by Guy of Germany. The Count of Orange forces Louis (who behaves
in a manner justifying the rebels) to accompany him with a great army
to Rome, defeats the Germans, takes his _fainéant_ emperor's part in a
single combat with Guy, and is again victorious. Nor, though he has
to treat his pusillanimous sovereign in an exceedingly cavalier
fashion, does he fail to have Louis crowned again as Emperor of Rome.
A fresh rebellion breaking out in France, he again subdues it; and
strengthens the tottering house of Charles Martel by giving his own
sister Blanchefleur to the chicken-hearted king.
"En grant barnage fu Looys entrez;
Quant il fu riche, Guillaume n'en sot gré,"
ends the poem with its usual laconism.
[Sidenote: _Comments on the_ Couronnement.]
There is, of course, in this story an element of rough comedy,
approaching horse-play, which may not please all tastes. This element,
however, is very largely present in the _chansons_ (though it so
happens, yet once more, that _Roland_ is accidentally free from it),
and it is especially obvious in the particular branch or _geste_ of
William with the Short Nose, appearing even in the finest and longest
of the subdivisions, _Aliscans_, which some have put at the head of
the whole. In fact, as we might expect, the _esprit gaulois_ can
seldom refrain altogether from pleasantry, and its pleasantry at this
time is distinctly "the humour of the stick." But still the poem is a
very fine one. Its ethical opening is really noble: the picture of the
Court at Aix has grandeur, for all its touches of simplicity; the
fighting is good; the marriage scene and its fatal interruption (for
we hear nothing of the princess on William's second visit to Rome)
give a dramatic turn: and though there is no fine writing, there is a
refreshing directness. The shortness, too (it has less than three
thousand lines), is undoubtedly in its favour, for these pieces are
apt to be rather too long than too short. And if the pusillanimity and
_fainéantise_ of Louis seem at first sight exaggerated, it must be
remembered that, very awkward as was the position of a Henry III. of
England in the thirteenth century, and a James III. of Scotland in the
fifteenth, kings of similar character must have cut even worse figures
in the tenth or eleventh, when the story was probably first
elaborated, and worse still in the days of the supposed occurrence of
its facts. Indeed, one of the best passages as poetry, and one of the
most valuable as matter, is that in which the old king warns his
trembling son how he must not only do judgment and justice, must not
only avoid luxury and avarice, protect the orphan and do the widow no
wrong, but must be ready at any moment to cross the water of Gironde
with a hundred thousand men in order to _craventer et confondre_ the
pagan host,--how he must be towards his own proud vassals "like a
man-eating leopard," and if any dare levy war against him, must summon
his knights, besiege the traitor's castle, waste and spoil all his
land, and when he is taken show him no mercy, but lop him limb from
limb, burn him in fire, or drown him in the sea.[36] It is not
precisely an amiable spirit, this spirit of the _chansons_: but there
is this to be said in its favour, there is no mistake about it.
[Footnote 36: _C.L._, ll. 72-79, 172-196.]
[Sidenote: _William of Orange._]
It may be perhaps expected that before, in the second place, summing
the other branches of the saga of this William of Orange, it should be
said who he was. But it is better to refer to the authorities already
given on this, after all, not strictly literary point. Enormous pains
have been spent on the identification or distinction of William
Short-nose, Saint William of Gellona, William Tow-head of Poitiers,
William Longsword of Normandy, as well as several other Williams. It
may not be superfluous, and is certainly not improper, for those who
undertake the elaborate editing of a particular poem to enter into
such details. But for us, who are considering the literary development
of Europe, it would be scarcely germane. It is enough that certain
_trouvères_ found in tradition, in history freely treated, or in their
own imaginations, the material which they worked into this great
series of poems, of which those concerning William directly amount to
eighteen, while the entire _geste_ of Garin de Montglane runs to
twenty-four.
[Sidenote: _The earlier poems of the cycle._]
For the purposes of the _chansons_, William of the Strong Arm or the
Short Nose is Count, or rather Marquis, of Orange, one of
Charlemagne's peers, a special bulwark of France and Christendom
towards the south-east, and a man of approved valour, loyalty, and
piety, but of somewhat rough manners. Also (which is for the _chanson
de geste_ of even greater importance) he is grandson of Garin de
Montglane and the son of Aimeri de Narbonne, heroes both, and
possessors of the same good qualities which extend to all the family.
For it is a cardinal point of the _chansons_ that not only _bon sang
chasse de race_, but evil blood likewise. And the House of Narbonne,
or Montglane, or Orange, is as uniformly distinguished for loyalty as
the Normans and part of the house of Mayence for "treachery." To
illustrate its qualities, twenty-four _chansons_, as has been said,
are devoted, six of which tell the story before William, and the
remaining eighteen that of his life. The first in M. Gautier's
order[37] is _Les Enfances Garin de Montglane_. Garin de Montglane,
the son of Duke Savary of Aquitaine and a mother persecuted by false
accusations, like so many heroines of the middle ages, fights first in
Sicily, procures atonement for his mother's wrongs, and then goes to
the Court of Charlemagne, who, according to the general story, is his
exact equal in age, as is also Doon de Mayence, the special hero of
the third great _geste_. He conquers Montglane, and marries the Lady
Mabille, his marriage and its preliminaries filling the second
romance, or _Garin de Montglane_ proper. He has by Mabille four
sons--Hernaut de Beaulande, Girart de Viane, Renier de Gennes, and
Milles de Pouille. Each of the three first is the subject of an
existing _chanson_, and doubtless the fourth was similarly honoured.
_Girart de Viane_ is one of the most striking of the _chansons_ in
matter. The hero quarrels with Charlemagne owing to the bad offices of
the empress, and a great barons' war follows, in which Roland and
Oliver have their famous fight, and Roland is betrothed to Oliver's
sister Aude. _Hernaut de Beaulande_ tells how the hero conquers
Aquitaine, marries Fregonde, and becomes the father of Aimeri de
Narbonne; and _Renier de Gennes_ in like fashion the success of its
eponym at Genoa, and his becoming the father of Oliver and Aude. Then
we pass to the third generation (Charlemagne reigning all the time)
with the above-named _Aimeri de Narbonne_. The events of this come
after Roncesvalles, and it is on the return thence that, Narbonne
being in Paynim hands, Aimeri, after others have refused, takes the
adventure, the town, and his surname. He marries Hermengart, sister of
the king of the Lombards, repulses the Saracens, who endeavour to
recover Narbonne, and begets twelve children, of whom the future
William of Orange is one. These _chansons_, with the exception of
_Girart de Viane_, which was printed early, remained much longer in
MS. than their successors, and the texts are not accessible in any
such convenient _corpus_ as De Jonckbloët's though some have been
edited recently.
[Footnote 37: M. Jonckbloët, who takes a less wide range, begins his
selection or collection of the William saga with the _Couronnement
Loys_.]
Three poems intervene between _Aimeri de Narbonne_ and the
_Couronnement Loys_, but they do not seem to have been always kept
apart. The first, the _Enfances Guillaume_, tells how when William
himself had left Narbonne for Charlemagne's Court, and his father was
also absent, the Saracens under Thibaut, King of Arabia, laid siege to
the town, laying at the same time siege to the heart of the beautiful
Saracen Princess Orable, who lives in the enchanted palace of
Gloriette at Orange, itself then, as Narbonne had been, a pagan
possession. William, going with his brothers to succour their mother,
captures Baucent, a horse sent by the princess to Thibaut, and falls
in love with her, his love being returned. She is forced to marry
Thibaut, but preserves herself by witchcraft as a wife only in name.
Orange does not fall into the hand of the Christians, though they
succeed in relieving Narbonne. William meanwhile has returned to
Court, and has been solemnly dubbed knight, his _enfances_ then
technically ceasing.
This is followed by the _Département des Enfans Aimeri_, in which
William's brothers, following his example, leave Narbonne and their
father for different parts of France, and achieve adventures and
possessions. One of them, Bernart of Brabant, is often specially
mentioned in the latter branches of the cycle as the most valiant of
the clan next to Guillaume, and it is not improbable that he had a
_chanson_ to himself. The youngest, Guibelin, remains, and in the
third _Siege of Narbonne_, which has a poem to itself, he shows
prowess against the Saracens, but is taken prisoner. He is rescued
from crucifixion by his aged father, who cuts his way through the
Saracens and carries off his son. But the number of the heathen is too
great, and the city must have surrendered if an embassy sent to
Charlemagne had not brought help, headed by William himself, in time.
He is as victorious as usual, but after his victory again returns to
Aix.
[Sidenote: _The_ Charroi de Nîmes.]
Now begins the _Couronnement Loys_, of which the more detailed
abstract given above may serve, not merely to make the individual
piece known, but to indicate the general course, incidents, language,
and so forth of all these poems. It will be remembered that it ends by
a declaration that the king was not grateful to the King-maker. He
forgets William in the distribution of fiefs, says M. Gautier; we may
say, perhaps, that he remembers rather too vividly the rough
instruction he has received from his brother-in-law. On protest
William receives Spain, Orange, and Nîmes, a sufficiently magnificent
dotation, were it not that all three are in the power of the infidels.
William, however, loses no time in putting himself in possession, and
begins with Nîmes. This he carries, as told in the _Charroi de
Nîmes_,[38] by the Douglas-like stratagem (indeed it is not at all
impossible that the Good Lord James was acquainted with the poem) of
hiding his knights in casks, supposed to contain salt and other
merchandise, which are piled on cars and drawn by oxen. William
himself and Bertrand his nephew conduct the caravan, dressed in rough
boots (which hurt Bertrand's feet), blue hose, and coarse cloth
frocks. The innocent paynims give them friendly welcome, though
William is nearly discovered by his tell-tale disfigurement. A
squabble, however, arises; but William, having effected his entrance,
does not lose time. He blows his horn, and the knights springing from
their casks, the town is taken. This _Charroi de Nîmes_ is one of the
most spirited, but one of the roughest, of the group. The catalogue of
his services with which William overwhelms the king, each item
ushered by the phrase "Rois, quar te membre" ("King, bethink thee
then"), and to which the unfortunate Louis can only answer in various
forms, "You are very ill-tempered" ("Pleins es de mautalent";
"Mautalent avez moult"), is curiously full of uncultivated eloquence;
while his refusal to accept the heritage of Auberi le Bourgoing, and
thereby wrong Auberi's little son, even though "sa marrastre
Hermengant de Tori" is also offered by the generous monarch with the
odd commendation--
"La meiller feme qui onc beust de vin,"
is justly praised. But when the venerable Aymon not unnaturally
protests against almost the whole army accompanying William, and the
wrathful peer breaks his jaw with his fist, when the peasants who
grumble at their casks and their oxen being seized are hanged or have
their eyes put out--then the less amiable side of the matter certainly
makes its appearance.
[Footnote 38: Jonckbloët, i. 73-111.]
[Sidenote: _The_ Prise d'Orange.]
William has thus entered on part, though the least part, of the king's
gift to him--a gift which it is fair to Louis to say that the hero had
himself demanded, after refusing the rather vague offer of a fourth of
the lands and revenues of all France. The _Prise d'Orange_[39] follows
in time and as a subject of _chanson_, the _Charroi de Nîmes_. The
earlier poem had been all sheer fighting with no softer side. In this
William is reminded of the beautiful Orable (wife, if only in name, of
King Thibaut), who lives there, though her husband, finding a wife
who bewitches the nuptial chamber unsatisfactory, has left her and
Orange to the care of his son Arragon. The reminder is a certain
Gilbert of Vermandois who has been prisoner at Orange, and who, after
some hesitation, joins William himself and his brother Guibelin in a
hazardous expedition to the pagan city. They blacken themselves with
ink, and are not ill received by Arragon: but a Saracen who knows the
"Marquis au Court Nez" informs against him (getting his brains beaten
out for his pains), and the three, forcing a way with bludgeons
through the heathen, take refuge in Gloriette, receive arms from
Orable, who has never ceased to love the Marquis, and drive their
enemies off. But a subterranean passage (this probably shows the
_chanson_ to be a late one in this form) lets the heathen in: and all
three champions are seized, bound, and condemned to the flames. Orable
demands them, not to release but to put in her own dungeons,
conveniently furnished with vipers; and for a time they think
themselves betrayed. But Orable soon appears, offers them liberty if
William will marry her, and discloses a second underground passage.
They do not, however, fly by this, but only send Gilbert to Nîmes to
fetch succour: and as Orable's conduct is revealed to Arragon, a third
crisis occurs. It is happily averted, and Bertrand soon arriving with
thirteen thousand men from Nîmes, the Saracens are cut to pieces and
Orange won. Orable is quickly baptised, her name being changed to
Guibourc, and married without further delay. William is William of
Orange at length in good earnest, and the double sacrament reconciles
M. Gautier (who is constantly distressed by the forward conduct of his
heroines) to Guibourc ever afterwards. It is only fair to say that in
the text published by M. Jonckbloët (and M. Gautier gives references
to no other) "la curtoise Orable" does not seem to deserve his hard
words. There is nothing improper in her conduct, and her words do not
come to much more than--
"I am your wife if you will marry me."
[Footnote 39: Jonckbloët, i. 112-162.]
_La Prise d'Orange_ ends with the couplet--
"Puis estut il tiex xxx ans en Orenge
Mes ainc un jor n'i estut sanz chalenge."
[Sidenote: _The story of Vivien._]
Orange, in short, was a kind of Garde Douloureuse against the infidel:
and William well earned his title of "Marchis." The story of his
exploits diverges a little--a loop rather than an episode--in two
specially heroic _chansons_, the _Enfances Vivien_ and the _Covenant
Vivien_,[40] which tell the story of one of his nephews, a story
finished by Vivien's glorious death at the opening of the great
_chanson_ of _Aliscans_. Vivien is the son of Garin d'Ansène, one of
those "children of Aimeri" who have sought fortune away from Narbonne,
and one of the captives of Roncesvalles. Garin is only to be delivered
at the cost of his son's life, which Vivien cheerfully offers. He is
actually on the pyre, which is kindled, when the pagan hold Luiserne
is stormed by a pirate king, and Vivien is rescued, but sold as a
slave. An amiable paynim woman buys him and adopts him; but he is a
born knight, and when grown up, with a few allies surprises Luiserne
itself, and holds it till a French army arrives, and Garin recovers
his son, whom he had thought dead. After these _Enfances_, promising
enough, comes the _Covenant_ or vow, never to retreat before the
Saracens. Vivien is as savage as he is heroic; and on one occasion
sends five hundred prisoners, miserably mutilated, to the great
Admiral Desramé. The admiral assembles all the forces of the East as
well as of Spain, and invades France. Vivien, overpowered by numbers,
applies to his uncle William for help, and the battle of Aliscans is
already half fought and more than half lost before the actual
_chanson_ of the name begins. _Aliscans_[41] itself opens with a
triplet in which the "steel clash" of the _chanson_ measure is more
than ever in place:--
"A icel jor ke la dolor fu grans,
Et la bataille orible en Aliscans:
Li quens Guillaumes i soufri grans ahans."
[Footnote 40: _Enfances Vivien_, ed. Wahlen and v. Feilitzer, Paris,
1886; _Covenant Vivien_, Jonckbloët, i. 163-213.]
[Footnote 41: Jonckbloët, i. 215 to end; separately, as noted above,
by Guessard and de Montaignon, Paris, 1870.]
[Sidenote: _Aliscans._]
And it continues in the same key. The commentators declare that the
story refers to an actual historical battle of Villedaigne. This may
be a fact: the literary excellence of _Aliscans_ is one. The scale of
the battle is represented as being enormous: and the poet is not
unworthy of his subject. Neither is William _impar sibi_: but his day
of unbroken victory is over. No one can resist him personally; but
the vast numbers of the Saracens make personal valour useless. Vivien,
already hopelessly wounded, fights on, and receives a final blow from
a giant. He is able, however, to drag himself to a tree where a
fountain flows, and there makes his confession, and prays for his
uncle's safety. As for William himself, his army is entirely cut to
pieces, and it is only a question whether he can possibly escape. He
comes to Vivien's side just as his nephew is dying, bewails him in a
very noble passage, receives his last breath, and is able before it
passes to administer the holy wafer which he carries with him. It is
Vivien's first communion as well as his last.
After this really great scene, one of the finest in all the
_chansons_, William puts the corpse of Vivien on the wounded but still
generous Baucent, and endeavours to make his way through the ring of
enemies who have held aloof but are determined not to let him go.
Night saves him: and though he has to abandon the body, he cuts his
way through a weak part of the line, gains another horse (for Baucent
can carry him no longer), and just reaches Orange. But he has taken
the arms as well as the horse of a pagan to get through his foes: and
in this guise he is refused entrance to his own city. Guibourc herself
rejects him, and only recognises her husband from the prowess which he
shows against the pursuers, who soon catch him up. The gates are
opened and he is saved, but Orange is surrounded by the heathen. There
is no room to tell the full heroism of Guibourc, and, besides,
_Aliscans_ is one of the best known of the _chansons_, and has been
twice printed.
[Sidenote: _The end of the story._]
From this point the general interest of the saga, which has culminated
in the battle of Aliscans, though it can hardly be said to disappear,
declines somewhat, and is diverted to other persons than William
himself. It is decided that Guibourc shall hold Orange, while he goes
to the Court of Louis to seek aid. This personal suit is necessary
lest the fulness of the overthrow be not believed; and the pair part
after a scene less rugged than the usual course of the _chansons_, in
which Guibourc expresses her fear of the "damsels bright of blee," the
ladies of high lineage that her husband will meet at Laon; and William
swears in return to drink no wine, eat no flesh, kiss no mouth, sleep
on his saddle-cloth, and never change his garments till he meets her
again.
[Sidenote: _Renouart._]
His reception is not cordial. Louis thinks him merely a nuisance, and
the courtiers mock his poverty, distress, and loneliness. He meets
with no hospitality save from a citizen. But the chance arrival of his
father and mother from Narbonne prevents him from doing anything rash.
They have a great train with them, and it is no longer possible simply
to ignore William; but from the king downwards, there is great
disinclination to grant him succour, and Queen Blanchefleur is
especially hostile. William is going to cut her head off--his usual
course of action when annoyed--after actually addressing her in a
speech of extreme directness, somewhat resembling Hamlet's to
Gertrude, but much ruder. Their mother saves Blanchefleur, and after
she has fled in terror to her chamber, the fair Aelis, her daughter, a
gracious apparition, begs and obtains forgiveness from William, short
of temper as of nose, but also not rancorous. Reconciliation takes
place all round, and an expedition is arranged for the relief of
Orange. It is successful, but chiefly owing to the prowess, not of
William, but of a certain Renouart, who is the special hero, not
merely of the last half of _Aliscans_, but of nearly all the later
_chansons_ of the _geste_ of Garin de Montglane. This Renouart or
Rainouart is an example, and one of the earliest, perhaps the very
earliest, of the type of hero, so dear to the middle ages, who begins
by service in the kitchen or elsewhere, of no very dignified
character, and ends by being discovered to be of noble or royal birth.
Rainouart is thus the ancestor, and perhaps the direct ancestor, of
Havelok, whom he especially resembles; of Beaumains, in a hitherto
untraced episode of the Arthurian story, and of others. His early
feats against the Saracens, in defence of Orange first, and then when
William arrives, are made with no knightly weapon, but with a
_tinel_--huge bludgeon, beam, "caber"--but he afterwards turns out to
be Guibourc's, or rather Orable's, own brother. There are very strong
comic touches in all this part of the poem, such as the difficulty
Rainouart finds in remounting his comrades, the seven nephews of
William, because his _tinel_ blows are so swashing that they simply
smash horse and man--a difficulty overcome by the ingenious
suggestion of Bertrand that he shall hit with the small end. And these
comic touches have a little disturbed those who wish to find in the
pure _chanson de geste_ nothing but war and religion, honour and
generosity. But, as has been already hinted, this is to be over-nice.
No doubt the oldest existing, or at least the oldest yet discovered,
MS. of _Aliscans_ is not the original, for it is rhymed, not
assonanced, a practically infallible test. But there is no reason to
suppose that the comic touches are all new, though they may have been
a little amplified in the later version. Once more, it is false
argument to evolve the idea of a _chanson_ from _Roland_ only, and
then to insist that all _chansons_ shall conform to it.
After the defeat of Desramé, and the relief of half-ruined Orange, the
troubles of that city and its Count are not over. The admiral returns
to the charge, and the next _chanson_, the _Bataille Loquifer_, is
ranked by good judges as ancient, and describes fresh prowess of
Rainouart. Then comes the _Moniage_ ["Monking" of] _Rainouart_, in
which the hero, like so many other heroes, takes the cowl. This,
again, is followed by a series describing chiefly the reprisals in
Spain and elsewhere of the Christians--_Foulques de Candie_, the
_Siège de Barbastre_, the _Prise de Cordres_, and _Gilbert
d'Andrenas_. And at last the whole _geste_ is wound up by the _Mort
Aimeri de Narbonne_, _Renier_, and the _Moniage Guillaume_, the poem
which unites the profane history of the _Marquis au Court Nez_ to the
legend of St William of the Desert, though in a fashion sometimes
odd. M. Gautier will not allow any of these poems (except the
_Bataille Loquifer_ and the two _Moniages_) great age; and even if it
were otherwise, and more of them were directly accessible,[42] there
could be no space to say much of them here. The sketch given should be
sufficient to show the general characteristics of the _chansons_ as
each is in itself, and also the curious and ingenious way in which
their successive authors have dovetailed and pieced them together into
continuous family chronicles.
[Footnote 42: _Foulques de Candie_ (ed. Tarbé, Reims, 1860) is the
only one of this batch which I possess, or have read _in extenso_.]
[Sidenote: _Some other_ chansons.]
If these delights can move any one, they may be found almost
universally distributed about the _chansons_. Of the minor groups the
most interesting and considerable are the crusading cycle, late as it
is in part, and that of the Lorrainers, which is, in the main, very
early. Of the former the _Chansons d'Antioche_ and _de Jérusalem_ are
almost historical, and are pretty certainly based on the account of an
actual partaker. _Antioche_ in particular has few superiors in the
whole hundred and more poems of the kind. _Hélias_ ties this historic
matter on to legend proper by introducing the story of the Knight of
the Swan; while _Les Chétifs_ (_The Captives_) combines history and
legend very interestingly, starting as it does with a probably
historical capture of certain Christians, who are then plunged in
dreamland of romance for the rest of it. The concluding poems of this
cycle, _Baudouin de Sebourc_ and the _Bastart de Bouillon_, have been
already more than once mentioned. They show, as has been said, the
latest form of the _chanson_, and are almost pure fiction, though they
have a sort of framework or outline in the wars in Northern Arabia, at
and round the city of Jôf, whose crusading towers still, according to
travellers, look down on the _hadj_ route through the desert. _Garin
le Loherain_, on the other hand, and its successors, are pure early
feudal fighting, as is also the early, excellent, and very
characteristic _Raoul de Cambrai_. These are instances, and no doubt
not the only ones, of what may be called district or provincial
_gestes_, applying the principles of the _chansons_ generally to local
quarrels and fortunes.
Of what purists call the sophisticated _chansons_, those in which
general romance-motives of different kinds are embroidered on the
strictly _chanson_ canvas, there are probably none more interesting
than the later forms of _Huon de Bordeaux_ and _Ogier de Danemarche_.
The former, since the fortunate reprinting of Lord Berners's version
by the Early English Text Society, is open to every one, though, of
course, the last vestiges of _chanson_ form have departed, and those
who can should read it as edited in M. Guessard's series. The still
more gracious legend, in which the ferocious champion Ogier, after his
early triumphs over the giant Caraheu and against the paladins of
Charles, is, like Huon, brought to the loadstone rock, is then
subjected to the enchantments--loving, and now not baneful--of
Arthur's sister Morgane, and tears himself from fairyland to come to
the rescue of France, is by far the most delightful of the attempts
to "cross" the Arthurian and Carlovingian cycles. And of this we
fortunately have in English a poetical version from the great
_trouvère_ among the poets of our day, the late Mr William Morris. Of
yet others, the often-mentioned _Voyage à Constantinoble_, with its
rather unseemly _gabz_ (boasting jests of the peers, which are
overheard by the heathen emperor with results which seem like at one
time to be awkward), is among the oldest, and is a warning against the
tendency to take the presence of comic elements as a necessary
evidence of late date. _Les Saisnes_, dealing with the war against the
Saxons, is a little loose in its morals, but vigorous and interesting.
The pleasant pair of _Aiol_ and _Elie de St Gilles_; the touching
history of Charlemagne's mother, _Berte aus grans Piés_; _Acquin_, one
of the rare _chansons_ dealing with Brittany (though Roland was
historically count thereof); _Gérard de Roussillon_, which has more
than merely philological interest; _Macaire_, already mentioned; the
famous _Quatre Fils d'Aymon_, longest and most widely popular, must be
added to the list, and are not all that should be added to it.
[Sidenote: _Final remarks on them._]
On the whole, I must repeat that the _chansons de geste_, which as we
have them are the work of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the
main, form the second division in point of literary value of early
mediæval literature, while they possess, in a certain "sincerity and
strength," qualities not to be found even in the Arthurian story
itself. Despite the ardour with which they have been philologically
studied for nearly three-quarters of a century, despite (or perhaps
because of) the enthusiasm which one or two devotees have shown for
their literary qualities, it does not seem to me that fair justice, or
anything like it, has yet been generally done. German critics care
little for literary merit, and are perhaps not often trained to
appreciate it; in England the _chansons_ have been strangely little
read. But the most singular thing is the cold reception, slightly if
at all thawed recently, which they have met in France itself. It may
give serious pause to the very high estimate generally entertained of
French criticism by foreigners to consider this coldness, which once
reached something like positive hostility in M. Ferdinand Brunetière,
the chief French literary critic of our generation. I regret to see
that M. Lanson, the latest historian of French literature, has not
dared to separate himself from the academic _grex_. "On ne saurait
nier," he says, "que quelques uns aient eu du talent;" but he
evidently feels that this generous concession is in need of guards and
caveats. There is no "beauté formelle" in them, he says--no formal
beauty in those magnificently sweeping _laisses_, of which the ear
that has once learnt their music can no more tire thereafter than of
the sound of the sea itself. The style (and if it be objected that his
previous words have been directly addressed to the later _chansons_
and _chanson_ writers, here he expressly says that this style "est le
même style que dans le _Roland_," though "moins sobre, moins plein,
moins sur") has "no beauty by itself," and finally he thinks that the
best thing to do is "to let nine-tenths of the _chansons_ follow
nine-tenths of our tragedies." I have read many _chansons_ and many
tragedies; but I have never read a _chanson_ that has not more poetry
in it than ninety-nine French tragedies out of a hundred.
The fact is that it is precisely the _beauté formelle_, assisted as it
is by the peculiar spirit of which so much has been said already,
which constitutes the beauty of these poems: and that these
characteristics are present, not of course in uniform measure, but
certainly in the great majority of the _chansons_ from _Roland_ to the
_Bastard_. Of course if a man sits down with a preconceived idea of an
epic poem, it is more likely than not that his preconceived idea will
be of something very different from a _chanson de geste_. And if,
refusing to depart from his preconceived idea, and making that idea up
of certain things taken from the _Iliad_, certain from the _Æneid_,
certain from the _Divina Commedia_, certain from _Paradise Lost_,--if
he runs over the list and says to the _chanson_, "Are you like Homer
in this point? Can you match me Virgil in that?" the result will be
that the _chanson_ will fail to pass its examination.
But if, with some knowledge of literature in the wide sense, and some
love for it, he sits down to take the _chansons_ as they are, and
judge them on their merits and by the law of their own poetical state,
then I think he will come to a very different conclusion. He will say
that their kind is a real kind, a thing by itself, something of which
if it were not, nothing else in literature could precisely supply the
want. And he will decide further that while the best of them are
remarkably good of their kind, few of them can be called positively
bad in it. And yet again, if he has been fortunately gifted by nature
with that appreciation of form which saves the critic from mere
prejudice and crotchet, from mere partiality, he will, I believe, go
further still, and say that while owing something to spirit, they owe
most to form itself, to the form of the single-assonanced or
mono-rhymed _tirade_, assisted as it is by the singular beauty of Old
French in sound, and more particularly by the sonorous recurring
phrases of the _chanson_ dialect. No doubt much instruction and some
amusement can be got out of these poems as to matters of fact: no
doubt some passages in _Roland_, in _Aliscans_, in the _Couronnement
Loys_, have a stern beauty of thought and sentiment which deserves
every recognition. But these things are not all-pervading, and they
can be found elsewhere: the clash and clang of the _tirade_ are
everywhere here, and can be found nowhere else.